Here is an interesting Story about The power of video games, or maybe it is just BS I will give my thoughts after it and would like to hear others thoughts about what happend, if some of them are gamers that would be cool. Got this from USA Today.

By Joe McDonald, The Associated Press
BEIJING - The parents of a 13-year-old Chinese boy who they say jumped to his death from a tall building after playing one of the popular Warcraft online games for 36 hours straight are suing its Chinese distributor, a news report said Friday.
Zhang Xiaoyi died on Dec. 27, 2004, leaving behind a suicide note saying he wanted "to join the heroes of the game he worshipped," the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

It said Zhang's parents, who live in Tianjin, just east of Beijing, are seeking 100,000 yuan ($12,500) from Aomeisoft, the Chinese distributor of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.

The suit says Aomeisoft failed to include a warning that the game's U.S. maker rates it as suitable only for players above age 13, according to Xinhua.

The Warcraft games are made by Blizzard Entertainment, a unit of Paris-based Vivendi Universal SA. Xinhua said a Tianjin court rejected a claim by the parents against the game maker.

The vice president of Aomeisoft, Bai Jie, told The Associated Press that he saw news reports about the lawsuit but that the company hasn't received any official court notice.

Bai said Zhang's parents were suing the wrong company, because Aomeisoft was set up in August, eight months after his death. Bai said he didn't know which distributor sold the game in 2004.

China has 111 million Internet users, second only to the United States. It is one of the world's biggest markets for online games, with tens of millions of players, many of whom hunker down for hours in front of PCs in public Internet cafes.

But the government has expressed concern about the violence and sexual content of some games. It has imposed curfews and time limits on children in Internet cafes and banned them near schools.

Also Friday, a newspaper said the Beijing city government has launched a review of the Chinese capital's 1,007 licensed Internet cafes to ensure they are complying with rules on admitting minors.

Violators could lose their licenses, the China Daily said.

In 2004, China shut down thousands of Internet cafes nationwide after a series of fatal fires and other accidents.

Xinhua said Zhang played at a "game hall," but didn't say whether that was an Internet cafe, which would have been required to limit his time there to a few hours.

Several cities have clinics to treat what psychiatrists have dubbed "Internet addiction" in users, many of them children and teenagers, who play online games or surf the Web for days at a time.

Specialists at a Beijing hospital examined Zhang's diary, school records and suicide note and concluded that "Zhang had excessively indulged in unhealthy games and contracted serious Internet addiction before his death," Xinhua reported.

His parents' suit also calls on the distributor to put a warning on the game's packaging saying "playing games excessively harms health," the report said.

Bai, the Aomeisoft executive, said the company plans to add "anti-addiction warnings" to future games.

The Warcraft games have 2.5 million players in China, with copies in more than 100,000 Internet cafes, Vivendi Universal chairman Jean-Bernard Levy told reporters in Shanghai in April.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

I admit that I have never played Video games that where made for online gaming, so I don't know from first hand experience if they are really addicting. But I have seen some people really get addicted or at least play Role Playing games for a long time stright and have heard of really long sesions , some times skiping food and bathroom breaks for a day.

I took a computer class at Canisius and the teacher admited that when he was first on the internet it was verry addicting. He admited that he would often lose track of time and hours and hours would pass and he had no clue, so he would have a clock and limit his time. If the net is addicting to some people and so is the game that could be a bad combo. I have seen a documentary show about some gamers and some of them will play for a day stright. I know I have done the same thing as my teacher before. Chat rooms and IM's are great for that.

Just because some one is addicted to a game dosn't mean that they would jump out a window but it could cause it. But the real question is who's fault is it. Did anyone not do something they should have like limit hours of use some how or have a warning. Or did some do something they shouldn't have done like make the game addicting and run tests to make it so people don't want to stop playing.

Being addicted to something is techniquely only labeled addiction by defination when there is a problem. For example if I came home and Smoked weed and turned on comedy cental it wouldn't be an addiction even if I did it every day. It wouldn't be and addiction untill that behavior caused problems. For example If cable goes out I freak out or can't go to work the next day cause I'm to messed up. I think that most things that are addicting arn't to most people. But that there is a small amount of people who will get addicted to them. I also belive that most addicts can't blame the thing they are addicted to. It isn't its fault it is that they have an addictive personality. One proff of this is often addicts switch drugs: they kick Coke or alcohol then pick up smoking.

However there is another factor and that is the character factor. Sometimes being a character can change your out look and you can start to think like the character and belive you are them. I know that sounds crazzy. But I do remember when there where Dungeons and Dragons suicides. Peoples characters would die and they couldn't handle it and they would kill them selves since they where so invovled in the game. There is a term in the wrestling Business for something simalar when a wrestler starts to belive he is the character they play. They play that role on TV then when they are in public they are recongnized and stay in charcter (or they used to atleast) and they sord of become that guy. I also heard an Interview with Bill Goldberg once and he said that Getting into character was easy, he just kinda flipped a switch, but he was so intense from being that other person that it took him a couple to a few hours to wind down and go back to being himself. So maybe the parents of this kid might have a case.