[Micrococonut]

True thanks for pointing that out. I'm addressing this as a self identified video game addict. I feel that pull to play in my brain every day. I just try to not live in denial telling myself that spending all my time gaming is a healthy and constructive way to spend my time.

I've seen this behavior in my peers and in myself. Almost always among the addicts like myself you get two responses. "Yea no doubt lmao" or an exhaustive list of other addictions like television, cigarettes, Facebook, etc. trying to rationalize it to you and themselves. I'd like to point out in these cases it is far beyond a hobby. It is self-destructive. Going a day or more without eating or sleeping. Pulling an all-nighter because you just cant seem to get away from it. I've literally seen league of legends ruin a friends future because he couldn't study over getting in just-one-more-match. In my perspective video game addiction is an undeniable truth. And those vehemently opposed usually have a self-image interest in opposing it.

[Karunamon]

That’s fair, but at the same time, nobody can diagnose addiction over the internet. There’s just too much critical context missing.

On top of that, as someone who has gaming as their primary hobby, seeing questionable armchair diagnosis brings back to memory shades of the anti-game hysteria that plagued the late 80s into the 90s. The feeling is decidedly “oh god not this shit again”. I’d be willing to wager a lot of the “Nintendo generation” that grew up on games is going to have a visceral reaction to what appears at first glance to be another attempt at demonizing them and what they do for fun, let alone the developers.

Put another way, if Tetris had been released today, I’d expect people to start banging on about addiction and how the developers are doing something wrong by releasing something so "adddictive". That deeply annoys me.