Digital Journal — They wear diapers so they don’t have to go to the bathroom. They forget about caring for their children. They stop talking to friends and they stop eating. They start living in a world removed from reality.
These are video game addicts who take online entertainment beyond the play-after-work norm.
Any kind of obsessive behaviour can cripple a functional life, but critics argue endless gaming has long been misrepresented as harmless. Today’s gamers are growing up — adults with full-time jobs and families are basking in the monitor’s glow of numbing fantasy, proving the $1 billion (US) online gaming industry hooks people long past adolescence. And they’re engrossing themselves so deeply that some have even committed suicide over it.
Dying to Win
Elizabeth Wooley’s voice is filled with anger when she talks about video game developers. A computer technician from Hudson, Wisconsin, Wooley says she has good reason to be so hateful towards them: Her son committed suicide because of their product, she claims.
Always a smiling, friendly boy, Shawn Wooley was known as someone who loved to ham it up for the camera. In home videos, he contorted his face, stuck out his tongue, even did the occasional headstand.
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| It would be naïve to think companies wouldn’t capitalize on the tendency to numb ourselves with entertainment (remember TV?). But what makes these online role-playing games so popular is continuity. |
In his late teens, Shawn tried out an online game and never stopped playing it. His fix was EverQuest, an epic multiplayer role-playing game where people invent characters for themselves and embark on missions to gain points. Shawn was playing the game almost every hour of the day, to the point that his mother was forced to bring Shawn’s keyboard to work with her.
Although Shawn was already afflicted with depression, Elizabeth says online gaming changed his personality for the worse. When he moved to his own place, dirty dishes and scraps of food caked his kitchen. He stopped calling his family and withdrew from any social interaction.
On Nov. 22, 2001, Elizabeth visited her son at his apartment. The 20-year-old had shot himself in the head while playing a game. His virtual character stood motionless on the screen, its name changed to “I love you.” Elizabeth believes Shawn proposed marriage to someone in the virtual world and was rejected. He quit his job and bought a gun after suffering a jolt of despair.
Since then, Elizabeth Wooley has met other gamers who attempted suicide. “They were afraid to come to real life because their lives were totally desolate,” she says. “They realize they just wasted five years playing video games.”
What started as grief ended up as a crusade to amass the voices of online gaming addicts worldwide. In 2002, Wooley founded Online Gamers Anonymous, an online support group (subscribe to Digital Journal now, and receive 8 issues for $29.95 + GST ($48.95 USD).
