According to Toronto's Globe and Mail, Andrew Kane, 16, "nonchalantly" asked his mom and dad if they would drive him to a motel where he would meet up with a woman who'd flown up from Texas to meet him. They weren't too keen on that idea. So he went back upstairs to tell the woman - a mother of two - he couldn't make the date. Mom and dad went back to check on him - at 2 a.m. - and lo and behold he was gone.

Kane was missing for two days. The Globe and Mail, drolly identifiying Kane and Lauri Price, 42, as "the couple" were found Thursday in a store in a nearby town. Ms. Price said whoa-whoa-whoa he told me he was 20, but it doesn't matter, 16 is the age of consent up in Canada anyway, so she's not gonna face charges.

The Globe and Mail has all of the creepy-creepy, as can only be supplied by two delusional lovebirds, one of whom got her college degree before the other was born. Obligatory game addiction mention, too.

Teen Found After Meeting his 42-year-old Online 'Soulmate' [The Globe and Mail, Toronto]

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pic via]

The Centers for Disease Control examined 500 adults across all majority ages (18 and up) in Seattle, because its Internet usage is highest in the United States and it's one of the largest media markets. Forty-five percent of respondents reported playing video games. Of them, CDC found that gamers' average age has gone up to a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life 35, and body condition, health and emotional state have followed suit.

All is not lost; girl gamers my age have it worse. CDC found they reported "greater depression and lower health status than female non players." Unsurprisingly, "male gamers reported a higher BMI and a greater reliance on the Internet than non-gamers.

"Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video game players from non-gamers," he said.

"Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status."

Feel like crap yet? You should, according to this study.

Video Gamers 'Older Than Thought' [BBC]

Kotaku has been following this story closely since it began in early 2008. 16-year-old Daniel Petric, angered at his parents for taking away the copy of Halo 3 that he had purchased against their wishes, shot both of his parents in the head with his father's 9mm handgun, after requesting that they close their eyes because he had "a surprise" for them. While his father, minister Mark Petric, survived the shooting, his mother did not.

Defense lawyers argued video game obsession as a motivating factor behind the killing...that Daniel didn't think the deaths would be real due to his immersion in Halo 3. While the defense was not enough to save the teen from being convicted in January of this year, it did have an effect on the sentence that Petric received this morning.

Instead of the full life sentence prosecutors were aiming for, Daniel Petric was instead sentenced with 23 years to life, with the possibility of parole after 23 years have been served. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge addressed the video game issue during the sentencing itself, claiming that it was a factor in his final decision.

I suppose the question we have to ask ourselves now is how heavily does the opinion of one common pleas judge weigh on the court system as a whole? We've seen the video game defense fail time and time again in courtrooms across the country, and while it didn't get the defendant off the hook on this occasion, it certainly had some impact. Does this sentence validate the game addiction defense, or is it simply an isolated event?

Update: Clarified sentencing terms.

Teen Who Killed Mother Over Video Game Gets 23 Years to Life [Fox 8 Cleveland]

The new skin condition springs from the case of a 12-year-old girl, treated in a Swiss hospital for intensely painful sores on the palms of her hands. The doctors examining the girl determined that she had idiopathic eccrine hidradenitis, a condition usually linked with heavy physical activity and intense sweating that results in sores on the hands and feet. Having the sores only on ones hands was rare, and the young lady in question hadn't been participating in outdoor activities...but she had been playing a great deal of PlayStation. Aha!

Sure enough, after 10 days spent avoiding the console, the girl's condition cleared right up, and the British Journal of Dermatology got a new entry in the form of PlayStation palmar hidradenitis.

Of course video game consoles have been hurting us since the very beginning of the industry. I used to have to tape my hands because the Atari 2600 joystick had torn the skin between my thumb and forefinger to shreds. I think the main difference between this case and all of the cases before it is that the parents didn't have enough sense to put two and two together and had to get doctors involved.

Researchers are calling this a physical symptom of video game addiction, similar to the acute tendinitis that has been reported by playing too much Nintendo Wii. It should be noted, however, that no one has ever listed tennis elbow as a symptom of tennis addiction. Just something to think about.

A Sony Computer Entertainment Europe representative was quick to reply to the BBC.

"As with any leisure pursuit there are possible consequences of not following common sense, health advice and guidelines, as can be found within our instruction manuals.

"PlayStation was launched in 1995 and has sold hundreds of millions of consoles over the last 13 years.

"We do not wish to belittle this research and will study the findings with interest. This is the first time we have ever heard of a complaint of this nature."

See? Because most people can make the association between too much game playing and sores on their palms. Thanks a lot, little Swiss girl.
Game consoles 'cause skin sores' [BBC - Thanks David!]

