Keep Your Priorities Straight

This is an interesting article about the addiction that some people have to World of Warcraft, and what it can do to a marriage:

“Jocelyn had been friends with her ex-husband Peter since the age of 13, but it took only nine months for her marriage to collapse. “I bought the game for him for Christmas 2004, when it first came out. By May we had our first serious discussion about where our marriage was going, and by September I had moved out,” she said. Jocelyn recalled one particular incident that was typical of Peter’s habits. “I had set aside 30 minutes for us to watch a television show together, and he couldn’t. He was stuck on a raid, and completely failed to understand why I was upset,” she said. Peter’s domestic duties also suffered. He stopped paying bills, she says, and refused to do his share of the housework.”

This is clearly an extreme case, but certainly not unheard of. Anyone with an addictive personality would certainly have trouble resisting getting addicted to a game that has no ending. World of Warcraft is probably at the root of more marriage break-ups than any other game in history, yet if it wasn’t the game it might be any other number of things that person would get addicted to. Should the game come with a warning label on the outside? “Caution: May Be Harmful to Marital Harmony.” I believe that people are responsible for their own actions and that blamings games, music, or anything else is a cop-out.