The view from the bottom

I just bought the 6th season of CSI on DVD. If I neglected my job and family, not to talk of other hobbies, hygiene, and good eating habits, I could possibly watch all 6 seasons in one week. Add the CSI Miami and CSI New York DVDs, and I can watch everything in 2 weeks. If I decide to still go working 8 hours a day, doing just the minimum for not losing my job, but still neglecting everything else, it will take me a month to watch all these DVDs. And then I could just start over, watch them for another month, and another month, until I can't stand CSI any more and stop watching. Should I then write an interesting blog post like "The View from the Top stating that CSI is a dangerous addiction from which I have been miraculously cured? Or is CSI a totally harmless form of entertainment, which I abused due to some personal psychological problem?

While I haven't heard much about CSI addiction, I'm always surprised how many people go for the "dangerous addiction" option when discussing World of Warcraft. I think that is part of a more general trend of blaming all sorts of problems on others, never admitting that it might be yourself who has a problem. Got fat? Sue McDonalds. Lost your wife and job? Blame World of Warcraft. Makes you wonder when the first law suit against Blizzard will arrive.

That is not to say that people overdoing World of Warcraft don't exist. But if WoW wasn't there, the same person would search to escape from the real world in some other way, be it TV, books, or video games. So we should offer these people help in the form of counselling for escapism, not shouting for warning labels on World of Warcraft boxes.

Millions of casual World of Warcraft players are enjoying this game in healthy doses. There isn't a threshold how many hours of WoW are suddenly an addiction. You need to know yourself how many hours of leisure time you have, after taking care of your family, your job, your friends, and whatever else is important to you. That totally depends on your personal circumstances, for example I'm sure I'd play a lot less if I had children. Real addictive substances don't have such a safe level.

The term "addiction" suggests that WoW is a dangerous substance, you try it once and are drawn into it against your will. Nothing could be further from the truth. World of Warcraft is just a lot of fun, and it is your free-willed decision whether you want to enjoy that fun with or without neglecting the rest of your life. The proof that it isn't an "addiction" lies in all these miraculous "cures", all these people that claim they were addicted and now stopped. Do you think people addicted to lets say heroin cure themselves that easily? What happens in reality, just like in my CSI example, is that the more you exaggerate consuming World of Warcraft content, the faster you burn out. At one point the game simply isn't fun any more, because you've seen too much of it. Classic MMORPG burnout. No miracle cure of a modern addiction here.