Dr. Jeroen Lemmens is a teacher at the University of Amsterdam and just last week successfully defended his dissertation and received his PhD, which he believes makes him the world’s first possessor of a PhD in game addiction.

Dr.  Lemmens’ dissertation consisted of four articles, which are summarized in a paper entitled Causes and Consequences of Pathological Gaming (PDF). According to the doctor, it’s the first time longitudinal analyses were utilized in order to reveal the causes and consequences of pathological involvement with games.

The paper’s underlying claim is that “adolescent gamers with pre‐existing psychosocial vulnerabilities, such as loneliness, low social competence, and low self‐esteem, are more likely to become pathologically involved with games.”

You might think something as innocuous the American Library Association’s third annual National Gaming Day, held this past Saturday, might be beyond the scope of criticism, but when you have an agenda (and a book) to push, logic, perhaps, goes out the window.

Psychology Today is hosting a column by Ryan Van Cleave, author of Unplugged; My Journey Into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction and the man behind the Video Game Addiction Awareness Week (VGAAW) website.

The Think Feel Play blog has an interesting take on videogame addition, asking “are video games the drug of our generation, or might something else be going on?”

Author Shoshannah Tekofsky (aka Shos) begins by looking at definitions of the term addiction before picking on research, specifically looking at two major issues “plaguing” videogame research: the all important casual link, “They need to find healthy, balanced people whose lives gaming ruined. This is a lot harder than it sounds,” and definition, “Many researchers assume that there is a problem, pick a set of criteria and see who fits into that slot.”

If you happen to live in the Michigan area, the Royal Oak Public Library will be holding a videogame addiction discussion on Thursday, October 28.

The chat will be headed up by Kevin Roberts, author of the book Cyber Junkie: Escaping the Gaming and Internet Trap. Roberts, who states that he has been “both gifted and challenged with ADHD,” is a self-proclaimed recovering “cyber junkie” himself, having “wasted years” of his life in front of a computer screen.

The sad story of a U.K. woman so addicted to an online game that she neglected her kids and let her dogs starve to death has been settled in court, but the details of the game she was involved with still continue to swirl.

Originally reported in the U.K. by the Sun, the game was Small World from Days of Wonder. Other U.K. papers picked up on the story, continuing to hammer on the game and offering detailed descriptions of it. Unfortunately, the information they gathered was on the wrong game.

The Sun reporter pulled the name from court proceedings, and while he got the name right, the other facts of the case did not fit. Small World has no online component and is not a Facebook game. It is a board game. The Daily Mail even reported as much, but failed to make the connection that the board game did not have an online component. The Mail even used a Warhammer Online photo as part of its story.

The real game in question appears to have been SmallWorlds by Outsmart, which indeed is online.

A Lightspeed Research study reveals that 17 percent of respondents who played social networking games believed that they were "addicted" to them. Lightspeed did not define what they meant when they said that they were "addicted" - were they simply overly enthusiastic about playing their favorite social game or actually suffering from a "psychological dependency" to the game? We do not know.

Lightspeed also said that 58 percent of users said they had played a social game, with 68 percent saying they had played a social game in within the last year. 53 percent of social gamers played daily, with the 55 - 64 age bracket proving more frequent players than those age 18 - 34. 17 percent of identified social gamers played on mobile devices as well; 34 percent of social gamers said that they took advantage of marketing-promoted in-game rewards; 18 percent had followed an advertisement to do so, while 3 percent had signed up for a new credit card that offered bonus virtual goods.

Quinn Pitcock, the defensive tackle attempting an NFL comeback following a self-diagnosed bout with videogame addiction, was cut from the Seattle Seahawks on Saturday (thanks sister site GameCulture).

Pitcock managed to survive until the final round of cuts after a preseason in which he appeared in four games, accumulating the same number of tackles.

The Ohio State University alumni recently expanded on his problem with games, saying that in his heyday, he would typically wake up at 3 PM and then play Call of Duty until 6 or 7 AM the next day.

A judge’s ruling earlier last month that Craig Smallwood’s lawsuit against Lineage II maker NCsoft could continue (a suit in which Smallwood claimed he was addicted to the game), could have an impact on End User Licensing Agreements (EULA).

A lawyer at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy named Steven Roosa took to his blog (thanks Slashdot) to discuss the Smallwood case, using the headline “A Software License Agreement Takes it on the Chin.”

