Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Lancashire therapist Steve Pope is once again making his claim that two hours of gaming is the same as a line of cocaine. A statement he first made in May last year, winning him media attention from the unquestioning writers in his local press, and then the wider press. A statement we investigated, and for which we found he was unable or unwilling to show us any evidence. As MCV reports, on BBC Radio 5 Live yesterday afternoon, Pope was once again comparing gaming’s apples to addiction’s oranges, making unevidenced statements about how videogaming produces a cocaine-like “high” in the brain, and without an example – astonishingly – calling gaming “the silent killer of our generation.” So to celebrate his reappearance, after some more on his latest, I’m republishing our previous investigation below.

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An absolutely remarkable claim has been made by a UK therapist, Steve Pope, that playing videogames for two hours is the equivalent of doing a line of coke. I attempted to speak to him over the last 24 hours with little success, the results below. Edit: Mr. Pope has since texted me a statement, which I will add below.

It’s from an article in the Lancaster Evening Post that really hits every clanging bell. Games are like drugs, games are addictive, games lead to bad behaviour, and of course, games lead to violence. Claims that are made, as is so often the case, without links to any form of evidence. But is this an example of a gaming website getting angry when someone says something bad about games? Nope, the reaction does not come from that place. It comes from one of having done a lot of research into the subject, and a desire for evidence-based science and reporting to be conducted in the realm of gaming. Because, as we’ve said a number of times, if games are bad for us then we would want to know. So let’s look at how this is written, and ask why.

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