A while back I came across the following news item about how video games were leading couples to divorce:
Although best-selling online role-playing game World of Warcraft boasts over ten million subscribers, it’s also leaving in its wake an increasing list of casualties.
Even though she’s never played the game, 28 year-old Jocelyn is one of the fallen. A well-spoken California resident, she divorced her husband of six years after he developed a crippling addiction to the smash online RPG.
“He would get home from work at 6:00, start playing at 6:30, and he’d play until three a.m. Weekends were worse — it was from morning straight through until the middle of the night,” she told Yahoo! Games in an interview. “It took away all of our time that we spent together. I ceased to exist in his life.”
I meant to link to the item at the time, along with some brief comment of the O Tempora, O Mores variety. But for some reason I never got around to it. And perhaps that was for the best, for today, my daily travels through the Internets brought me to this article, descriptively entitled How Rock Band Saved My Marriage.
As someone who is neither married nor regularly plays video games, I admit I find both articles rather mystifying. But then again, given some of my recreational habits, perhaps I’m not one to talk.
May 27, 2008 at 4:46 pm
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_single_young_men.html
Here’s another one.
May 27, 2008 at 4:58 pm
More:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_new_girl_order.html
Kay Hymowitz is a very solid investigative reporter.
May 27, 2008 at 6:38 pm
I knew a fellow who succumbed to the video game addiction and it nearly cost him his marriage. Its not so far fetched. There was a time when I even caught myself spending a little too much time playing Madden Football, much to the chagrin of my wife. With so many things competing for time away from our families, an addictive time intensive activity is a recipe for trouble.
May 27, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I know someone whose wife had a computer addiction. I’m talking all night and weekend, games like world of warcraft.
She left him for someone she met online.
May 28, 2008 at 7:15 am
Temperance would help some.
May 28, 2008 at 9:47 am
Well, yes…. everybody’s got their jones.
The remarkable thing about most of the commentary on video games is how banal it is. The two articles you’ve linked to pretty much capture the entire range of opinion in the mainstream media. Video games are destroying us/videgames can save us. New technology as problem/new technology as solution.
Given the financial, social and emotional investment in video games it seems to me we ought to try to understand the phenomena a little better. Perhaps in so doing we could come to demand something more from them.
May 28, 2008 at 5:16 pm
If only wives would create characters and work up to an attractive exp. level, then they could live out their marriages in the game, wedding ceremonies and all!
……actually, I bet you could find this kind of thing happening already.
In hac lacrimarum valle,
May 30, 2008 at 2:26 pm
The husband here sounds like a little boy with dropped balls who has never grown up. His mother or his sister, if he had any, should really stepped in to give him a good slap and remind him about what his real responsibilites were. Good grief!