As reported previously, Petric had purchased a copy of Halo 3 following his parents' Mark and Susan had forbid him to do so. After having the game confiscated, Daniel broke into his father's lock box, which held the game and a 9mm handgun, entered the living room of his house, asked his parents to close their eyes, and shot both of them in the head, killing his mother and wounding his father.

Petric's lawyers argued that video game addiction had driven the teen to the crime, but Common Pleas Judge James Burge found otherwise. Petric now faces up a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

Once again my condolences go out to the Petric family for this horrible tragedy, though I sincerely hope Daniel doesn't see the outside of a prison for quite a long line.
Teen convicted of killing mother over video game [Associated Press]

The man "kept talking incoherently about how to win his favorite computer games, even after being sent to a Beijing hospital ICU" on Sunday.

According to the report the man has been addicted to computer games since early in junior high school, but his condition worsened recently.

I wonder if there is something about the culture or politics of China that seems to make people more pre-disposed to game addiction there, or at least makes the results more extreme.

It could be an issue of the media in China writing more about the issue because it's become very high profile recently, but even if that were the case, I still think it's worse there than in other parts of the world.

Computer Game Addict Swallows Saw Blades [China Daily]

The center, which opened in 2004 at military base, has become the model for the nearly 300 similar centers that now dot China. The center treats the addiction with three months of military-style discipline, counseling, confidence building, sex education and for more than half of the cases, medication.

Most of the patients are 15 to 21 year old men hooked on multiplayer online games, most notably World of Warcraft and Counterstrike.

What makes this article stand out is it's talk with the founder of the center and one of the people leading the push to have internet addiction classified as its own disorder. There are also some fascinating talks with the folks afflicted with this addiction, like teenager Jia Chunyang who calls Counterstrike his "drug" of choice.

"My relations with friends weren't good; I only communicated with them online," says Jia. "I stole money from my family and skipped school. And the games also affected my personality. If I couldn't play for a while, I would feel upset."

He hit bottom in 2006, when he ran away from home and went on a 15-day Counterstrike bender in an Internet cafe. He took breaks for instant noodles and half-hour catnaps, but otherwise went on an uninterrupted shoot-'em-up spree, as his parents searched for him.

If internet addiction and, as an offshoot, gaming addiction ever does get it's own classification I can see it eventually leading to legal issues for developers like Blizzard. If gameplay is considered addictive and harmful, what sorts of moral obligations do developers have to not add extra hooks to their games?

Strange and interesting territory.

In an increasingly wired China, rehab for Internet addicts

Keith Bakker of The Smith & Jones Centre in Amsterdam explains that while a gamers who show other addictive behaviors such as drinking or taking drugs have been successfully treated using traditional abstinence-based treatment models, the vast majority of compulsive gamers have a social problem, rather than a psychological one.

"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," Mr Bakker told BBC News. "Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication."

Responding to this realization, The Smith & Jones Centre is now changing it's treatment plan for compulsive gamers, moving away from substance-abuse type methods in favor of a plan involving activity-based social and communication skills, to help players interact better with the real world.

The BBC article this story originates from goes on to speak to a gamer called "George" who sought help at the center to help overcome his 10 hour-a-day Call of Duty 4 habit.

"I liked gaming because people couldn't see me, they accepted me as my online character - I could be good at something and feel part of a group."

Underlying that new sense of belonging was a young man who felt powerless and neglected in real life.

"I was aware that I played too much but I didn't know what to do. But it helped me because I could be aggressive and get my anger and frustration out online," he says.

Bakker believes that the key to keeping this sort of thing from happening lies with parents communicating with their children, which is the old-fashioned way of preparing them for the real world, back before electronic babysitting was invented.

He also warns of the dangers of continuing to refer to compulsive gaming as an addiction.

"If I continue to call gaming an addiction it takes away the element of choice these people have," he says. "It's a complete shift in my thinking and also a shift in the thinking of my clinic and the way it treats these people."

Compulsive gamers 'not addicts' [BBC News]

“Apparently he’s got you supporting him and taking care of the house. I wonder what level that is in the real world,” Dr. Phil quips.

Other stories include a 41-year-old man who accumulated $24,000 in debt and attempted suicide, the author of the book "Game Widows", and the return of special guest Liz, whose 21-year-old son killed himself while playing Everquest. Hit the link for the full show notes.

Virtual Chaos [Dr. Phil via Game Politics]

"Experiences tell us kids or adolescents simply don't stop playing games when faced with forceful measures. Such attempts can also cause many side effects,'' (Xtive president) Yun said. "But our newly developed sound sequence tells them to stop playing on their own. We think this can make a real difference in the war against obsessive game play.''

Acoustic Wave Prevents Game Addiction [Korean Times, via GamePolitics]