This is kinda old news but if you haven't heard this story...

cbc
A body found northeast of Barrie, Ont., on Wednesday is believed to be that of 15-year-old Brandon Crisp, who disappeared from his home last month after a dispute with his parents over a video game.

Police are not yet confirming the body is Crisp's, but it was found in the Shanty Bay area where searches have been taking place since Oct. 20.


The teen disappeared on Oct. 13 after arguing with his parents over a favourite Xbox video game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. They had taken the game away from him because they felt he had become obsessed with it and his many connections in the online gaming community.

The parents urged the police to do more to access records on their son's Xbox and online gaming accounts to try to find the teen.

Officers had been searching cornfields and the bush in the Shanty Bay-area around Barrie where Crisp was last reported seen walking on the Oro-Medonte Rail Trail with his bicycle.

Crisp was sighted twice on the day he disappeared. His bicycle was found on Oct. 20.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/11/05/crisp-body.html] [cbc.ca]

So DD, do you think gaming can be potentially dangerous? Where do you draw the line between fun and addiction?

The problem with this story as evidence for the harm of game addiction is that we really don't have anything to go by other than the parents' assumptions on why he ran away.

Let's look at possible reasons:
A. He lost Xbox privileges and was SO addicted to games that he ran away to find another place when he could play games.
B. He was simply a dumb kid running away because he didn't get along with his parents, and losing his Xbox was simply the punishment that sparked it.

There's too much I don't know about the situation, so I can't say for sure what it was, but if I were to make a guess it would be option B. It just makes way more sense. The media wants to guess option A because it's more sensationalist, and the parents want to guess option A because it makes videogames the bad guy.

The really dumb part is the idea that he would have been going to meet somebody on his Xbox Live friends list. Xbox Live doesn't store and publicly display home addresses of people on your friends list.

If you really want evidence of videogame addiction, this isn't where to find it. You make a much better case with the stories of South Koreans and Chinese people dying in internet cafes, or parents who neglect their children while playing World of Warcraft. Those make excellent cases. And based on those cases I would say YES, videogame addiction is real and harmful. You can be addicted to MANY things. Practically any hobby.

I think the line between fun and addiction is drawn when either your job, personal relationships, or health begin to suffer from games. Otherwise, gaming is just as valid a hobby as anything else.

I live close to where that kid lived. I even went to the same school as him.

...

Always the close to home stuff that hits you...

I used to skip school just for the sake of playing Starcraft. Yes that's addiction. When it came to a point where I got so good at it that I can PWN 3 people (average players or slightly skilled) vs me using terran, I got tired of it.

Same thing with games like Counter-Strike. I'd skip school for that.

I also called in sick alot of times just so I can play Command and Conquer: Zero Hour. Its my favorite RTS game because it gives the players the option to make it a small unit tactics game or a big army fight. Also you can't win if you just mass produce one unit and send hundreds of them to your enemy's base at once.

And then I spent two weekends just in front of my computer playing the campaigns in Tiberium Wars and its Kane's Wrath expansion. While the story is awesome, too bad the actual online gameplay SUCKS. So I just couldn't play this game online. Unless of course, you want RTS games that are all about rushing, microing, and HARDCORE budgeting of resources. I don't like RTS games like that. I like seeing huge armies battle it out. I'm not too fond of small unit tactics.


I'm a fan of FPS (first person shooters) and RTS (realtime strategy). And not so much into MMORPGs. Because MMORPGs are all about levelling up and "grinding" (the practice of just going around killing monsters just to level up and collect items. Its boring). I know there's a social aspect to MMORPGs and thats what really gets people hooked into it.

People are always quick to blaim computer games when anything goes wrong. There are always going to be crazy people who do crazy things even if you take the games out of the equation. People have committed suicide because they were inspired to do so by novels and yet you don't have books being demonised in such a way. Any method of escaping reality for a while can be harmful if you cling because you can't cope with reality.

People have committed suicide because they were inspired to do so by novels and yet you don't have books being demonised in such a way.

The blame game goes in cycles and every generation we see a new form of media get hit. It just happens to be video games' turn. Books got their fair share of blame in the past, just like music, TV, movies, radio, comics, etc.

I've got to say this particular case is kind of pushing it, though. Like Hawk said, it sounds more like typical teenage rebellion than anything game related. The parents probably want to believe that the games caused their kid to run away simply because they feel guilty about the whole thing.

Xbox Live doesn't store and publicly display home addresses of people on your friends list.

No, they don't, but your address and info is usually required as part of your billing information in order to sign up for Xbox Live Gold. Police could get those records from Microsoft as part of an investigation.

As for the dangers of video game addiction, it really isn't a problem any worse than any other psychological addition. People can get addicted to just about anything, from abstract ideas to physical objects or substances. I don't think video games are any more addictive than anything else. I've seen people who obsess far more over things like Harry Potter or anime.

I heard about this ages ago. The game obsession angle is pure rubbish. It's the kind of thing eaten up by your usual no-brain outrage seeking general public. It would be funny if they didn't react the same way every time.

As people have said here; this is a teenage thing more than anything else. The fact that the child ran away after his dad took away the game shows that the dad made a gigantic blunder: he obviously wasn't close enough to the boy to know how much playing on that thing meant to him or he wouldn't have acted so foolishly.
To the boy, the game system was probably part of his extended social network and his daily routine; something he looked forward to and had as an essential part of his day; An anchor
And we all know how important our anchors were when getting through our teenage years.
If someone had stopped me from drawing for example, I wouldn't have taken it well.

-This is just a case of a tragically foolish farther, and people refusing to understand the boy because it's easier to sensationalise these sorts of things in simple ways.

ozoneocean
The game obsession angle is pure rubbish.

I agree with Australia.

It's all a matter of discipline these days, and I'm a kid, and I love my parents no matter what happens. Yes I get addicted, and yes games are fun, but have YOU HEARD the THREATS people give to you when you kick their ass at video games??

The only obsession I have with gaming are those damn Achievements/Trophies! Ahhh! Gotta raise my Gamerscore and Level!!!

You will be passed once again, Bek'...

Ah, the ol' videogames = scapegoat routine. Gotta love it. But yeah, video games are just an outlet for people with outlandish ambitions - you know as soon as the controller's taken away, people will just find something else to act crazy about.

Honestly, I think it'll blow over eventually. Already, I've noticed people have been going a bit easier on the media since Jack Thompson was publicly humiliated, so we're probably over the worst of it, knock on wood.

I watched an in-depth news story about this and I think I understand the situation better.

The kid really did have a gaming problem. He was trying to get into the professional gaming circuit and was skipping things like school and meals just to play and not let his clan down. The news team covering the story placed a lot of the blame on organized gaming tournaments and professional gaming, unfairly or not.

Based on what I saw, it really was time to take the kid's Xbox away, and he really did run away because of it. Apparently he was on the cusp of hitting the big leagues right when his parents grounded him from videogames.

I don't think any of us will deny that you can get too engrossed in almost anything, videogames included. But the real unfortunate part of the news story was just how easily the parents shed any guilt over what happened. To them, videogames killed their son and they are blameless. I happen to disagree. I'm sure there are quite a few ways the situation could have played out in which their son would still be alive. I still blame parenting most of all, in this situation.

Hawk
...I still blame parenting most of all, in this situation.

That's pretty much how it is. The parents don't want to take the blame for not properly raising their kids. It's easier to point fingers rather than take responsibility for the actions that have been done (or lack thereof).

Which is why I think the whole "video games kill people" view is a bunch of bs.