A leading psychiatrist in the treatment of online game addiction has revealed that some World Of Warcraft users are more ashamed of being addicted to the game than to online porn. Speaking to The Boston Globe, Dr Jerald Block spoke about the rise in internet addiction and some of the …

UK Minster Margeret Hodge has revealed that T anya Byron’s Review into the availability of inappropriate digital material to young people cost the UK Government 275,000. The Review, which was immediately backed by Government, recommended that BBFC ratings should appear on all games released in the UK – with anew …

Having charmed the industry with her thoroughly modern views on gaming, it was clear that Byron was keen to stress gaming’s positive associations. But cut to three weeks later, she’s drawing vague and potentially damaging comparisons between gaming and drug addiction. If you didn’t see Am I Normal? – a …

Tanya Byron narrates ‘Am I Normal?: Most of us think of games as the preserve of the teenager; young people escaping into a virtual world of fantasy. It’s an attractive but artificial world where they can give themselves a new identity and a status and power unobtainable in reality.” Michelle …

Anybody who researches in the area of childhood Internet use and videogaming will not have been surprised by the report co-ordinated by Dr Tanya Byron. As someone that has been researching in this area for over 20 years, there was little in the conclusions that were reached and the recommendations …

Usually the first column of the year is a time for looking ahead. But for a change, letâ??s think beyond the prospects for PS3 or middleware.

A fresh batch of anti-games bile came from a columnist in The Times, and follows some cheeky comments about games causing obesity from (drumroll, please…) McDonalds’ UK boss . And even Prime Minister Gordon Brown got in on the action, linking knife crime to games in a recent Sun story. …

I’d filled a lab with a cornucopia of games technology, from deafening arcade machines to tiny pocketable gadgets, and then over a period of some time, watched carefully as the under 20s, and often the under 11s, played them for all they were worth. At the time horror stories were …