Roosa detailed NCsoft’s attempt to stop the lawsuit by using Section 12 of its User Agreement, which is entitled “Limitation of Liability.” The judge eventually only partially granted NCsoft’s motion to dismiss.

Roosa wrote:

Quinn Pitcock, the almost 300-pound defensive tackle attempting a comeback with the Seattle Seahawks following a bout of depression-induced (and self-diagnosed) videogame addiction, has survived the first round of cuts with his NFL team and racked up four tackles in the Seahawk’s first three preseason games.

Pitcock also opened up to the Dayton Daily News (he attended Ohio State University) about his trouble with videogames, labeling Call of Duty as his game of choice. Pitcock indicated that on a “typical day,” he would wake up at 3 PM and then play until 6 or 7 AM the next day.

Playing as Randy the Random 1, Pitcock said, “First-person shooter games were my thing. I was ranked at one point 55th in the world.”

A law blog contributor believes that the Hawaii man suing Lineage II creator NCsoft for making the game so addictive has an uphill battle in order prove his case.

Craig Smallwood sued the game maker after reportedly spending 20,000 hours playing Lineage II between 2004 and 2009. He claimed that NCsoft neglected “to warn or instruct or adequately warn or instruct plaintiff and other players of Lineage II of its dangerous and defective characteristics, and of the safe and proper method of using the game.”

In a column on the blog LegalMatch.com, "Rusty Shackleford" asks if such a case demonstrates the need for tort reform, or if the plaintiff and court are “on to something.”

On Smallwood’s chances:

While videogame addiction still isn’t recognized by the American Medical Association, an article on the subject in the Dayton Daily News features quotes from Iowa State researcher Douglas Gentile in which he continues to make the push that videogame addiction is real.

The article begins with a mention of Quinn Pitcock, the ex-NFL player attempting a comeback with the Seattle Seahawks following a bout with depression, which, he claims, led to excessive videogame play. From there the article evolves into a discussion on the subject of game addiction itself.

Sarah Greenwell, a Pediatric Psychologist from the Children’s Medic l Center of Dayton, kicks off the piece by stating that, throughout her years of service, she has come across only two kids that were genuinely addicted to videogames.

Craig Smallwood of Hawaii has a lawsuit in the works against the creator of Lineage II, claiming that he became so addicted to the game he became “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.”

In a Wired piece on the suit, Smallwood, in his proceedings, claims to have spent 20,000 hours playing the game between 2004 and 2009. He claimed that developer NCsoft is negligent because it failed “to warn or instruct or adequately warn or instruct plaintiff and other players of Lineage II of its dangerous and defective characteristics, and of the safe and proper method of using the game.”

The suit appears to be moving forward as the presiding judge refused to dismiss some of Smallwood’s claims earlier this month.

South Korean psychiatrists claim that they have successfully treated game addiction with an antidepressant drug called Bupropion. The study was conducted by psychiatrist from the Department of Psychiatry at Chung Ang University - College of Medicine, used 11 participants that were "diagnosed" as having "Internet Game Addiction" because they played "StarCraft for 4 or more hours a day." Six of the eleven participants had skipped school for two months, while two of the participants had been divorced due to their addiction to StarCraft.

The entire group was treated with the antidepressant for six weeks. After the trial period, researchers say that their group’s cravings to play StarCraft apparently decreased by 23.6 percent and total playing time decreased by 35.5 percent. Researchers also conducted MRI scans on all of the subjects and discovered that their brains responded "less strongly" to pictures of Zerglings after taking the drug.

Quinn Pitcock is a 299 pound defensive tackle from the Ohio State University who was drafted in the 3rd round by the Indianapolis Colts in 2007, but retired after just one season due to depression, which, he claims, eventually contributed to an addiction to videogames.

Pitcock is on the comeback trail though, attending training camp and hoping to catch on with the Seattle Seahawks. He told The News Tribune that back in 2008, he “was suffering from bouts of depression, and that he had used video games as an outlet.“

On the Seahawks website (thanks Kotaku), Pitcock explained what he did after walking away from the Colts, “I cast myself away from everybody and became almost a hermit. I ended up using video games as my out, I got sucked into that. I got lost to the world.”

A wilderness-based addiction and substance abuse treatment center in Utah has added a rehabilitation track for young men addicted to the Internet and videogames.

