I have an addictive personality but have never lost myself to a game. If something comes up for school or family I will drop whatever I'm doing and put that first.

I don't think someone can be addicted to games, but people can mismanage priorities and time. For example World of Warcraft does not ruin peoples lives but mismanagement of time is what ruins those peoples lives.

i remember i saw a thing on tv about people who god addicted to World Of Warcraft.

one guy ended up killing himself because of it.

Gaming don't fect me, fect me, fect me . . . =)

I remember playing both Indiana Jones and the Infenal Machine and Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast non-stop for almost 24 hours several years ago when I was between jobs, skipping sleep and eat. Needless to say it was unhealthy and thank goodness I have not repeated that since.

I used to play games until I beat them, so I would hammer through regardless of what else is going on.

Now with all the summer and winter sales I have this long list of games on my computer I have not beaten, and I usually just stare at them and can't even figure out which games to play.

I only play video games for about 1 hour a week now.

So I guess I am no longer addicted.

I never lost more than an hour of sleep because of games (going to bad an hour later than normal), though, so I don't think I was as bad off as some other people. I also walk 6 miles 6 times a week, not including the hikes I go on, so I always had exercise mixed in too.

Edit: cannot spell anymore, must be getting stoopit.

My boss pretty much spends his entire non working life playing eve online, absolutely hooked, its even a common talking piece between few of them during work as well, Trying to keep interested whilst hes talking about ore mining and spaceships is probably the hardest aspect of my job LOL.

A few people in the clan I play in have been lost to wow including one of our longtime players who after being threatened with a divorce due to much cod4(what we were competing in at the time) Bought his wife a pc and wow and they now work go home and play that all night every night, his best friend even feels abandoned heres what he said when I last asked about where he was and bear in mind theyve been friends for 15 years and he lives about 20 mins drive away from him.

[Z+]Ogr3: He has the WOW needle embedded in his forehead, spine and testicles
Violator X: last thing he said was his wife was beginning to get pissed off with him on the comp all the time and then wham gone
[Z+]Ogr3: He used to stay in touch with me regularly, now I never hear from him
Violator X: your shitting me?
[Z+]Ogr3: Yeah, they got into an arguement over the computer, the end result was that she got a computer and now they play WOW together!
Violator X: ........
[Z+]Ogr3: More than friends
[Z+]Ogr3: Hes my brother in heart
[Z+]Ogr3: Maybe not blood, but in all other respects
Violator X: but now you dont see him because of wow?
[Z+]Ogr3: Yup
[Z+]Ogr3: You know how committed to VC, COD, ect. Well, now its WOW and he's never coming back
[Z+]Ogr3: I gave up trying
[Z+]Ogr3: When I go over there, he wont even get up from the computer. His wife does, but he wont
[Z+]Ogr3: It pervented a divorce, basically
[Z+]Ogr3: Now they play all the time
[Z+]Ogr3: together

Pretty much sums it out in a nutshell, Problem with human nature is people always have a competitive desire and a longing to be the best and put the time in so they can be, This leads to a huge problem in mmos due to the scale of time you have to put in in comparision to something like a fps where you can play for a couple of hours, With all the things such as leveling, gold mining training and other stuff just eats up time but people always want to be the "alpha male" and will do whatever it takes to be it. I have always vowed to never play an mmo due to this as you can never fully complete or master a game of that magnitude.

So from what ive seen I would say that yes I would say its very possible to addicted to gaming ive known people that are firsthand, But on the bright side I guess a gaming addiction would create a lot less damage to society than people with other addictions unless people commit crime to fund their monthly mmo subscription lol.

I don't know the technical definition of addiction, however there have been reports of people playing games to the point that they died. This ability to override your basic survival instincts because you need to keep playing the game suggests that there is some kind of problem resembling addiction.

Then again, we don't know the circumstances that these people died in. It has been rumoured that they were working as "Gold Farmers" in WoW, in which case it is possible that their survival instincts were to generate enough money to stay alive, and they just got the balance wrong.

Deaths "due to gaming" are really deaths due to sleep deprivation and dehydration. It is also likely that some of the reported "gaming-related deaths" are due to sudden arrythmic death syndrome, and might have occured during any other activity as well.

I would say it is not possible to be addicted to gaming in the strict sense, just as it is not possible to be addicted to television or addicted to running triathlons. At the end of the day it's not a chemical addiction that will summon a physiological response the day you quit doing it, and I think we should be aware of that line and draw it.

Yeah, the games didn't kill them. However the sleep deprevation was not an unlrelated effect. Deaths due to boxing are really just down to repeated head injuries. Deaths due to Drug abuse are actually caused by heart / kindey / liver failure.

The real question is why aren't YOU playing games?

LOL Well, I am. I currently have a sweet Port Royale 2 game going. My gaming time has been curtailed since the birth of my son, but I still get to sneak in a few hours a week.

There have been some great responses in this thread, and I genuinely appreciate the thought that went into them. The mention of addicitve personalities, the analogy drawn with gambling, etc are all good input.

I don't seem to have an addictive personality. MMOs have never grabbed me, and I am never too attached to one game.

This is me right here. I believe I have about 400 games in my collection, and I've probably gotten around to about 40 of them. I have so many games I don't know what I want to play and it just ends up with me doing something completely different.
Let's just say I have a collecting addiction instead.

Games like that are designed to be addictive. Which is why I don't play them. The worst ones are the ones like Travian that give you an advantage to being online all the time, even if you're just monitoring it. Then there're ones like kingdomofloathing, which are addictive, but give you an option to spend less time playing. I stopped playing that one when it got to the point where I was having to spend all my time playing to accomplish some of my goals.

Prior to NS13 it was a much more manageable game, then they felt the need to force us through parts of the game with no entertainment value for dubious reasons.