Suing Sony for Everquest Related Suicide? 967
daoine writes "The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story about how Sony could be sued by the mother of an Everquest player who recently committed suicide. The lawsuit itself doesn't seem all that interesting (she's aiming for warning labels) -- but it is interesting that Sony won't release any of the game data citing privacy policy, even if it could help unlock what exactly drove the guy to end his life."
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Informative)
The lawyer for Woolley made a statement saying that the labels would be an *indirect* result of the suit. They *are* suing for financial damages, so significant, in fact, that (paraphrased) "Sony will have to put warning labels on its games as a matter of fiduciary responsibility."
Re:Give me a break (Score:2, Informative)
But, posting warnings on box (ala cigs) won't do crap. Just look at how many people are deterred by those life-threatening warnings now.
Re:Goes a bit far... (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortuneately, many people don't. Check out this application for one of the 'Uber' EQ guilds.
http://www.fohguild.org/html/recruit.php [fohguild.org]
Note some of the downright anti-social requirements, such as a level 60 avatar, and the 'right' class. Most damning of the lot is this, which is a direct quote from the page:
- We raid generally 6 days a week. Attendance to at LEAST 5 days is required. If you are busy with work or school or any other outside responsibility and do not feel you can make it 5 times a week, this is not the right guild for you. Raid times vary on the weekends, but generally our weekday schedule is from 4pm PST until 10pm PST.
There are people with too much time on their hands out there. There are also people like this, who have abandoned real life in favor of the alternative.
I survived 2 years in Norrath. (Score:4, Informative)
I personally witnessed the self destruction of more than one person while playing the game and I saw many people put trust in people who they didn't know only to lose all of their in game posessions. For those people who would spend 12 hours a day for more than a year in game only to lose it all because they thought they had a friend it is very devistating. No more different than giving someone you meet in real life the key to your apartment only to come home one day and find all your stuff gone, save a few pennies scattered on the rug.
Everquest is addicting and there is a point where you realize, at least there was for me, that you've spent nnn hours in game and have yyyy treasure. You can quit now and lose it which makes you realize that the nnn hours were all pretty much a waste or you can keep playing until you find something better to do with your time that will make you forget about the waste of nnn hours and the loss of yyyy treasure. Some people quit and come back to the game several times before quitting for good. Others will do something to get banned from the game to ensure that they will be quitting for good. I think this is where you see people getting ripped off by so called friends because the people who do this are caught and they do get banned.
I think Everquest can be a very dangerous game for some people. It is only a game but it has people interacting and bad people do play it. I definatly wouldn't let a child play it and would advise against a mentally ill person playing it as there seem to be enough of those playing already. On the other hand, I have heard great things about how some people with physical handicaps have used the game to give them a life they couldn't normally have.
I knew Shawn... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:it'll get dismissed... (Score:4, Informative)
Well you must have read at least part of the article to get some of these facts. Unfortunatly you got it pretty mixed up and are talking about cases involving several different players instead of the one in question.
The mother wants some information regarding her sons suicide. Had the guy gone to a night club and come home and killed himself then the mother could go to the night club and try to find people he was with to try to find out why he did it. In this case she can't talk to anyone because Sony is being very uncooperative. Her only recourse is to sue Sony which will do several things. Directly it might get them to put some warning labels on the box and it will get some publicity. Indirectly, the news of the lawsuit may reach guildmates or acquaintences of the deceased in game who may choose for themselves to contact the mother and offer her some condolences so she can get the closure she needs.
Sony is more than capable of putting out a message of the day, MOTD, to notify friends of this player to visit a site where they can choose for themselves if they want to talk to this guys mother. Instead Sony always blurts out this boilerplate response about privacy of its players and that is the end of the matter to them. They clearly have a responsibility here, in this case a moral one, to offer some form of condolence to this guys mother. They can at least let people in game know about the death and let the players choose if they want to do the write thing.
When I played I had a guildmate get severly injured in a car accident. He was in a coma and almost died. It was months before we all found out about it and when we did we all sent messages to our fallen friend. Someone in the guild went as far as hand delivering screenshots and get well postings to him in the hospital which he appreciated very much. The point is, there are some people who play the game who do care. If this guy had friends in the game they might know of some of the problems he was having and that could help his mother recover from her loss.