Passages to Recovery begins treatment with a 40-day wilderness experience, which is then followed by on-site treatment. The center announced that its Clinical Director, Lucy Taylor, LPC, recently completed certifications in online gaming, anonymity in online relationships, pornography and infidelity, and the psychology of Internet misuse. Taylor was tutored by Kimberly Young, PsyD, from the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery.

Videogame addiction treatment will begin with “an assessment of the client’s patterns of use and the needs that are being met by gaming.” As Taylor explained, “Most people abuse the Internet or video games to meet an underlying need. Our goal is to help our clients decrease stress and increase pleasure without numbing themselves or trying to fill a void through video games or the Internet.”

Ryan G. Van Cleave's new book about his battle with game addiction is in stores today. The book is called "Unplugged: My Journey Into The Dark World Of Video Game Addiction," and it details what the author calls a battle with "very serious addiction" to playing videogames. His level of addiction? He claims he spent 50 hours a week playing videogames which led to self-imposed alienation from friends and family, job loss, and bad health.

A press release this morning in support of the book offers a particularly hard to belive quote on what he experienced when he gave gaming up:

If you’re like us, you were probably completely unaware that this was the week we were all supposed to turn off our computers, phones and game machines as part of Digital Detox Week.

The movement is the work of anti-consumerist group Adbusters and kicked off on April 19 (it ends April 25). Adbusters writes that “Whether it is texting, gaming, downloading or emailing, so much of our time is spent in the virtual realm.” Fortunately though, the group writes, “… the off button is easy to find.”

Ryan Van Cleave, a recovery consultant that works with ex-addicts, imparted some warnings about unplugging from the digital world cold turkey, telling the DailyBeast that the idea of Digital Detox Week is “unimplementable” in today’s connected society.

Last week we reported on a school in East Brunswick, New Jersey putting on a play that revolved around the subject of videogame addiction.

The story of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom (N3RD for short) being put on by the School of Performing Arts at the Middlesex County Vocational and Technical School eventually made its way to a few other gaming sites, inspiring a Kotaku reader to go watch, and then review, the play.

Geist002, who called the play “fairly well done,” offered this description:

Most of the characters with the gaming addictions came from broken homes, really messed up backgrounds, or were victims of poor parenting. If you approach this play already condemning video games, you just see video games as the villain.

While the topic of videogame addiction has spawned books, studies, round-table discussions and even treatment centers, up until now, it’s never been the subject of a school play.

Students from the School of Performing Arts at the Middlesex County Vocational and Technical School in East Brunswick, New Jersey are preparing to unveil just such a production. Entitled Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, or N3RD for short, the play centers around a group of kids who become addicted to a fictional horror videogame (Neighborhood 3).

The Sentinel reports that the play, written by Jennifer Haley, “explores video game addiction and the importance of teenparent communication by revealing the thin line between reality and virtual reality, and dramatizing the consequences of games gone too far.”

In a bid to limit the screen time of its young gamers, Korea has unveiled some drastic initiatives.
 
Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will try to block certain online games after midnight, reports the Korea Herald. Midnight, however, appears to be a generic term, as gamers will be able to choose their specific six-hour long gaming black-out period: 12AM – 6AM, 1AM - 7AM or 2AM - 8 AM. Under the plan, online access to massively multiplayer games would automatically shut off at the appointed time.

A secondary aspect of the policy would have the Internet speeds of young gamers throttled down if users remain online for a “lengthy” period of time. The slowdown policy is said to be in current testing on four online games, with plans to spread the procedure to 19 games in total in the second half of 2010.

The Ministry will also target young gamers who use the registration numbers of their parents in order to circumnavigate such restrictions.

A young man with a promising future as a writer seemingly gave it all up to in order to give in to the unhealthy combination of Grand Theft Auto IV and cocaine.

The Observer has an article up written by Tom Bissell, the former essayist himself. Bissell begins by outlining the period from 2001-2006, which saw him author two books and a series of magazine articles. During this time he says he “rarely felt disciplined,” and his productivity seemed to happen in spite of itself.

The author's dive into gaming kicked off with GTA: Vice City, which he called, “the first video game I can recall having to force myself to stop playing,” before he moved on to GTA: San Andreas and eventually GTA IV. When the latter game came out, a friend introduced Bissell to cocaine and the pair played the game for 30 hours straight.

Bissell attempted to put a finger on the attractiveness of the game:

In a bid to combat its estimated 2.0 million Internet and videogame addicts, South Korea will offer free software to the populace that would limit time spent online.

