Gaming all the way to the bank
Dec 28, 2017, 6:19 AM | Updated: 7:43 am
(AP Photo/Jungho Choi)
(AP Photo/Jungho Choi)
The World Health Organization has seen enough. It will add to the official list of recognized illnesses an illness called “gaming disorder.”
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The doctors have figured out what parents of young males have known for years – too much computer gaming makes you sick.
Where they draw the line is when the gaming “takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities.” As in, when you spent 12 months living in the garage playing Minecraft.
Except I’m learning there’s actually a lot of money in Minecraft. It’s sold 107 million copies and if you can create a really compelling virtual world, you can set up a server, and charge people to enter.
In fact, the FBI discovered that the internet blackout right before the 2016 election was caused not by some rogue state, but by rival Minecraft hosts hijacking computers, trying to shut each other down.
“Most people never even understood that their device had been hijacked and turned against rival Minecraft servers,” Garrett Graff of Wired.com told me.
There are even Minecraft fight songs.
“FBI determined during the course of this that people were actually making $100,000 a month. There’s incredible money in this,” Graff said.
So bottom line, gaming disorder is official. The only question is how to treat it. Do you call a good psychiatrist or a good stockbroker?
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