Author: Andrew Rainnie - UK Correspondent

The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s ever colourful tabloid that often likes to stretch the truth to within a hair’s breadth of fiction, decided to bait some video game players and journalists with the bold headline, “Gaming as addictive as heroin.” Written by Sun writer Lee Price, who won his job in a competition entitled “Column Idol,” the article makes some rather haughty claims that video games pose as big a health risk as drug and alcohol abuse, despite zero deaths being directly linked to the former and over 10,000 deaths per year blamed on the latter.

Video game players and journalists have been swift to condemn the article as little more than click-bait. Ironically, the article itself is hidden behind The Sun’s paywall.

Fellow journalists at The Market for Computer & Video Games (MCV) went beyond what started as a “spirited debate” on Twitter with Dan Silver, The Sun’s Deputy Head of Publishing, and found several holes in the story. The first was that Dr. Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University and a contributor to the story, essentially debunked The Sun’s claims, stating it was factually incorrect to suggest that Britain was in “the grip of a gaming epidemic.” The website for the Alchemy Clinic, run by former football agent and gambling addict (not gaming, gambling) turned counsellor Steven Noel-Hill is no longer active, despite The Sun’s claims that the clinic received 5,000 calls for help with video game addiction. A press release from the clinic’s opening two years ago had Noel-Hill listing video games as one of a variety of factors that caused teenagers to grow into adult addicts.

“Many of my clients exhibited problem traits during their adolescence, with events such as expulsion, excessive drug and alcohol use, self-harming and excessive computer gaming characterising their behaviour. Parents and schools are too willing to believe that it is just a phase and they will grow out of it. But many don’t and we are left with young adults who are unable to cope with life. There is nothing inevitable about a self-destructive life pattern. With early recognition and intervention, lives can be transformed.”

Yet despite his own addictions and his work for The Priory Clinic in London, Noel-Hill does not seem to be a qualified medical expert, and does not appear to be on any accredited register in Britain. It has been left to Jo Twist, CEO of the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) to bring some logic and reason to the debate. She told MCV:

“The games industry takes the health and wellbeing of all consumers very seriously and there is currently no official medical diagnosis of video game addiction, either from the American Medical Association or the World Health Organization. Like any other pastime, a common sense approach should be applied and players should take regular breaks of at least five minutes every 45-60 minutes. Stories like these completely ignore all the positive effects of playing games and the fact that millions of people round the world play video games safely and sensibly every day.”

We can only presume The Sun launched the blistering, unprecedented attack on the culture of video games at the behest of its owner, Rupert Murdoch. Perhaps he kept losing at Flappy Bird.