Doing Some Casual Research on the Internet...

Here's an old artice dated 2000 from someone married to an EQ player:

Guest Editorial: I Was an EverQuest Widow

Wow. The game came out in 1999, and 2000 was already the starting point for the term "EQ Widows"? I have to admit, I would not have been as insightful that early on. Here is someone who posted concern over his daughter's EQ obsessiveness in 2000.

Here is a project I found done by a few Stanford University students in 2002 called Computer Addiction and the Effect of the Internet on Personal Lives, with lots of quotes from people who feel they may are addicted to computer games (check the link "Gaming WOrld")

Here is a loooong but well-written and interspersed-with-tons-of-quotes article by someone named Jewel: But in the end, they're still nothing more than video games. It's an odd conclusion that she has: "People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don’t have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don’t know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park." If I truly had a choice over my addictions, I wouldn't choose gaming addiction either but addiction to reading, meditation, painting, playing the guitar, discussing how to realize sustainable living. Her options are so obviously bad that gaming addiction emerges as the best one, but in truth, she's excluding a lot of other good choices.