Other incidences have been found in longtime gamers, without any family history of the disease, for whom too much sitting was most likely causing premature DVT. Sitting isn't unique to gaming in this day and age, and some of the people surveyed worked desk jobs, but this example stands out as a reason to seriously examine the health of the player.

And the programmer, for that matter. These issues shouldn't be taken with a grain of salt. If gaming is impacting health in negative ways, then shouldn't notions of what constitutes "good game design" change with it?

But conducting balanced research on game issues is like trying to swim up Niagara Falls. So far, too many have taken the approach of blaming someone -- rather than trying to understand why some players can't control themselves. Make no mistake, there's a feud a'goin on.

There are people who want to dismantle the gaming industry, without giving games a second thought. It's called misoneism -- an unquantifiable yet undeniable fear of the new. We humans are built to protect the hive against something foreign. When games don't get an unconditional clean bill of health, and especially when presidential candidates blast video games as dangerous, the collective is in danger of turning into a wolf pack.

The people pelting games tend to misinterpret what a game is, because they're distanced from its structure yet close to the problems games are perceived to create. A lot of people hate Liz Wooley, a woman who has crusaded against the games industry because her son committed suicide while playing EverQuest. Outright hatred of somebody in her position seems amiss. Nobody has to like emotional and anecdotal approaches to the problem, especially when backed up by emotional and anecdotal evidence.

The mob responds readily to these stimuli. Most people out there aren't developers, gamers or researchers. They aren't interested in grasping a game's richness, but they can imagine being in Wooley's shoes. If regular people don't dismiss such critics, the industry can't afford to either.

"Never argue with such individuals, but feel confident to debate in public forum with them," wrote Gygax. "The weight of medical evidence and scientific fact are the best ammunition to use."

That's good advice, but whose evidence are we going to use? Most of the books on gaming issues are punctuated by doom and gloom, and at least two more such books are forthcoming this year. Even great scholars are strong-armed by popular medical journals to use the phrase "Internet Addiction" (IA) when referring to heavy game use. This is despite serious and ongoing concerns over many different elements of IA's validity.

The researchers themselves too often seem distanced from any real understanding of gaming, creating data that serves to label gamers, misrepresent games and further mislead the public. Worst of all, some gamers clearly have problems. Until we explore this topic cogently, we're not in a position to help them.

We can't say with any measure of certainty whether the games are at fault, which makes the emotional attacks all the more frustrating. The critics of gaming often have few qualms about leaning on adrift research, which leaves the industry in an awkward position.

Meanwhile, the issues raised by excessive gaming appear very real in the eyes of the South Korean, Chinese and Singaporean governments, whether or not the analysts at the helm have an adequate understanding of gaming. Korea currently treats "Internet Addiction" (again, games inclusive) as one of its chief public health concerns. South Korea has poured money into the research, and as a result they've gone past the pigeonholed Western gauges for IA.

The government then used that gauge of IA, which was renamed the K-Scale, in order to assess what it sees as a pandemic. Whether or not these governments see the legitimacy in gaming, the primary concern is public health. And that's sensible. Good health is part of good entertainment. The two compliment each other.

Just as too many governments, researchers and regular folks seem distanced from games, developers seem to sometimes distance themselves from a game's potential for causing problems.