Are you addicted to online gaming?

However for some the fun ends and their life is taken over by this new fantasy world and in some cases even to the point of giving their life for it. There are many mental and physical perils to online gaming and fun can very quickly turn into addiction, some of the online fantasy games give you a new persona to the point where the gamer believes they are that person and nothing else matters but mixing potions and welding swords to advance through the levels of the game to the coveted number one position. For some gamers this means never leaving their homes, they don’t eat, sleep and their normal day to day living ceases including work and school.

Some anti-gamers have dubbed online games as “heroinware” in that the addiction is likened to that of the drug heroin. One of the factors of online gaming which seems to draw people in is the fact that you can “chat” or interact with people all around the world under the disguise of the particular character they are playing in the game. Unfortunately for some that persona completely takes over their life and they start to live the character. Another factor that drags people into the gaming world is the series of complex tasks and assignments such as finding a specific item or achieving a goal, this gets the gamer totally immersed into the game and leads them to spending hours at a time or even days immersed in the game. Online gaming is all about power and status and those taking part take it very seriously to the point where the game becomes their life.

Recovery is possible but getting the addict to admit they even have a problem is one of the hardest to overcome. Recovery can only begin if the person realises they have an addiction and very few who are addicted will admit or even realise it. One of the biggest problems for those who have become addicted to online gaming and their character in the game is giving up their character or “killing” them off and coming back to reality. Counselling for online gaming addiction is essential as many gamers who do manage to give up their character do so for only a very short while before returning again. With companies such as Microsoft and Sony pushing online gaming as the next generation of games which earns them a revenue of around $1.8 billion a year there is no wonder that so many are becoming addicted to the world of online gaming.