South Korea, the dominant winner at the world cyber games, is working on a rehab for addicted gamers.
The first move is to start a statutory warning like for cigarettes and liquor, as the industry's rapid growth gives rise to a new generation of addicts, like the man who died of heart failure after playing "Starcraft" for 50 hours at an Internet cafe.
Currently in the country, Valve's Counter Strike is the game that has got people hooked onto it. Though it's not online, in Mumbai we have clans thronging multiplayer gaming cafes for hours together.
Prasanth Menon, a gamer, said, "In India gaming has not yet reached the level of insanity. It s still in a nascent stage, but the day won t be far when youngsters will be addicted to this. I think it is even more addictive then smoking cigarettes. Indeed we need some rehab centers."
While a Playstation 2 gamer said, " We only need a counter-strike rehab facility. All other gamers are quite chilled in life."
What can be done to help gamers? An interesting view was put forth in this regard by Gurdeep Singh, a system administrator; "The government should sponsor membership to clubs so youngsters can feel the real world sports."
The South Korean government has designed clinics to help cure gaming addicts and is also talking with developers about creating advisory patches to warn gamers about the hazards of heavy playing.
According to IDC, the online-game sector is growing explosively in Asia, worth an estimated $1.1 billion last year with annual growth set to average 19 percent through 2008.
Another case of addiction; a gamer in Shanghai was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a competitor who borrowed and then sold his virtual "dragon saber."
So far there have been no incidents like these here and fortunately online gaming is still un- affordable here. Most of the youngsters who play games have parents to take care of so no need to worry!
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So who on TE is going there
