[MUD-Dev] Death of a game addict

[Dave Rickey]

From: Michael Tresca <talien at toast.net>

> From: http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar02/31536.asp

>   Shawn Woolley loved an online computer game so much that he
>   played it just minutes before his suicide. Elizabeth Woolley, who
>   says her son, Shawn, was addicted to EverQuest, wants to sue the
>   makers. EverQuest is played by more than 400,000 people
>   worldwide.

>   The 21-year-old Hudson man was addicted to EverQuest, says his
>   mother, Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola. He sacrificed everything so
>   he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job
>   and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000
>   people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy."

> MMORPGs have come into their own.  They have people blaming them
> for the world's ills, once the coveted position of Dungeons &
> Dragons (see http://ptgptb.org/0006/egbert.html for the eerie
> similarities).

And I say the same thing now I said back then (as a teen-aged player
of 1st edition AD&D): Nobody kills themselves because of a game.  If
a game is involved in the trigger incident, your life was hopelessly
screwed up long before you ever heard of it.  If anything, these
games have probably *prevented* many suicides, by giving people who
were otherwise candidates a virtual life that doesn't suck.

> I could easily see a minimum age requirement due to the likely
> contact with adults and adult material for games.  But a warning
> that doing something to excess is bad for your health?
> Puhleeeaze!

WARNING: The Surgeon General wants you to know if your life is
hopelessly f***ed up and you are mentally ill, this game won't fix
it.

--Dave

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