Father Hires Gamers to Virtually Kill His Son

How would you solve your son's addiction to video games? This father in China hired some professional gamers to find his son on online games and kill his avatar. To him the situation was unacceptable, his 23 years old son was unemployed and spent all day in front of the screen, in a virtual reality world.

The son ended up asking one of the gamers why they kept targeting him. Olivia Grace is a World of Warcraft expert, she said she did not think Mr Feng's actions would necessarily act as a disincentive. "Being killed by someone happens all the time" she said."People are just like that online".

Gaming addiction is a very common issue in China and governments are starting many programs to stop this kind of disorder. Nevertheless the problem doesn't seem to get better and online gaming is exponentially growing among kids and teenagers. Many Chinese parents are struggling with it, out of China’s 330 million online gamers, 150 million are younger than 19 years old. In some cases, they experience addiction problems that cannot be so easily diagnosed by specialists. The most typical symptoms by addicted gamers are attention deficits, academic problems and hyperactivity disorders.

"It's not going to do much for family relations" Prof Mark Griffiths, gambling and addictions expert at Nottingham Trent University, told to BBC. "I've never heard of that kind of intervention before, but I don't think these top-down approaches work. Most excessive game playing is usually a symptom of an underlying problem".

Source: BBC. Image: Shutterstock