We had a current affairs panel discussion yesterday about video game addiction. It was quite lively as usual, with most people supporting video games. One panellist that particularly interested me was Zhong Yang, who took on the role of a mother whose son died as a result of video game addiction.

My views on this issue basically echo that of the CEO of a video game company. Video games are just amother form of entertainment, like films and books. However, their interactivity allows people to replay them just for high scores, or to play through the game’s story in a different way. Therefore, people tend to spend more time on video games then they do on books.

I feel that the highly-publicised cases about people that die as a result of video game addiction are very rare, isolated cases. Video game ratings are there for a reason. If the parents of a child allow him or her to play mature games when their child is 7 years old, they have no right to blame the video game company for making the game in the first place, since they were not responsible parents themselves.

P.S. I hate blogger. It deleted this post and my swine flu post, so I had to rewrite them. L