Blizzard is not guilty for World of Warcraft addicts!
| A video about one of the WoW addicts. According to joystiq it is these kind of “news” that cause the violence. But, whose fault is it that people become addicts? Is it Blizzard? Or the game itself? Or is it someone else’s fault? |
If a parent of a fat child decided to file a lawsuit against a baker who makes such tasty bread, and a butcher who sells meat, because his kid is addicted to these, that would at least be considered silly. But when such a parent decides to sue McDonald’s, even though the principle is the same, the act is praised in the media.
Similarly, if a parent of a child who plays chess a lot sues the maker of a chessboard, it would be considered silly. But when a parent of a child who is addicted to World of Warcraft decides to sue Blizzard, then he meets with the approval of psychologists and mass media and the so-called intellectuals. Nonetheless, these people are too dumb to realize that the principle is the same in all of the above cases – or better said, the same principle is being violated.
World of Warcraft is probably Blizzard’s greatest success. It is played by roughly 4 million people worldwide. Not only are these people willing to pay for the game itself, but also the monthly subscription required so that they may play on-line – the only way it can be played anyway.
As with anything, people can exaggerate in playing this game. They often do. According to the video, 40% of them exaggerate. These people are mostly kids. There are some pathological cases that lose their jobs over it and such. But mostly, they are kids. In the video, we see the mother of a 16 year old crying and sobbing over how much her kid plays this game. In the news, we se parents suing Blizzard because so many people get addicted to the game. A gifted child, the video says, killed himself because he wanted to see the heroes of World of Warcraft in the afterlife. His parents are suing too.
In this scenario, there are many things that have gone wrong. First of all, there are no grounds on which to sue Blizzard. Blizzard has created a great game and as such should be praised, not condemned. There are 2,4 million players that are happy this game exists. They have spent their free time on this game, rather than all of it, and have had lots of fun. On the other side, there are the troublesome ones – the 1,6 million who have no life and all they ever do is play World of Warcraft. They are the ones whose mothers are sobbing over, who lose a job to a game, who play for 36 hours straight and then, naturally, flip. Clearly, the problem is not the game – for there are 2,4 million people who live happy lives with it. The problem is not Blizzard either, unless one would consider success a problem. The problem is, as it always is – failure. The problem are those 1,6 million failures who have naught to do with their lives but play games. And if within those 1,6 million failures there are mainly kids, then the problem are their parents too.
The first barrier to those parents is that they would not admit it that they are the problem. They cry and sob and they blame Blizzard, but they take absolutely no action to make such insanity stop. For crying out loud, people, when your kid is playing WoW too much, why don’t you simply unplug the router? If the game is really what the 16-year-old from the video says – like going out with friends, only over the Internet – then unplugging the router would be the equivalent of grounding a kid that spends too much time in the disco. An appropriate further action would be selling the computer and reducing your kid’s allowance. Forbid him to go out of his room. Stop paying internet bills. Take away his plastic cards and hide your own. Don’t pay his monthly subscription to the game. There are a million ways to prevent your kid from playing World of Warcraft, and that is not by suing Blizzard. Furthermore, admit to yourself that, since your kid got addicted to a game, you haven’t shown him that there are better things in life, i.e. you’ve been a lousy parent. Especially if he dares to say that playing a game is his own choice. If it truly is, then I suppose your kid is also the one earning and paying for it?
And finally, there are parents who are suing Blizzard because their kid killed himself over World of Warcraft because he wanted to see his heroes in the afterlife – who planted the stupid idea of an afterife in that kid’s head in the first place? Why didn’t those parents start actively raising their child, rather than let him go with whatever stream caught him? And now they still blank-out on the fact that it’s their own fault for what happened to their child and instead of rethinking their error, they are making another one – suing Blizzard.
The principle is always the same – if you have a problem, then it is your problem. Suing somebody because you have a problem won’t help you solve it. Also, there is no such thing as “Internet addiction.” It’s fiction invented by those who wouldn’t admit themselves they have a problem. There are millions upon millions of people who use the Internet every day, and they do it with moderation. Only drugs cause addiction, not Internet – because if the Internet caused addiction, then every person with a modem would be an addict. In short, the so-called addicts are misusing the Internet – or World of Warcraft – or whatever other thing they are said to be addicted to. By the same principle, a chair would be misused if you sat in it 24 hours a day. These things were not meant to be raped with use, they were meant to help you. The fact that this overuse happens, shows that people who overuse them – rather than owning things – are being owned by things.
