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Compulsive computer gaming

Broadcast Date: Nov. 13, 1990

The Nintendo Entertainment System is easily the world's most popular toy in 1990, and players all over the world are engrossed in the fun and exciting games it offers. Maybe too engrossed, in fact. Concerned parents and doctors find the games foster compulsive behaviour, or even total addiction. CBC-TV's Marketplace talks to fascinated kids and frustrated parents about this growing obsession.

Compulsive computer gaming

• Video game addiction is cited as the cause of seizures, psychotic episodes and deaths typically brought on by sleep deprivation and malnutrition. The problem is especially noticeable in Asia, where some gamers have died after lengthy playing binges. In March 2007, a 26-year-old Chinese man collapsed and died after playing computer games for 15 days straight.

• The Nintendo company got its start in 1889 when Fuasiro Yamauchi began manufacturing hanufada (Japanese playing cards) in Kyoto. The company was officially created as Marufuku Ltd., in 1947 and rechristened Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd. in 1951. It began manufacturing home video game systems in 1977. The Nintendo Entertainment System hit the market in 1985.

• The name "Nintendo" is a combination of two Japanese words: ninten (leave luck to the heavens) and do (company).

Compulsive computer gaming

Medium: Television

Program: Marketplace

Broadcast Date: Nov. 13, 1990

Guest(s): Claude Braun, Dr. Jeffrey Derevensky, Susan Hermolin, Peter MacDougall, Seymour Papert

Reporter: Norma Kent

Duration: 11:30

Last updated:
Dec. 12, 2008