Are you an obsessive online gamer?

From Internet Addiction web site :

Answer "yes" or "no" to the following statements to see if you may be addicted to online gaming:

1. Do you need to play online games with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve the desired excitement?
2. Are you preoccupied with gaming (thinking about it when offline, anticipating your next online session)?
3. Have you lied to friends and family members to conceal extent of your online gaming?
4. Do you feel restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop online gaming?
5. Have you made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop online gaming?
6. Do you use gaming as a way of escaping from problems or relieve feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or depression?
7. Have you jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, or even risked your marriage because of your online gaming habit?
8. Have you jeopardized a job, educational, or career opportunity because of your online gaming habit?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, you may be addicted to online gaming.

Oh dear...I answered yes to six of those questions...

Searching the support forum using the term "addiction" I find three interesting posts, two of them are polls :


how much addicted are you to GEWAR???

How does your significant other feel about GEWar?

And this one is a post that contains an interview with a GEWar player from a Dutch magazine:

Not only is msn addictive, more and more people can go no more than an hour without their games. Especially games such as world of warcraft which are rather addictive. Tim from Vught is entirely hooked, "During holidays I start after breakfast with gameing and I just stop when I really get hungery. That is just around 11 o clock in the evening. I play quietly to 3 o' clock at night." The 5th year gymnasium student regularly games all day, and this is from when he was 8 years old. According to his mother he turns of the tv at night, but when she leaves the room he admits to gaming until 3 am sometimes. There is always someone online, which is the advantage of gaming against people from Australia. I admit I have not really had any effort to stop gaming. It always sits in my head. In Tim's room is a large cupboard with some of his computer games. Red Alert 2, Rome: Total War, Half Life 2, and Morrowind but there are a couple titles which lie in Tim's gamekast. When he's not playing, he manages the web forum of the game GEWar. There are games that i'm buzy with at the moment. Tim's friends are not concerned that his hobby has gotten out of hand. They dont say anything about it being a problem. And that whereas more quality spend time with its computer then with its friends. A life without games is this way stupid. Tim hardly goes outside, but he does not find that compared to gaming the world is small and stupid. A life without games is just stupid! On seven of the ten questions of our internet junkie test he answered with a yes, on the other three he said no. He does not see his addiction as a problem. A world without games he can imagine, but he cannot imagine a world without gaming ever coming to excistance. You can consider it complete life as a game.

Needless to say most players don't feel they have a problem. However I suspect a minority do or will develop problems. Should that be of concern? A debatable question indeed.