Under what’s termed a “consensual shut-down program,” users would be able to set the days and times that they would be able to access the Internet, reports the Korean Times. A second method of limiting screen time would involve a program dubbed Internet Fatigue, which is designed to “make gamers become bored as time goes by.”

The measures were issued by a special inter-ministry group setup to fight the overuse of the Web and games. The government is said to be focused on preventive actions and will launch educational programs expected to reach 10.0 million people, while 300,000 heavy Internet users will be able to receive counseling services. 10,000 jobs will be created as a result of the latter initiative.

A UK treatment facility has introduced technology addiction to its repertoire, claiming that the service was added in response to increased calls from parents concerned about their children’s over use of games, the internet or cell phones.

London’s Capio Nightingale Hospital’s Young Person Technology Addiction Service features programs that “are individually tailored to the needs of the young person and vary from intensive in-patient care, through day care to group and individual therapy.” Treatment includes processes such as interpersonal therapy, exploring “the meaning” of a users dependence on technology, the promotion of life skills and improving health and diet.

The hospital’s Dr. Richard Graham on the new service:

Mental health services need to adapt quickly to the changing worlds that young people inhabit, and understand just how seriously their lives can be impaired by unregulated time online, on-screen or in-game.

The South Korean parents of a three-month old allegedly fed their gaming habits obsessively while neglecting their daughter, who effectively starved to death.

The 41-yeard old husband and his 25-year old wife, identified only as “the Kims,” spent up to 12 hours every night at Internet cafés playing games, according to a story on ABC. The couple came home one morning last September, after spending the whole night out, and alerted authorities upon finding their daughter deceased.

An autopsy revealed that the baby’s death came about from malnourishment. The Kims subsequently confessed that they had been feeding their daughter “rotten, powdered milk and had often spanked their crying baby.”

In a sinister bit of irony, officials reported that instead of taking care of their real child, who was born prematurely, the couple was infatuated with raising a virtual daughter in the massively multiplayer online game PRIUS.

The article also features a quote from Dr. Kim Sang Eun, of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, who believes game addiction is a brain disease. She stated, “there's no certain clinical indicator to define 'game addiction' but our study shows that brain PET [scan] images of suspected online game addicts are very similar to that of a cocaine addict.”

The parents were arrested on Wednesday.

A new entry in MTV’s True Life television series takes a cursory look at the impact that playing too many games can have on relationships and life in general.

True Life: I’m Addicted to Video Games shadowed two fixated gamers: a white male college student named Barry and an African-American female college student named Charisse. Jezebel summed up the episode nicely, choosing to focus more on the plight of Charisse mostly because the site is for females, but also because Barry came across as attempting to “live up to every possible stereotype that exists about guys who game.”

Jezebel noted that Charisse “Though an obsessive player in her own right... showed quite a bit of range, devoting time to her five Sorority Life accounts, Farmville accounts, Guitar Hero, and Halo.” Additionally, “Charisse's boyfriend (Corey) is also African-American, a pairing that illuminated three different demographics not normally associated with gaming: a gaming couple, black gamers, and black girl gamers.”

The show caught Charisse and Corey in a rough patch in their relationship, but ended with the two accepting each other for who they are and trying to advance their relationship, with Charisse attempting to include Corey in her passion and play more games with him.

In a comment on the story, Charisse added that the heavily edited show didn’t show every aspect of her addiction. She said that her reliance on games caused her to “lose my job, neglect household chores, and lose financial aid.”

The episode is scheduled to air again tonight on MTV at 7PM ET.

A love of the social aspects of videogames tends to drive any perceived dependence on games more so than a game’s activity itself.

This is the angle a Kent State University article takes in examining the aspects of what fuels gamers to keep on playing, in addition to the subject of whether or not the term “addiction” is fair to use in relation to videogames. KSU Sophomore Brian Clark weighed in on the latter subject, stating that the use of such a term was misleading:

Rather than craving the game itself, they crave the interaction they get in the game so rather than going out and having a real life social interaction, they’re having social interactions with other people on a game.

The piece notes that a definition of someone addicted to videogames, as put forth by the American Medical Association (AMA), is a person that “has more control and success over his or her social relationships in the virtual world than reality.”

