Warning: Addiction vs Gaming

A 16 year old boy from Andhra, India who played PUBG continuously for  days skipping his food and water died out of dehydration and diarrhea. – News18

Furkhan Qureshi, a resident of Neemuch town of Madhya Pradesh, India and a student of Class 12 died due to cardiac arrest as he was playing PUBG for continuous six hours post his lunch – The New Indian Express

Teen uses father’s life savings on PUBG mobile under pretext of online study, spends Rs 16 lakhs from parents’ bank account – India.com

The number of instances like the above are frequenting the headlines now a days. It is not just about the game PUBG, which should take the blame as the story of gaming started decades ago.

Right from the Super Mario to the Blue Whale to PUBG, there are umpteen addictive games available for every age group.

In spite of age limits , this world of game has tied up many people making them numb to hardly feel anything other than games

Is it fair to blame the games for letting it destroy the young minds?

Not exactly. The difference between a Mario kind of game and PUBG is the realism. Mario lived in his own comic world and the players lived in their real world distinctly. But that is not the case with the multiplayer games like PUBG, COD, COC, Free fire, Grand theft auto to name a few. The modern games get the players into the virtual games’ world. We are just a few steps behind to reach the world we experience through movies, Ready Player One.

To curate and to educate the youngsters about the games is of great demand now. Even the developers are issuing a warning as follows…

Video game addiction is a real mental health condition recognized by the World Health Organization. They have a set of three criteria as warning signs:

• Impaired control: Your gamer is unable to control or limit their gameplay.
• Loss of interest in other activities: Your gamer’s life revolves around gaming instead of gaming revolving around their life.
• Continuing to play despite negative impact: Gaming is causing significant harm to their school grades, employment, or relationships.

To get addicted towards every interesting game is so common, but the difference starts when it sows negative impacts among the players. They hardly know when to hit the stop button. Whatever the heroism or the stunts one cannot do in real world, the virtual world offers it with almost perfect life-like experience, thanks to the motion capturing and the big data insights behind the games. The developers knew exactly how to make the players addict to the game.

The game developers need to groom themselves as a responsible entities rather focusing on sales.

Typically a gaming habit starts through peer pressure among kids and when it comes to adults, they see it as a way to ease out their mind like a break-time fun.

But is it really easing us or adding up pressure?.

Any addiction is not a pleasure but a pressure. So are games.  They are just games, not real but a fantasy. No one belongs there, except the developers who makes money out of it.  

Gamers will soon have to prove their age (most of them already have begun such measures) and identity so that they can’t keep playing video games for longer.

China, the home of PUBG, (Tencent) has come up with new rules for the same, where players who are under 12 will only be able to play for an hour a day. The rest are allowed to play for up to two hours, but will not be able to play past a certain point in the evening.

Even if such rules are implemented, gamers will always find a way out to play unlimited gaming with proxy user IDs and other ways. No measure is fool proof way to prevent addiction than one’s self control. The more you spend your time on games, the more you live in fantasy.  Living in fantasy adds no value to your life. So, confine your time when you wanted to relax through games. Even if a minute exceeds, just throw it away, because it’s no more the pleasure but a poisonous pressure!