It's no secret that millions of online gamers get too involved with their business. Normally, uninformed people would look at these time-consuming games as evil and even blame them for their problems. Philadelphia's 6-ABC had something about MMORPGs on the news, but it was pretty fair.

The feature was about Greg Straff, a WoW player that spends much time with grinding and raids like other regular players. His mom Lori Straff, who now regulates his playing time, said "it's really not healthy just to focus on this computer game and not socialize with your friends and on your schoolwork."

Another mother, Elizabeth Woolley, believes that EverQuest caused her son to commit suicide. After skipping his ADD and epilepsy pills, quitting his job, and cutting off his phone along with any communications with friends and family, Shawn was found dead with a rifle in front of his computer with EverQuest on it.

Woolley thinks that companies are using gaming as drugs to get customers addicted for their own money. She created Online Gamers Anonymous to help gamers who get addicted to MMORPGs and "save" them. There, they share their experiences and help each other.

While psychologist Kristen Dudley believes that online games can draw you in to a life of isolation, she's skeptic about those games causing someone to commit suicide. "Millions of people play these games every day and they don't have a problem, but some are missing that connection with real life," said Dudley.

According to Dudley, games are just catalysts like drugs, alcohol or gambling. Those who get obsessed had problems with depression or anxiety before and they just put it out on video games. She advises parents to limit the playing time of their children and time spent on the TV.

Now, how long will it take before Jack Thompson or other lawyers come up on TV and say violent games taught Shawn how to use a rifle?

Okay, so maybe this piece find you a little too early, but what the heck. We're going to be celebrating Christmas dinner and ripping up presents in a few hours or minutes (depending on what part of the globe you're in), with a fresh new year waiting for us in six to seven days. You know what that means, people...consider this a bit of quiet time for some of the older among us.

It's been a crazy year for a lot of us, and we're not even getting to the part of the console launches. For one, we've been looking at congress attempt to wangle new (and queer) legislation, like the ill-fated "Truth in Video Game Ratings Act" from way back. Good thing that never took off. Then there's the ESRB...which has enough coverage that we won't be mentioning 'em any more.

Moving on to the more stranger side of the year, there's our all-time favorite lawyer, Phoenix Wright Jack Thompson. We're at a loss of how to describe him. On one hand, he's been dissing off anything that is Rockstar, be it the GTA franchise or Bully. On the other hand, though, we found ourselves agreeing ever-so-slightly to some of his points, along with the other surveys that say violent gaming might spur violent behavior (Key word: might).

How is this so? It shows in our language, and most prominently, in the way we've balked at Thompson's statements in the blogs - by way of flaming. "Violence begets violence," as the old saying goes, and maybe the more intolerant we are of his statements, the more fired up his kind gets. With over six billion people (correct me if I'm wrong) on earth, you can't expect everybody to agree with you.

Well, now that we've gotten some of this bad karma off our chest, let's look at the brighter side of things, after this jump