While I absolutely agree with the addictive quality of video game playing. I personally believe that it is more akin to the addictive quality of any stimulus. Your list was quite accurate in the sense that some of the stimulus have more addictive quality than others. However, I believe that it is important for people to recognize that it is ultimately up to them to control their own actions.

I have an addictive personality and have had a tendancy to overplay many games, but I learned long ago that while I may overplay from time to time it is up to me to step back and recognize when I am playing too much and letting other things in my life slide.

I feel that video game addiction is a psychological addiction brought on by the combination of stimulus and escape potential. Usually the most addicted people are a case of, marginal game playing along with other poor life choices, this is followed by bad or hard times for the individual, which is followed by increased game playing, and you have yourself a downward spiral. The game becomes the escape from reality which is overwhelming the individual.

In a case like this, removing the specific game in question may make all the difference, but it may not. The individual may continue to engage in addictive behavior attempting to escape anywhere they can from the difficulties of reality.

I believe that when we discuss the difficulties of game playing it is also important to discuss the benefits.

Games such as World of Warcraft can have many benefits as well. These include improving social networking, improved money management skills, typing skills, problem solving, situational awareness, improved reaction time, analytical thinking, and possibly even attitude adjustment. All of these are helpful in the real world because they are necessary skills to be successful.

I really appriciate your article and like that you wrote it to help educate people about games and help them understand what they or their children may be into. I would like to see parents take a much greater role in their kids lives by discussing addiction, game playing, responsibility, perserverence, video game violence, and anything else that is relevent to their childs development.

There are some great tools in place for new games and even windows vista can have parental controls set to require a password for games of certain ratings or genre. Passwords can be set to play games at all or time limits can be imposed to keep your children from playing too much, but none of that matters if it is not used or the kids are not made aware of why it is being done and to what effect.

Great article thank you for sharing it.

This addiction is pretty serious though people die from these types of addictions.

Any it ruins many a persons life for sure.

But of course in moderation your ok, but that is true for everything.