Thank you for your insightful comment. I’ve stumbled across your blog a couple times and found it very useful. You really seem to care about maintaining academic accuracy, so let’s address those two objections:

1) The Yee and Ng & Wiemer-Hastings studies.

“You’re inflating the addiction because it’s a self-report measure where a lot of people have different ideas of addiction, so a person’s concept of addiction isn’t considered so for another person.”

Yes; this is one of the problems I pointed out with those two studies. (see problem 2) Like I said, THESE STUDIES ARE FOCUSING ON QUANTITY RATHER THAN QUALITY. You need both to prove a point. Interestingly enough, the Charlton and Danforth study you referenced also used self-reporting questionnaires. We should recognize the limitations of these studies, but that doesn’t mean we should throw them out.

2) The definition of addiction.

This is a REALLY slippery topic. If you read my last post, you’ll know that I accept a much more liberal definition of addiction than most of academia. On the other hand, your definition (or lack thereof) represents one of the most restrictive definitions of addiction that I’ve ever seen:

“So if a person has lost his job, has no contact whatsoever with family members or friends outside cyberspace, thinks only his video game, does not care for personal hygiene and suffers withdrawal symptoms. Then, there is a serious consideration that he could be an addict.”

Really? Then we only have a “serious consideration” that he might be addicted?

Now the next thing I want to point out on this topic is:

“As of now, there are no definitive diagnostic criteria to determine video game addiction.”

A diagnostic criteria and the definition of gaming addiction are two very different things. A diagnostic criteria means that psychiatrists can look from the outside, judge someone, and determine beyond a shadow of doubt whether they are addicted. My purpose in making a definition of addiction is not to look at someone else and say “ok, you’re addicted.” It is to allow people to take this definition and look at themselves or their kids.

At any rate, the point of this post really isn’t addiction alone. It doesn’t matter whether we call it problem game play, addiction, dependence, or exploding head syndrome. Once an activity, even a good activity, interferes with more important activities, it’s probably a good time to stop or cut back.

As of now, there are no definitive diagnostic criteria to determine video game addiction. There is no definitive percentage of players that can be considered addicted, the latest rate is around 10%. Just ask Dr. Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University.

There are also several things to consider in addiction, is the process of video game addiction and how it is different from other types of addiction. Have you considered the social aspects of MMORPGs?