Imagine sitting in a 9:30 a.m. class and watching the professor write on the board. Thoughts begin drifting away from lecture, and thoughts about shooting guns at aliens, attacking goblins with swords, and preparing vehicles for combat take over. Back in the dorm room, logging onto the Internet and playing a massive multi-player online game takes immediate precedence over studying, spending time with roommates, and writing papers.

Some might not consider this behavior to be an addiction, but in June, a council of leading American doctors did.

On Wednesday, June 27, the American Medical Association turned down a request to make video game addiction a formal psychiatric disorder. Declaring it a formal disorder would have opened up millions in insurance money for those afflicted and created awareness for the topic.

Reactions to the impending AMA decision were mixed, with writers from popular gaming Web site Gamestop and video game bloggers weighing in on the issue. While many were glad with the association’s decision to not label their hobby an addiction, others were not as enthusiastic.

Scott Waldyn, a junior English major at Western Illinois University and long-time video gamer, said that he doesn’t see much of a difference between obsessive playing of video games and gambling or alcoholism.

“Video games are just the legal pitfalls youths can step into, if not regulated and controlled by strong willpower,” he said. “People can be sucked into downward spirals due to obsessions with these activities. It’s not that they are necessarily bad, but there is such an idea as too much of a good thing.”

Waldyn cited his own video game use as a risk to his social life, grades, and extracurricular activities in grade school and in high school. In college, though, he said that he was forced to keep his video game habit under control due to lack of time. He also said that he acknowledges that he has it much better than some of his peers, who still play six hours of video games a day.

The AMA cited lack of scientific evidence as the primary reason for its decision. The association did say, however, that it would continue researching the subject. According to a report released during the hearings, 90 percent of American adolescents and youths are exposed to video games, with 15 percent being “at risk” for developing a psychiatric addiction, pending a future decision.

“Concern over people becoming over-involved with video games is nothing new,” NIU said assistant sociology professor Adam King, who did not say whether or not he agreed or disagreed with the AMA decision. “[This discussion] stretches all the way back to the first video games in the 1970s and 1980s, with people [saying] that their friends were overindulging with Pong or Pac-Man or Spacewar.”

The American Psychiatric Association, which publishes a psychiatric diagnostics manual, considers an addiction something that will cause feelings of withdrawal in a person if they are without it, such as a substance or a behavior such as gambling. In the AMA decision regarding labeling video game addiction as a formal psychiatric disorder, it adopted an official statement regarding the issue that said video and online games can be a “problem for children and adults, [but] calling it a formal addiction would be premature.”

“Scientists have to be careful how they use words,” King said. “If they expand the definition of ‘addiction’ to include any seemingly negative habit or behavior, then ‘addiction’ will be a word that is too vague and too subjective to be of any use for the development of diagnoses, treatments, and public policy.

“Perhaps chronic video game overindulgence is an addiction, I don’t know. But I do believe that the AMA is doing the right thing in being careful in how they label things, rather than overreacting to the hype of the current moment in time.”