A recent survey conducted by an online gaming magazine has revealed that almost 75 per cent gamers prefer hooking up with games on PCs and consoles to having sex or spending some quality time with their partners. This invariably has upset their better halves and girlfriends who say that their beaus prefer their games onscreen rather than off it.
Explains Vaishnavi Jadhav, a marketing consultant whose husband hasn’t quite grown out of his addiction to Everquest. She laments, “We both work 9 am to 9 pm jobs and the only time we get to meet each other is over dinner. I was flabbergasted to see him move his so-called ‘gaming rig’ over to the bedroom one day, which happened to have the only broadband socket in the house. The simple solution I figured was sleeping in the next bedroom.”
But afflictions like insomnia are only the beginning; social lives going for a toss is the most common repercussion. Says T. S. Prakash, software engineer, “I work for more than eight hours a day. As soon as I return home, I get on to World of Warcraft. Food and sleep are pretty much secondary compared to a conquest in the game. I am more than content with the four hours of sleep I get. It’s also one of the reasons I can’t afford a girlfriend, because I wouldn’t be able to give her enough time.”
In fact, even counselors are saying that such new age addictions have started causing cracks in relationships among couples. Vasuki Mathivanan, counseling psychologist says, “I once had a client who was contemplating divorce due to her spouse’s addiction to PC games. As several professionals these days spend more than eight to 10 hours in front of the computers, they tend to get obsessed and sit in front of the same even after they come back home. But what’s happening is that they are in turn isolating themselves by keeping themselves busy and avoiding their friends and acquaintances.”
