The Article That Started It All

This blog post, The Psychology of Video Game Addiction, is the source of my interest in this topic. I learned many new things about MMOs, such as the fact there is a name to this addiction, Massively Multiplayer Addiction (MMA). I also learned that people have hypothesized that MMOs activate the same brain pathways as more "traditional" types of addiction, such as cocaine and such. This happens through the release of dopamine in the reward pathways.

Also, a child died when the parents neglected to take care of it because of an MMO? After some digging, I found this post about it on Gamespot. This is insane. This is not the only death linked to WoW, as aparently a 28 year old man with the nickname "Snowly" has died as a result of the games addictive influence.

This article that started this whole curiosity was posted in 2007. I would assume that more information is available in the past three years. So, I will take a look at some of the psychological affects of MMO addiction,