AMA Weighing Addictive Nature of Video Gaming

June 24, 2007— -- Since she first discovered the online game in May 2005, Mary (who requested that we not reveal her last name) estimates that she has spent well over 4,000 hours playing World of Warcraft -- roughly 25 percent of her life during that time.

The 36-year-old mother of two from Memphis, Tenn., said that she plays constantly and often thinks about the game when she is not playing.

She has only taken two major breaks from the game -- a month each time, for sickness and surgery.

"I obsess about it," she said. "I can't quit. If I don't have it, I think about it. I want it."

It is this type of obsession that has many doctors worried that gamers like Mary may actually be addicted to video games.

At their annual policy conference, which begins this weekend, the American Medical Association (AMA) will discuss whether or not to recommend that video game addiction be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the guide consulted by psychiatrists when diagnosing patients.

But for Mary, the answer is already clear.

"As a person who has been addicted to cigarettes and addicted to food, I can say that I see a lot of the same aspects of addiction when I think of online video games," she said.

World of Warcraft is among a group of newer games known as Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, in which players control a character and complete tasks while interacting with characters controlled by other players around the world.

For Hal Halpin, director of the gamers' advocacy group the Entertainment Consumers Association, the degree of interactivity of these games may have more to do with why people play them so much than any inherent problems with the games themselves.

With the dynamically changing worlds established by games like World of Warcraft, he said, gamers are potentially exposed to an infinitely expanding array of challenges and rewards. The gaming experience is more engaging, more entertaining, and for some, possibly more addictive.