HBO's documentary film about game addiction in South Korea will premiere tonight at 9:00 PM ET. The film, "Love Child," tells the story of two South Korean parents who were so addicted to the Korean MMO Prius that they neglected their three-month-old child to the point that he died. They were later charged by police.

HBO sent out another reminder to the media that its documentary film about game addiction in South Korea will premiere on Monday, July 28 at 9:00 PM. The film, "Love Child," tells the story of two South Korean parents who were so addicted to the Korean MMO Prius that they neglected their three month old child to the point that he died. They were later charged by police.

HBO will premiere the documentary "Love Child" on Monday, July 28 at 9:00 PM. The film tells the story of two South Korean parents who were so addicted to the Korean MMO Prius that they neglected their three month old child to the point that he died. They were later charged by police.

Flappy Birds will be coming back, and when it does it will be a multiplayer game, according to the CNBC program Closing Bell. Host Kelly Evans confirmed on Twitter that the game will release in August. When it is re-released it will offer a multiplayer component and "less addictive" gameplay. The last point is important to creator Dong Nguyen, who took his game offline because it ruined his simple life and because he felt it was too addictive.

Last week we asked our readers, "Should the Mental Health Community Officially Recognize "Video Game Addiction?." The majority of you said that all behavioral addictions should be lumped together, with a close second going to "no."

Researchers at the University of Adelaide (Australia) are shedding light on the unique problems of supposed "gaming addiction," saying that there is "strong evidence" to suggest that new treatments should be developed for these conditions. One of the biggest problems researchers face is that both Internet and gaming addictions are not recognized globally by mental health professionals as "real addictions." Gambling and sex addictions, for example, are recognized and treatable conditions.

While Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen may have pulled his popular iOS and Android app from both stores because it was "too addictive" (despite making a lot of money off the free game), at the time he said that he would continuing developing and releasing games.

Dong Nguyen, the 29-year-old Veitnamese indie creator of the popular mobile game Flappy Bird, said that he removed the game from both Google Play for Android and iTunes for iOS devices because he was deeply concerned that the game was too addictive. There has been plenty of speculation that Nguyen pulled the game because of legal threats from Nintendo (for using art similar to art found in the Super Mario Bros. series of games) or because he couldn't handle the pressure, but it turns out that - he claims at least - he had a lot of concerns about people playing his game too much.

A documentary about the ill effects of online game addiction in South Korea made its debut this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival. According to the festival's official website (as reported on by GameSpot), the documentary explores South Korea's online gaming culture as it follows the story of a couple whose three-month-old daughter died of malnutrition while they were allegedly playing the massively multiplayer online game, Prius Online.

I'm not sure if this Telegraph article on game addiction is supposed to be some kind of Onion-esque comedy bit, but it sure reads like one. In it the author offers five tips for beating your game addiction.

Putting aside that fact that game addiction (and Internet addiction for that matter) is not a real recognized addiction like gambling is by mental health professionals around the world, the article offers such wonderful tips as:

1) Time Yourself.

New research from the University of Missouri suggests that massively multiplayer online games can serve as a source for what is commonly referred to as "problematic video gaming." While gaming addiction is not a recognized addiction by the global mental health professional community, that hasn't stopped researchers and some mental health professionals from trying to identify and treat it.

When Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate came out a few months ago, I played it like a man obsessed!  The minute I came home from work I would fire up the game and play it for hours on end.  There was no time to eat, I dutifully sat in front of my TV and hunted monsters until I had to go to bed.  The next day I would do it all again.

A recent episode of Katie Couric's syndicated talk show offers a pretty one-sided look at video game addiction, asking the question in the title: "Are Video Games to Blame for Violent Crimes?" Couric does mention that she asked the Entertainment Software Association to participate in the show or comment on its contents, but they did not respond to the request...

Dr. Daniel King, from the University of Adelaide's (Adelaide, South Australia) psychology department says that the definition of video game addiction has yet to be defined because of the model that most researchers have used - namely borrowing from the framework of gambling addiction. He believes that treatments of the addiction to games could be improved if a "standard definition of video game addiction was adopted."

Michael Langlois, a licensed Psychotherapist, speaker, defender of video games, and author of the book "Reset: Video Games & Psychotherapy," will be hosting an interesting one-man panel at PAX East called "Rethinking Game Addiction."

Ultimately the discussion is meant to challenge the mainstream thinking on game addiction and to explore the mental health benefits of playing video games - even violent ones. From the description at the Pax East web site:

According to a report from Xinhuanet (as reported on by Shanghaiist), the Chinese government is developing its own set of criteria for early diagnosis of online game addiction in young people. Chinese authorities announced plans on Sunday to develop "China-specific criteria" for diagnosing and treating online gaming addiction in minors.

