The truth about videogame addiction
Just how harmless are our gaming habits?
By Jim Rossignol

Have you ever succumbed to temptation and had "just one more go?" Do you find yourself playing games and then later realising you had other things you should have been doing? Like sleeping, to take an example entirely at random…

Almost all gamers will have tasted that peculiar guilty feeling of having played one hour or level too many at some point. The question is: when does it become a problem?

Is it the point when you've not done the dishes for a week? When you've skipped the pub to stay in front of your screen? Or when you die? And there have been deaths.

Last year, a Chinese gamer reportedly died of heart failure after fifteen days of heavy gaming in a cybercafe, while a Starcraft player in Korea apparently died after a non-stop fifty hour session. These individuals are part of a growing number of people who have managed to play themselves to death. And unfortunately, deaths mean sensationalism.

A Korean Starcraft player reportedly died after playing for 50 hours without a break