14 DAY TRIAL // We play videogames because they make us feel good. When the brain solves a puzzle, whether it’s presented as a room full of enemies which need to be shot with a variety of guns or as a town that needs to be built up based on sound efficiency procedures, it's only natural for the player to feel pleasure. But to some people, the “high” offered by a good videogame is very much the same as the one offered by strong and illegal drugs.
Steve Pope, a councilor and therapist who works in the British town of Garstang, told the Lancashire Evening Post newspaper that “Spending two hours on a game station is equivalent to taking a line of cocaine in the high it produces,” adding that “It is the fastest growing addiction in the country and this is affecting young people mentally, as well as leading to physical problems such as obesity. It gives parents peace and quiet, but it becomes a concern when it is all the child wants to do.”
But nowadays, with the profile of the typical gamer moving away from the 20s and into the 30s and even 40s, it's not enough to paint apparently horrific images about the impact of videogames on those who do not have the maturity to resist them, so Pope also talks about adult addiction, saying “But it is not just children who are suffering - a growing number of adults are addicted to the Internet and to sites like Facebook.”
The problem with the views presented above is that they do not come from a political rallying his base or trying to win electoral support but from a trained professional who should be better able to evaluate his opinions and try to back them up with facts. We might like playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 or Napoleon: Total War but drug addicts we are not.