A Swedish teenager collapsed after an extended World of Warcraft session. The 15-year-old boy had been celebrating the launch of the latest WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, by inviting friends to his house for a 24-hour marathon bout of gaming. He suffered an epileptic fit caused by a combination of sleep deprivation, lack of food and prolonged concentration on the game, doctors said.
Although the boy is expected to make a full recovery, the news has sparked usual set of finger pointing about the addictiveness of online games and the negative impact they can have on physical and mental health.
One psychologist told the BBC (via The Times) “The problem with World of Warcraft is the degree it can impact and create a socially withdrawn figure who may be connecting with people in the game and is largely dropping out of education, social opportunities.”
Which spectacularly misses the point here. Clearly the boy wasn’t “socially withdrawn”, seeing as he was playing alongside his friends in real life, not to mention the thousands of others you can, and indeed must interact with in order to beat the more challenging and rewarding aspects of the massively multiplayer game. We doubt that those quoted as playing for 14 to 16 hours per day without breaks are doing it just for the solo grinding either.
This case simply highlights the fact that although online games are a lot of fun, your basic bodily needs don’t go away just because you’re enjoying yourself. We expect the upshot of this and other now sadly familiar cases, is that it will cause a fresh surge in intrusive health warnings during your games. It won’t do much to dispel the ‘games are evil’ myth either. But at least if it encourages developers to build in more ways for parents to limit and control their children’s play sessions, then perhaps it won’t be such a bad thing.
Out now | £24.99 for PC and Mac (WoW + Burning Crusade also required) | World of Warcraft (via TechDigest)
