Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects

An eleven-year-old boy strangled an elderly woman for the equivalent of five dollars in 2007, then buried her body under a thin layer of sand. He told the police that he needed the money to play online videogames. Just a month later, an eight-year-old Norwegian boy saved his younger sister's life by threatening an attacking moose and then feigning death when the moose attacked him—skills he said he learned while playing World of Warcraft.

As these two instances show, videogames affect the minds, bodies, and lives of millions of gamers, negatively and positively. This book approaches videogame addiction from a cross-disciplinary perspective, bridging the divide between liberal arts academics and clinical researchers. The topic of addiction is examined neutrally, using accepted research in neuroscience, media studies, and developmental psychology.

An eleven-year-old boy strangled an elderly woman for the equivalent of five dollars in 2007, then buried her body under a thin layer of sand. He told the police that he needed the money to play online videogames. Just a month later, an eight-year-old Norwegian boy saved his younger sister's life by threatening an attacking moose and then feigning death when the moose attacked him—skills he said he learned while playing World of Warcraft.

As these two instances show, videogames affect the minds, bodies, and lives of millions of gamers, negatively and positively. This book approaches videogame addiction from a cross-disciplinary perspective, bridging the divide between liberal arts academics and clinical researchers. The topic of addiction is examined neutrally, using accepted research in neuroscience, media studies, and developmental psychology.

RockPaperShotgun

Should definitely be read by a wide range of folks who are interested in knowing a bit more about where gaming now sits amid general electronic culture...probably the most important work yet written on the subject of habitual gaming...a wealth of information...straight-forward, well-constructed...points out that the problems of excessive gaming...probably the best set of resources on this topic that is available to us at the moment...pick up this book, arm yourselves with Clark and Scott's research...a practical and sensible starting point to understanding a subject that is going to loom ever larger in all our lives.

Neils Clark lives and works in Redmond, Washington. He has lectured at DigiPen, and his work has appeared in BusinessWeek and PC Gamer Magazine. He was an invited speaker at the 2008 Games for Health conference in Baltimore. P. Shavaun Scott is a practicing psychotherapist and has been active in the treatment of game addiction for more than a decade. She has been a guest on NPR and BBC Canada, interviewed by PC Gamer Magazine and MSNBC Online, and has written for numerous clinical publications.