Online Gaming..more than play?

By Rachel Stockman
Monday, February 19, 2007
Viewed 6214 times.

The U.S. psychiatric community hasn't yet recognized obsessive gaming as a true mental illness. However, with cases of gaming suicide and computer exhaustion, it is quickly becoming a major problem. What keeps people playing?
According to Northwestern Senior Scott Arnold, it's not just about games, it's also about making online friendships.
Arnold says he sometimes plays "World of Warcraft" for up to five hours a day.
But he says he's not addicted.
"I don't go into sweats or anything I still have an active social life."
And while gaming is popular among teenagers and twenty-somethings, adults have also been logging on in bigger numbers. Local priest AKM Adam prays by day but plays at night. He also is the character of a priest when he plays the online game.
"You can accomplish extraordinary things that give you more of an accomplishment than completing a memo," said Rev. Adam
Reverend Adam believes gaming doesn't count as addiction. "I'm hesitant to apply that term because there is more to it than that."
Reverend Adam says gaming has opened a new way to console others.