Okay, well I'm going to PO some people here, but I think he's right to some extent. He's got the specifics wrong, but the truth is that gamers do behave like a group of addicts. I will explain so don't freak out, and actually read this, even though I'm sure most people are going to disagree with me.
In his case, he's absolutly nuts in his examples, about how there is something wrong with the way people react to having something snatched from them, or the bits about chemical reactions and how bad they are, and a lot of that kind of thing, but there are a lot of problem behaviors involved. It's a differant kind of addiction than what he's talking about.
Where I see the problems with addiction is in the game industry and how games are marketed. We as consumers pretty much let the gaming industry slap us around like crazy, because we can't bear to go without our games. It doesn't matter what the industry does, price increases, taking away our control of our own property, quality reduction, and let's not even get into the antics of people like Bobby Kotick and that entire "Infinity Ward" fiasco, we keep buying the products. What's worse, as a group we know what is going on is wrong, we sit around and complain about it constantly, we complain about how we're getting gouged by things like Downloadable Content with things being held out of games so companies can charge money for what should already be there, we complain about having to buy games digitally knowing that we could lose access to very expensive products at the drop of a hat, or if someone wants to have an ego trip like EA just did by cutting some guy out of his "Dragon Age 2" purchuse because they didn't like something he said on their forums. In the end though we line right up to buy the products, and the industry keeps right on finding ways to charge
us even more money, while giving us less in the way of actual products.
Looking into the mirror is painful, but this *IS* the kind of behavior junkies exhibit. Right now we've just watched EA do something that's ridiculously inexcusable in taking someone's money for a product, and then refusing to deliver it, and justifying it by "we don't like the guy's attitude on our forums". Yet amazingly, the reaction to this (which goes beyond whether the guy deserved the ban or not) is going to largely be "gee, glad it wasn't me" as everyone lines up to buy their next big release.
Look at what Bobby Kotick has done, the game industry equivilent of a rampaging, out of control dealer who has a habit of killing people more or less at random. The guy refused to pay his people promised bonuses, and outed them with thugs. A popular group of developers no less. That entire fiasco and yet people ignored it when "Black Ops." came out as the next game in the "Call Of Duty" series. The bottom line being that nobody cared about the DLC gouging, nobody cared about the guy running the show, nobody cared about what happened with the servers, everyone complained, but at the same time the community lined right up, hat in hand, to buy the game, knowing very well that in doing so they were reinforcing the behaviors they had problems with... but it doesn't matter, because they have their game right now.
To be honest things like Cocaine are a bad example, I think the addiction in mostly mental and social to be honest. It's a situation where a lot of games like "Call Of Duty" have become part of society to the point where people are afraid of exclusion by NOT buying the games. After all if all your friends are going to be playing, and spending hours talking about this, you don't want to be the guy who is on the out. It's a mental addiction like any form of escapism is, not especially problematic, any more than watching TV and getting obsessed with show after show to the point where you go out of your way to watch prime time (which a lot of people do). On it's own I think the addictive aspects are within permissible levels, if you become concerned about this you by extension would be banning pretty much every activity and hobby out there that garners more than a casual level. The "problem" games tend to largely be the ones with social components, such as multiplayer shooters, MMORPGs, fighting games, and certain franchises that have grown to the point of developing large communities even without a direct multi-player component.
Right now I think the biggest problem is that gaming has hit the mainstream rather suddenly and there really isn't much balance on industry exploitation, there is no real consumer advocacy among gamers for example. I also think the goverment is behind the curve in regulating the industry due to the new technologies involved. One of the problems with societies is how slowly they move and adapt, and truthfully lawmakers and those who protect the consumer tend to be a generation behind, and I don't think a lot of the people calling the shots really grasp the whole idea of "virtual property" or the issues involved in digital distribution, or people setting up these kinds of "always online" verification schemes that can be used to track people, or even cut people off from things that they purchused.
The problem is also compounded by the fact that I think the gaming industry was savvy enough to buy up most of the people that understand the relevent laws. As a result in cases where we see things like EULAs fought, it's rarely done competantly except on their side of the coin. In many such cases I can't help but roll my eyes at the very angle of attack chosen by the guys representing the person making the case against the industry.
The point is that this guy is right on some levels, he's just wrong that it's the kind of problem that needs to be dealt with in a "your kids are on drugs" format. Gaming is "new" as far as the mainstream is concerned, and society is simply incapable of really putting it into context, or adapting to the technology and issues involved.
To be honest, I think this guy's problem is that he's trying to deal with gaming through the eyes of what he knows, and ground it in established sciences, when it's really not that easy. His arguements are very similar to how when Televisions came out how "disturbing" it was the amount of time kids (or people in general) would spend watching them, especially seeing as it was new and differant. What's more the companies in control were totally ruthless and corrupt and it took the goverment a LOT of effort to catch up with them in that arena. Look at how close Ted Turner came to pretty much becoming the god emperor of all media before the goverment finally "got it" at the last moment and slapped him down. Guys like our Bobby Koticks, and our large companies like EA and Activition are the equivilent of the Ted Turners of this generation, seeking to get things like "Digital Distribution" and constant online linkages established BEFORE the goverment gets to the point where it understands and can act. If this stuff is already totally entrenched what the authorities can do becomes a lot more limited.
In short, gaming IS an addiction, the same way a hobby, or television is an addiction. We can go without it, but people who are into it, don't WANT to go without it. It's new enough to be differant though and people who think of video games as they were 20-30 years ago (who are a lot of our lawmakers) don't seem to really "get" that what they are dealing with is not simply a prettier version of "Pac Man" that people should want to drop at a moment's notice. Taking a controller out of someone's hand, or clicking off a game box, can ruin hours of work. Sort of like how missing an episode of a favorite show, or a televised sporting event, or something else, especially if someone else intentionally saborages it, can ruin someone's entire day, or maybe their entire week. It's scary like a drug addiction when you fail to assign equal weight to what's being dealt with.
Long, drawn out, and probably confusing, apologies for that. I know many people will disagree with me, but that's my thoughts on the subject. In short we ARE addicts, but not as this guy presents. The big problem isn't so much gaming itself, as much as the game industry. Sort of like how Ted Turner was a problem in how he tried to run/control everything, even if Television was not a problem in of itself. The specifics are differant, but the bottom line is almost identical.
