Sherry Myrow founded GamerWidow.com in 2005 as a community for those affected by videogame addiction. This interview is a companion to our feature on the same subject.

What made you start Gamer Widow?

Six months after I got married, my husband discovered World of Warcraft and he got very, very obsessed with it, playing it to the point where I felt extremely neglected.

One day I was posting a message on a message board and I noticed a woman there was talking about her boyfriend who was addicted to Final Fantasy Online. Another woman said “I’m a gamer widow too”. When I saw those words, I thought that described me so perfectly because that’s how it felt: it felt like basically my husband had died and I was dealing with my marriage on my own.

When I searched online to see if other people were talking about this, I only found one email group for Everquest and there was nothing else. And so I joined that group and noticed that other people were talking about other games and not just Everquest. I decided to create a message board where anyone could talk about any game, so it wasn’t game-specific, it was just the situation for us, and that’s when I started GamerWidow.com.

That was a few years ago. What’s the situation now?

Now he’s completely quit World of Warcraft. That’s mostly because we had a daughter and it’s our first child. We also had discussed the problem a lot and he agreed that yes, it was a problem. We went to the root of why he was playing so much. And after discovering that, he was able to work on the problem of playing the game all the time. So it was a lot easier for him to deal with, to make the conscious decision that what he was playing was a game and all the time he invested in it, he could be doing something else.

Have you played World of Warcraft?

I actually have. I’m a person who believes in marriage for life and so when that was all happening, I was willing to do anything it took in order to save my marriage. One of the things he said was “well you don’t understand why I play the game, so you should play it yourself before you criticise.” So of course, I’m not a gamer, but I’m willing to do anything, so I got the game and actually got addicted myself for a couple of months. So I definitely understand the lure of the game.

Why do you think some people get addicted to games, but others don’t? Is there a profile you’ve seen of people who are more vulnerable than others?

From the people I’ve talked to who were or are addicted to videogames, it’s almost always because they’re missing something in their life; there’s a void that the game fills. Whether that’s a lack of social skills, or friends, or you have a job that you’re not happy with, you don’t have enough money, or you don’t have enough love in your life. You know, this game [WoW] lets you pretend that you do have a lot of money or you have a job that people value.

“There’s a void that the game fills”Because you’re playing with other people around the world, the social aspect is there. Some people have found love through the game. And the fact that the game is also very, very rewarding in the sense that there is positive reinforcement throughout the game; every time you do something it makes you feel like you’ve done something amazing, so there’s instant gratification when you play the game. I find that for the people who don’t get addicted, it’s because their lives are full. They have enough going on in their lives that they don’t need to substitute reality with virtual reality.

For people who are addicted or whose significant others who are addicted, what would you suggest is the best way to stop this behaviour? What should people do?

One of the mistakes I made was trying to address the problem while he was still playing. I know a lot of people do that; they try and talk to the gamer while they’re playing the game and that’s not the right way to do it. I found that the only way I was able to get through to my husband was, after having given this advice to enough people and them having the same results, to talk about the problem as if it was completely on your end. So we talked outside of the house.

We had dinner on the rare occasions that we went out and we were actually enjoying ourselves and I took the opportunity, almost in the middle of a laughing part of our conversation to let him know, you know, I really miss this and that I’ve been getting really lonely lately and wish we could have more of this together. I guess I had always expressed it as I always hate the game and he spent too much time on the game and so I decided to say, “I don’t hate the game, I don’t hate the fact that you play the game. What I hate is that you’re not paying attention to me any more and I feel that I don’t have a husband and I just want you back.” And that opened his eyes to the whole situation; what he was actually doing was hurting me. And it’s ok that he plays the game, as long as he knows how to moderate it between his online life and his real life.

With physically addictive substances like tobacco and alcohol, it’s obvious that the manufacturers are responsible for addiction. But with games, it’s a psychological addiction. What difference do you see?

I see a very big similarity with substance abuse and videogame addiction in the sense that the body reacts in the same way because drug addicts usually lose weight, they’re complexion becomes very pale and sallow, they start lying about what they’re doing, they are very suspicious and get jittery, and with gaming addicts it’s very similar. A lot of gamers either become extremely obese because they just eat junk at their desk or they lose an incredible amount of weight because they pretty much stop eating and just play.

Most gamers forget about any kind of household responsibilities, so bills don’t get paid and the house does not get cleaned. In very extreme cases, well more and more common, sadly, children aren’t supervised and they lie about the behaviour, so they may say, “No, I was watching my child”, but in reality he or she’s playing the game. I know people who have quit their jobs in order to play the game. They lose sleep over it, so a lot of people who are very, very addicted play upwards of 15 hours a day, 18 hours a day is average. There’s very little for sleeping, eating or anything else.

With traditional substance manufacturers like tobacco firms, there have been lawsuits brought against them. It’s well known that their products causes harm. But with games, there’s less perception that anything is being done wrong by manufacturers. Do you think we should treat them the same?

I think manufacturers are very clever in how they design the game in the sense that they really do design them in order to try and keep the person playing as long as possible. Having said that, not everybody gets addicted; some people are just able to play it and leave it to go and do something else. But it does require an incredible amount of time investment to successfully play a game like World of Warcraft, Second Life or any of those online role-playing games. Mainly because it takes a few hours to see anything happening in the game, so speaking from experience from having played World of Warcraft, I know you can’t just play for an hour. In an hour, you really don’t get too much done and it’s, like I said, very reward based.

The game also goes on with out you, while in games before the advent of the online role-playing, you press pause or saved and you were able to come back to it at any time that you wished. With online games, the world really does go on without you, so they, say, have a Christmas celebration, decorate the game, people buy things and have special concerts that last for one week. So naturally if you miss a day, you’re going to miss whatever’s happening in the game.

So it really does lure people in and they do this on purpose. From a business perspective, it’s genius because people are paying a subscription to continue playing this game above and beyond the price to purchase the game.

I know some manufacturers have started to put warnings where they say, “Warning: this game can become very, very, addictive” and I think that’s the right way to go as long as parents or people, or consumers in general, are aware that if you start playing this game, there’s a chance that you may start spending a lot of time on the game and not on other things. I don’t see anything else that can be done.

Part of the problem seems to be the perception of risk. Everyone knows that smoking is bad, but not necessarily that addiction to games is. What should be done to change this?

I have had a lot of people on GamerWidow.com, who when they read other peoples’ stories that are a little more extreme and really bad cases, they say, “If I had not read this I would have kept on gaming”, or “After I read this, it really made me take a look at my own gaming practices and I’ve changed them, I’ve modified them”. In other cases, it’s been, “Having read those extreme cases, I’ve realised that, you know what, the situation I’m living in is actually not that bad and my gamer is not actually addicted, he actually just really likes the game”.

I think it’s important to educate people about the signs of gaming addiction, how you can handle it and the road it can lead to. Awareness will help the problem. More and more in the news you read about countries like China, where there’s such a large population that they’ve started online gaming clinics. I know in the United States, they’ve started a clinic where they treat online gaming addiction, in Canada they’ve formed an online gamers anonymous group, so anyone can join that and do the whole 12 steps like alcoholics anonymous. So slowly, slowly, there’s awareness that’s growing, but we still need to go a long way.