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It's not specific to World of Warcraft but also applies to video games in general. The abuse of video games can
cause visual fatigue, nervosity, dizzyness, orientation and consciousness troubles. Some people can even suffer from nausea
caused by the inadequacies between the movement in the game and the immobility of the player's body, like motion sickness.
Beware the video hyperesthesia, whose signs are difficulty to sleep and loss of appetite. In that case, game termination is
necessary, along with a medical consultation.
World of Warcraft, a drug?
Addiction to both drugs and World of Warcraft work on the same principle. For several addictology specialists, WoW is
designated as an addiction source, like alcohol, drugs or tobacco. Here are a few conclusions from their work:
- The problems observed on WoW addicts are essentially psychological in nature. Emotional, relational and intellectual
life impoverishes over time, but we can also observe, with varying degrees of isolation, physical troubles. In the most severe
cases, people lose weight because they don't find the time to eat. For others, corporeal hygiene becomes a chore. However,
we do not become addicted to video games by ourselves; we need an external source of suffering for that to happen.
Here are a couple of similarities with drug abuse:
- In the addiction to the World of Warcraft, we have the following: the search for pleasure, the quest for limits and
isolation. In a game, we want to go as far as possible. WoW can allow well-seasoned players to earn worldwide fame, to become
some kind of celebrity. As with drugs, one starts with conviviality and ends up doing it all by him/herself. To share this
enjoyment with others gradually loses its importance; the addiction is one's only source of relief.
- To those who claim that interaction between players is a form of interpersonal relationship, doctors respond to this
by saying that it remains a virtual relationship. It's the same difference as being addicted to pornographical websites and
making sex; we never meet the latter. This proves the difficulty to have real relationships.
- To become unaddicted, it often requires more than a year, but relapse risks exist if we do not address the underlying
issue. There is also a danger that this addiction shifts to another form, like drugs, alcohol or tobacco.
The casualties of World of Warcraft
Already, in 2005, there were 2 French players hospitalized because of side effects of playing WoW; the first one because
he played 3 weeks non-stop, the other because he lost 15 kgs of weight. And there is at least one death that is directly related
to WoW, after which the Chinese government threatened Blizzard to take the developer to court after a 13-year-old player was
killed as a result of his addiction.
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