PUBG Is Being Blamed For A Jammu Man's Alleged Gaming Addiction That Put Him In Hospital

Gaming is fun for those that choose to indulge. But like any other pastime, too much of it even when inappropriate can be damaging. And if there's one game capable of doing that recently, it would be PUBG. After all, everyone and their kid sister are playing the game.

According to a UNI report, there's actually recently been a case of full-blown gaming addiction in India, thanks to PUBG Mobile. It talks about a fitness trainer in Jammu who reportedly began self-harming thanks to the game, and ended up in the hospital. Supposedly this is the sixth such case in Jammu.

The report indicates the fitness trainer became addicted to the game over ten days of playing. Then one day, after finishing up a round, he reportedly began hitting himself fairly hard, and ended up injured badly enough he had to be taken to the hospital.

"The patient is unstable at the moment and has partially lost his mental balance," a doctor treating him stated. Apparently, though the patient was able to recognise people around him, he was supposedly still only semi-conscious and "completely under the influence" of the game.

It seems locals think this is enough of a problem to appeal to the J&K governor to ban these kinds of "life-threatening" games.

Frankly though, we remain a little sceptical. Let's set aside the whole debate surrounding gaming addiction, because the science of it is still unclear. Though the WHO has placed it on the list of addictions alongside others like gambling, other experts have voiced dissent concerning the research methods involved for that. In either case though, we're not going to debate whether it's gaming addiction or not, and the very short time frame that the person was supposedly playing it for. Instead, we're going to look at the description of events that happened.

Every gamer hates to lose, though it will be to varying degrees. The ones able to exercise restraint will be able to deny the I need just one win" and walk away from a game even in the middle of a losing streak. Then again, the other extreme is the gamer that rages. There are unfortunately far too many of these. They can't take a loss, whether it's to another player or even a computer-controlled opponent. Do a quick YouTube search and there's an avalanche of video documentation of this. In this case, is when the gamers in question tend to get violent; they punch walls, smash computers, even smack themselves. This is astonishingly even something that happens fairly often on Twitch, which viewers dedicatedly tune into to sate their schadenfreude.

So as it stands, it seems more like this incident in Jammu is about a gamer who couldn't control himself when he lost, rather than just an addiction.

Which brings us to the next part of this discussion; stop trying to ban PUBG, or other games for that matter. You focus on the addict and get them help. And it's not a mind control system either so a patient wouldn't still be "under the influence" of a game. Trying to ban every other game is a flawed attempt at attacking the problem at the source. It's not an innately harmful activity like many other addictions, only when carried out without moderation.