Big Fish Games has launched the first real-money gambling game in the United Kingdom through a partnership with Betable. The Big Fish Casino U.K. app lets players gamble for fun or make best with real cash via a new slot machine title. The game uses technology from Betable, a company hoping to take advantage of even more social mobile games in the future by enabling online gambling options.

CBS Cleveland News is reporting that 15-year-old Tyler Rigby has been hospitalized after a 4-day gaming marathon left him severely dehydrated.  Reportedly, the Columbus teen locked himself in his room to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  According to his mother, he emerged for the occasional potty and snack break.

States across the Union are passing or debating laws that will make online gambling legal, either for their entire state, or – as is the case being discussed in New Jersey, presently – just in certain cities/areas. These legislative changes may represent a shifting in the ideals of voters, but the impetus is most certainly tax revenue and perceived job creation.

Twenty-one-year-old Aymen Korbi of Wallington, England, was convicted in Croydon Crown Court on Tuesday for stabbing his wife. The charges stem from a November 2011 domestic dispute which ended with Korbi stabbing his 21-year-old wife Aida in the back with a shard of glass from a broken mirror. During the trial she told the court that she had packed a bag and intended to leave with their 18-month-old daughter, but Korbi attacked her before she could leave the residence. She said he broke her cell phone, smashed a bedroom mirror and attacked her with a shard of glass.

Birmingham resident Twana Bond-Jones has written a play called "Game Over" that deals with gaming and how it interferes with relationships. The first run of the play will take place April 21 at the Carver Theatre ( 1631 Fourth Ave. North) in Birmingham, Alabama at 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm. Tickets cost $22 and are available at the box office and online.

A new study from Charité University Medicine in Berlin has made a connection between the time a person spends playing a game with enlarged reward centers in the brain. The study published in Translational Psychiatry conducted test on casual (less frequent) and hardcore (frequent) players, and came to the conclusion that hardcore players had larger reward centers within the left ventral striatum than those who played games less frequently. Researchers also noted that even when players failed in a game, they still experienced stimulation.

Amazon has a product page up for the hardcover edition of Ryan G. Van Cleave's newest book on game addiction, "You Know You're a Video Game Addict If..." You may remember Van Cleave from his first book, "Unplugged: My Journey into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction," which detailed has extreme addiction to World of Warcraft. It's a cautionary tale, for sure.

A sad story from Sky News (by way of The Escapist) details how the dead body of a man in a New Taipei city, China cyber cafe went unnoticed for a full nine hours. The man, who was playing an undisclosed online game, died on Tuesday night according to local reports. The cyber cafe had 30 customers that night, some of which sat next to him, and didn't notice that he was no longer alive.

According to a new study conducted by the Institute for Special Populations Research in New York, some types of games are more addictive than others and have the potential to create "problem gaming" habits in a small percentage of gamers. While the mental health community is not quite ready to make the leap of faith it takes to proclaim that video game addiction is a real mental disorder like gambling and drug addiction, studies like this one are certainly trying to establish causation.

Psychiatrist Philip Tam believes internet addiction should be classified as a disorder. The Sydney, Australia based psychiatrist and some Australian parents think that internet addiction and online game addiction need to be officially classified as addictions so that children can be treated for the so-called disorders.

Researchers at the Charité University Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Berlin, Germany, found that gamers who play "frequently" have greater left striatal gray matter volume compared with those that are considered to be moderate gamers. Researchers say that these findings show the importance of "striatal volume and activity in shaping preference of skills for video gaming."

Young men love Angry Birds and they are willing to lay out the cash to get the full experience - according to a new survey from Ask Your Target Market, a "do-it-yourself" online market research firm. According to the results, men between the age of 18 and 24 are most likely to pay for the full version of Angry Birds. Age aside, men are 35 percent more likely to pay for the game after downloading the free version and 76 percent more likely to buy the game than a female over the age of 25.

A Carlisle, Pennsylvania, lawyer blamed his addiction to video games for sloppy legal work that inevitably resulted in a three-year suspension of his ability to practice law in the state. 43-year-old attorney Mathew Eshelman claimed that he immersed himself in video games to fight job stress and problems at home.

Divorce Online, a website dedicated to getting rid of that dead weight in your marriage, claims that 15 percent of the divorces it has handled can be attributed to spouses that are addicted to online games such as world of Warcraft and Call of Duty.

According to a press release issued by Divorce Online, an examination of 200 unreasonable behavior petitions filed by women using its service between January - April of this year found that 15 percent complained that their husbands were happier playing video games than they were paying attention to them. They called their "gaming addiction" an unreasonable behavior that lead to the divorce they were seeking.

The release also offers comments from one disgruntled 21-year-old wife from London named Jessica Ellis, 24, who married husband Michael in 2008.