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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story about an Everquest player who commited suicide - and his mother planning to sue Sony Online being responsible for his death:
Shawn Woolley loved an online computer game so much that he played it just minutes before his suicide.
Elizabeth Woolley, who says her son, Shawn, was addicted to EverQuest, wants to sue the makers.
The 21-year-old Hudson man was addicted to EverQuest, says his mother, Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola. He sacrificed everything so he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000 people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy.
On Thanksgiving morning last year, Shawn Woolley shot himself to death at his apartment in Hudson. His mother blames the game for her son's suicide. She is angry that Sony Online Entertainment, which owns EverQuest, won't give her the answers she desires. She has hired an attorney who plans to sue the company in an effort to get warning labels put on the games.
"It's like any other addiction," Elizabeth Woolley said last week. "Either you die, go insane or you quit. My son died." The article continues to state that her son was epileptic, spent 12 hours a day in front of Everquest and had a couple of seizures due to that fact.
Allow me some comments on this story: First of all, I think it's his mother's right to sue Sony Online, since the legal system allows everyone to seek compensation for ill-happenings, whether these claims are justified or not. Another thought that came to my mind is that when someone you love dies, you are looking for someone to blame - it's just a natural reaction that helps you to live with the depressing fact that a beloved one is gone. However, for an European it is sometimes hard to understand how many people go to court in the US because they want compensation for mishappenings. This is not because europeans think that americans are strange or stupid, it's just that our legal system differs. In fact, I believe that a general attorney in europe would possibly sue his mother for letting him sit in front of a computer for 12 hours, knowing that he's an epileptic. The legal system on the continent stresses your own responsibility for things that occur to you. I am not judging which system is better or more just, I am just pointing out the differences.
Do I think that MMORPG's can be addictive? Yes, sure they can. But everything can be addictive - from cigarettes to alkohol to sex to religion. Now here's what the attorney said:
Jay Parker, a chemical dependency counselor and co-founder of Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Wash., said Woolley's mental health problems put him in a category of people more likely to be at risk of getting addicted to online games.
Parker said people who are isolated, prone to boredom, lonely or sexually anorexic are much more susceptible to becoming addicted to online games. Having low self-esteem or poor body image are also important factors, he said.
"The manufacturer of EverQuest purposely made it in such a way that it is more intriguing to the addict," Parker said. "It could be created in a less addictive way, but (that) would be the difference between powdered cocaine and crack cocaine." And this is where I think the case leaves the trails of being reasonable. I think that Parker mixes "being fun" with "being addictive". In his statement above, he implies that "low self-esteem or poor body image" makes you more likely to intensly play MMORPG's - and that's, with all respect, ridiculous.
I'd really like to hear your opinions on that case. Head over to this thread in our general CRPG forum and tell us your thoughts... |
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Death of an Everquest Player