I think in the end the mother will hear what she needs to but not with Sony's help. The publicity and will prompt a few players will come through to help her.
Addiction != physiological dependence. (Score:3, Informative)
There are plenty of gambling addicts who would take offense at how you've minimized their disease. Having spent some time around problem gamblers, I can assure you that they are in just as much pain as the problem drinkers and drug abusers...and causing just as much pain to those around them.
One last thing -- addiction is largely a matter of genetics. If your family has a history of addiction, you run the risk of having those same genes. Your only real choice is whether to trigger the addictive behavior with your choices or not.
Write your will before your dead (Score:1, Informative)
I don't want my name on TV now or after I'm dead. Look at the poor bastard in the article. Do you think this is what he would have wanted? "Please discuss all of my social and mental problems in a public forum after I killed myself over my failure in a computer game. My life wasn't pitiful enough."
Hmm...really? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm an epileptic. Have been all my life. I've had my brain picked constantly from the age of two by neurosurgeons and neurologists from far and wide. I've had a segment of my left temporal lobe excised in a failed attempt to remove scarring causative of epilepsy. I think I've read everything there is to read on epilepsy, and I simply do not know how a game can cause it. Certainly, photo-sensitive epilepsy (i.e., the variety of epilepsy in which light can provoke seizures) can be provoked by viewing of a monitor, especially at a lower refresh rate. The same goes for flourescent lighting. But I've never known a photo-sensitive epileptic who could not come up with any solution to the monitor problem. And "the game" isn't provoking the seizure in that case anyway. If that were the case, the mother should be suing her monitor manufacturer, or perhaps just giving herself a whack in the head for letting her unprecedentedly and dubiously photo-sensitive son use a screen of any sort. Sleep deprivation can often increase the frequency of seizures - it was in fact subtly recommended to me by a neurologist when I was once under observation for two weeks, waiting for a seizure to occur so that the neurologists might observe it that sleep deprivation might speed up the process - and MMORPGs can deprive one of sleep, but that doesn't precisely constitute "the game" causing seizures, either, anymore than ill-health due to sleep deprivation constitutes Everquest causing the common cold. Frankly, I think the mother is just looking for pity, here. And she's making specious arguments about her son's serious medical condition in order to further her profit-seeking. You don't have to be any sort of medical professional to conclude that Everquest doesn't "cause", in any precise sense, seizures.
Re:Its the kids fault (Score:3, Informative)
You've never been bullied much, have you? Or faced inescapable injustice?
I agree with the basis of your statement, but not the qualification. People can push others to very desperate acts. Even a very strongly willed individual has their breaking point.
But I do not believe that the case in this article falls into this scope.
Re:Ya! (Score:2, Informative)
plus, Adrenalyn is a naturally produced hormone.
I'll tell you something else that's chemically addictive by your logic: Testosterone. While we're at it, why don't we add the infamous DHMO [dhmo.org] or even worse, Glucose!
Please, people, educate yourselves about drugs before you go spouting off what is a chemical dependency and what isn't. Even a chemical drug isn't necessarily physiologically addictive.
D and D may actually SAVE lives... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, the D & D suicide attacks are specious, and we know it. Lawyers fight for their clients, not for the truth.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/d_a_d.htm [religioustolerance.org]
Michael Stackpole calculated expected suicide rates by gamers during the early years of Dungeons and Dragons. He used B.A.D.D.'s estimate of 4 million gamers worldwide. Assuming that fantasy role game playing had no effect on youth suicide rate, one would have expected about 500 gamers would have committed suicide each year. As of 1987, B.A.D.D. had documented an average of 7 per year. It would appear that playing D & D could be promoted as a public health measure, because it would seem to drastically lower the suicide rate among youth.
Emphasis mine.
A social game means you're dealing with people. Sometimes that means you despair over a bad relationship, but despairing over loneliness is a far greater risk.
Re:Sony should (Score:1, Informative)
Everquest creates a situation that encourages risky behavior. Said behavior is known to cause suicidal depression in healthy adults, and is used for just this purpose in laboratories to test the effectiveness of anti-depressant drugs.
The risk is not documented. It is also unnecessary. Verant could still make their fortune without endangering lives. Instead they have decided that, if you want any one of a number of items, you need to stay up for N days straight. They do not document that this is known to cause suicidal depression.
My full comments are over here. [slashdot.org]