Death(suicide) of Game Addict

[sweet_angel]

Shawn Woolley loved an online computer game so much that he played it just minutes before his suicide.

The 21-year-old Hudson man was addicted to EverQuest, says his mother, Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola. He sacrificed everything so he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000 people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy.

On Thanksgiving morning last year, Shawn Woolley shot himself to death at his apartment in Hudson. His mother blames the game for her son's suicide. She is angry that Sony Online Entertainment, which owns EverQuest, won't give her the answers she desires. She has hired an attorney who plans to sue the company in an effort to get warning labels put on the games.

"It's like any other addiction," Elizabeth Woolley said last week. "Either you die, go insane or you quit. My son died."

I just read this article (not that new) .

Check out http://www.jsonline.com/news/State/mar02/31536.asp


Watch out guys......Are you game addict??

[cybermagellan]

Well Darwins Rule always prevails. The idiots will kill themselfs.

[programmer07]

That makes me mad.All the company did was make the game not trying to get people to kill themselves over it and now someone dies and the mother is going to sue.I know people that once they get home from work they get right on the game and stay on it until the next day.I really dont want to get into it because of how addicting it is.The boy obviously had problems any way and I think if he played 12 hours a day when he killed himself it would be when he was playing the game or around then.

[nabylbt]

Damn, sounds like the darwinawards.com winner ...
(for those who have never checked that site out, take it lightly ....)

[tampabay420]

It's not right to talk ill of the dead!

Suicide is when someone does not want to live anymore- it was his choice. That man's poor mother is just looking for answers in the wrong place...

[alittlebitnumb]

My father committed suicide and I know how painful it is to lose somebody you love. With that said, I have to say this...

It is not Sony's fault this guy killed himself. I can almost gurantee he used the game as an outlet and a way to "cope" with his real problems. It's like an alcoholic. People drink alcohol, enjoy it and do not become alcoholics. However, alcoholics use alcohol as a way to cope and "drink the problems away." The same goes with a computer game or anything else.

The question I have is, why didn't the mother get him real professional help? Suicides do not come out of the blue; they are usually accompanied with threats of suicide, depression, and other tell tale signs. The mere fact he was spending 12+ hours a day on the game should have been a red flag something was horribly wrong.

albn

[debwalin]

He sacrificed everything so he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000 people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy.

I'm very much NOT making light of the suicide, but don't you suppose the previous quote indicates a much more serious issue? Albn is very right...this kind of behavior denotes classic escapism. You don't spend that much time doing any one thing unless you are trying to escape your life. If it had been alcohol, or drugs, or even a woman that caused this behavior, someone would have taken action to stop it before the suicide occured. But because it was a video game, no one looked at it from that perspective.

[FamStars&Straps]

Oh god I don't want to see another good thing to be takin down because of the angry mother of another stupid kid. Like Ozzy Osbourne and Marylin Manson, that whole secret messages in the song ordeal. Another good thing being attacked because of someone stupid. Maybe there should be a warning on things such as music and games, it should read "You must be in good mental health to use this".

[Chuck56]

I think it's natural to blame anything and everything else when someone dies, whether by suicide, or some other cause. I don't believe games are the cause any more than I believe games are the reason for violence in our society. The focus is on violence in computer games, tv, movies, and magazines because a certain small segment of the population will grab at anything they don't approve of and beat the rest of us over the head with it.

[Syini666]

It never fails that people look to to the simplest route for blame. albn is on the right track, someone should have stepped in to intervene, even if it had to be by force, to prevent the suicide from happening. I am kind of curious as to why sony isint releasing the account info, I would think they would have no problems turning it over to the next of kin. I don't see how the info is going to make much of a differene, and suing sony wont make anything any better. I would think that the woman would be more concerned about coming to terms with what happend, but I guess going after a entity though to be at fault for her sons's suicide is a part of the process of dealing with his death.