Is Electronic Community an Addictive Substance?

This paper contends that labeling online games such as EverQuest as "addictive" is a misleading framing that obscures what is often a deeper problem of social isolation and unmet need for community. The authors argue that media coverage and policy responses, which treat heavy players as helpless victims of a compulsive product, overlook the life circumstances and social motivations that drive engagement. They situate this argument within an international survey of responses to gaming, including the Sean Woolley suicide case in the United States, Internet addiction treatment centers in South Korea, gaming restrictions in Greece, a curfew on the game Ragnarok in Thailand, Internet café closures in China, treatment camps in Germany, and municipal bylaws in Canada.

The central empirical contribution rests on six months of ethnographic fieldwork involving interviews with three EverQuest players and one psychiatrist. Within this small and admittedly non-representative sample, the authors find that engagement is driven largely by guild membership, group play, social status, and a sense of accomplishment. Players who reported heavy use typically described strong social ties rather than isolation, which the authors interpret as evidence of a persistent, self-sufficient community that provides belonging.

From these findings the authors conclude that addiction-framed regulation, including curfews, warning labels, and lawsuits against developers, is a flawed policy direction. They argue that such measures are unlikely to address the underlying social dysfunction that the framing overlooks. Because the supporting data are limited in scope, the conclusions are best read as a critical reframing of the addiction debate rather than a definitive account of gaming behavior.