Gaming Injuries

Because it is extra work I suppose, to safeguard against a very small minority of people who have this problem. You are right in that respect though, it isn't exactly a huge thing to add.

And in the same way as beer companies come under pressure to ensure that their clients do not drink too much there is no excuse for these gaming companies to put in simple safeguards when they know that their games are addictive.

On the practical point - given the huge amount of programming (and data storage) in a game like WoW how hard would it be to keep track of how long someone has been playing and kick them for a while if they've been playing too long?

No, it wouldn't be hard to track at all. On Guild Wars there's a message that pops up every hour telling you how long you have been playing for and to take a break after you reach 3 hours.

I'm sure I read somewhere about a game (think it was a korean mmo) which banned you for a certain time if you played longer than a certain number of hours without logging out.

Regarding the point about beer and a landlord not serving a customer once they have had too much, I think this analogy isn't a fair comparison. You don't become intoxicated by playing games and so when having too much to drink you can not realise that you've had too much. Of course, you could argue that certain games can be very addictive and be hard to stop, but there is no outside influence of alcohol to impair the judgement from playing games.

People should know themselves that things are bad for you, without having to be told by everything that it can be bad for your health. This reminds me of what I heard on the radio recently of an old advert from the 50s (iirc) which had the slogan "Go to work on an egg". It wasn't allowed to be shown for nostalgia's sake, because people may get the wrong impression. They would have to change the slogan to "Go to work on an egg, as part of a balanced died". It's like putting a warning on a bag of peanuts that says "May contain nuts".

Where is the common sense?

I say pwned sometimes, but it's always deliberate

Plus all the mental injuries that come from items getting stolen. Notable mentions:

Diablo 2 stealing is everywhere
Chinese kid arrested for stealing in Lineage 2
Korean kid beaten up for stealing
The Cloudsong in DaoC

I don't really play MMO's, but some of my friends do.



Sometimes when I've played a game for ages, I start to think about it in real life. So do a lot of people. Like, imagining things in isometric view, thinking of using CTRL+F when looking in a book, pressing tab for third person, and such. Does this happen to anyone else?

I know someone who always says "lol" and occasionally "pwned" too. I don't think he does it by "mistake" but because he thinks it's cool or something.