World of Warcraft was mentioned often in the piece, with Clark admitting that a friend of his had a reliance on the online game, which Clark, again, attributed to the social aspect of WOW. The additional factor of playing a game that never really ends only increases the difficulty of putting a game like WOW aside noted student Connor Shivers.

Achievements can also be a powerful lure for gamers to keep playing. Clark’s previously discussed WOW-loving friend also became reliant on them, “He would play some Xbox games just for the fact of getting achievement points (on Xbox LIVE) and feeling like he accomplished something.”

GP: The definition as defined by the AMA probably needs to be updated as more and more relationships that begin in virtual worlds cross over to the real world. I would venture a guess that most hardcore gamers have befriended a fellow gamer via an online guild or clan and then met up with them IRL.

The Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS) investigative show Frontline will air a deep look into how digital media and the Internet have transformed human lives and the subject of videogames is featured heavily in the program.

Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier will debut on February 2 at 9:00 ET. The 90 minute show was produced by Rachel Dretzin, who also created the recent Frontline special Growing Up Online, and will feature commentary from Douglas Rushkoff. Segments include Living Faster, Relationships, Waging War, Virtual Worlds and Learning.

Many individual videos are already available for viewing on the PBS website and a trailer for the show offers a quick overview of what it’s all about.

The Waging War section features game-related topics such as the military’s use of virtual reality training, as well as looks at both America’s Army and the Army Experience Center.

Virtual Worlds contains a cornucopia of videogame segments, including the use of virtual reality therapy for veterans, gaming addiction, professional gamers, violent games, Second Life and about 20 more pieces.

Another cool aspect to the program is that the Digital Nation website launched about a year ago ago in a bid to let users collaborate with the project by sharing their own experiences.

The straight-shooters over at Vice interviewed the co-founder of Washington State’s ReStart facility, which treats people for gaming, Internet and texting addictions.

Dr. Hilarie Cash was asked whether or not she believes games are becoming more addictive:

All games focus on the idea of unpredictable reinforcement – you don’t know what’s going to happen when you reach the next stage, but you get “rewards” or “treats” at random points. And people who develop successful games have figured this out. In fact, many games companies hire professional psychologists these days to help them develop the best unpredictable reward payoff structures.

Dr. Cash on the potentially violent side of the addicts she treats:

There was a young man who ended up having to have an intervention. When the parents tried to take the computer out of his room, he tried to attack them with a knife. They just backed down, gave him his computer, went away. A teenager whose parents just take the computer away cold turkey – it’ll send them into a rage, and that rage can be quite dangerous.

How about Dr. Cash’s thoughts on whether gaming addiction or porn addiction will be more hazardous to society over the next ten years?

I think they’re equally hazardous. Pornography taps into anyone’s sex drive or need for sex. I’m sure the numbers of sex addicts far outnumber game addicts. That will probably continue, but I know that the internet-based games are typically highly addictive.

Following the news of a treatment center in the UK expanding its offerings to include treating game addiction, an Australian academic has called for a similar program to be launched down under.

Sydney University Psychiatric Professor Vladan Starcevic, also billed as a game addition expert, made the call for action to the Herald Sun citing his own recent research in which he polled 2,000 gamers. The results of the survey led him to believe that up to one in ten subjects showed signs of addictive behavior. Starcevic said that his study was undertaken due to more patients exhibiting signs of being addicted to games.

Of the UK’s Broadway Lodge treatment center, Starcevic noted, “I think it's good that someone has taken this seriously. I think it should be recognised that this is a problem for some people.”

Starcevic’s full study will be released in this month’s Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

The latest in a wave of gaming addiction centers has opened its doors in the UK.

Established in 1974, and located in the English town of Weston-super-Mare, Broadway Lodge has expanded its treatment repertoire to include game addiction, employing a 12-step abstinence program to help patients kick the habit. Group therapy and “therapeutic” tasks such as cleaning and vacuuming are also used in treatment, but apparently baking cookies is not part of the mix.

The center’s Chief Executive Brian Dudley tells the Telegraph that he thinks game addiction is a widespread problem, “I would stick my neck out and say between five and ten per cent of parents or partners would say they know of someone addicted to an online game.”

Broadway Lodge Counselor Peter Smith added:

It's not unusual for people to get so obsessed with online gaming that they forget to eat and drift towards an anorexic and undernourished state. You have a relationship with characters in the game that give you an artificial feeling, created by your body's natural endorphins, when you have killed some monster or solved a problem.