If you achieve a world first in an MMO, that achievement is as real as winning a sports championship. Even if you don't do something with a competitive component, some gaming achievements are as real and can be meaningful to the individual as something like climbing a mountain that everyone has climbed before. I don't agree that it is any way helpful to just characterize games as some kind of fake activity that requires special attention. Other nerd-like activities would be anime watching and book reading. I would argue both of those have examples of extreme addiction.
The diagnosis criteria makes clear that the problem is when you start sacrificing normal life functions to get your fix. Lots of marriages have fallen apart while one partner was out playing golf. It doesn't matter how much time you spend on something, what separates a disorder from a hobby is when you are letting other responsibilities suffer.
Being world No 1 in an MMO may be a real achievement, but for the millions of mediocre players, being a mediocre but persistent sportsman is likely to lead to far greater life outcomes as side effects. (And, again, physical limits stop the temptation becoming all consuming.)
I feel like there's not much that would separate a gaming disorder from addictive behavior in general. So much so, actually, that to grant a special term for a video game related illness comes off as a little ridiculous.
Doesn't seem like "addiction" alone communicates what's happening there.
Credentials in most systems are useless outside of those systems (and even within them in certain cases). Some can be used to gain employment or other things but even those can be abstract and "virtual" in a sense.
As another poster (always_good) observes, there is a huge observable difference between video game addicts and substance abusers. I would not expect nerds to be substance abusers, and I would not expect substance abusers to be video game addicts, but everything about video games, in their construction of alternative realities and virtual goals and online communities, is like a glove tailored to the hand of nerd-dom.
You callin me a nerd, Tycho?
So, broadly, I can agree that a tendency towards escapism is what would make someone develop a "gaming disorder". And perhaps video games are the pinnacle of what our culture can offer as the richest form of escapism.
But I still don't think that's enough to draw a categorical line between the vices through which escapist tendencies become pathologized. It seems to me the solution to the mentation of escapism is to reinforce what you appeal to as "anti-nerdiness": pursuing meaning in a world you can (and do) fully occupy with the senses. And I agree there too.
Noting the bit at the end of the article about how terribly few people manifest a "gaming disorder" is what I'm not pleased to hear. Calling it a "gaming" disorder makes it seem like if you get rid of games, you've solved the problem. But obviously that's not necessarily the case, and so I think it's a useless distinction which potentially obscures the real issue.
If the WHO is making an indictment against the entertainment industry to formally warn against the ethical risks of making games which exploit escapist tendencies, that's fine. But I don't think there's actually much of a problem here that couldn't already be meaningfully identified as an addictive tendency.
In terms of marketing and supporting affected gamers, sure. But from a medical perspective, it's as arbitrary as classifying behaviors on Monday as somehow being qualitatively different from behaviors on Tuesday.
Showing how this parallels the exact same dopamine addiction patterns as gambling, porn, and social media provides greater insight and understanding.
The addiction research (especially with gambling) is more developed and provides much needed context and background.
People are going to think oh, it's just video games, no big deal. When they understand they are behaving exactly the same as a gambler, that might trigger something in them.
From a chemical / psychology perspective the brain operates the same no matter the domain.