A lot of parents, relatives, friends and SO’s throughout the industrialized world are struggling with this right now on multiple levels re dealing with people utterly absorbed in MMPs yet I have not heard a peep about a film like this being made.
Hollywood seems to think that video games are all super sexy and several movies have been made with games as the central focus, yet no one has explored the IRL dark side of addiction to these time and life absorbing worlds.
Why not?
Because watching two hours of that would be boring as shit? 
I thought ALL movies and TV shows that referred to WOW players got into how they are massive losers, living in their moms’ basements, and generally incapable of normal human interaction*. There’s probably a TV Trope entry, but I have better things to do today than get lost in THAT dungeon.
Make Love, Not Warcraft, of course!
There’s a couple of real ones, e.g. this one.
Then there’s that maybe unofficial TVTrope that all gamers live in their parent’s basement, despite being a majority of the population. Even your grandma plays Angry Birds.
Yeah, while there can be interesting movies made about addiction, these usually involve things like alcoholism, illegal drugs, or gambling that require the addict to go around to different places and meet colorful people, possibly winding up in dangerous situations. But watching someone play video games, where the characters, locations, and danger are all imaginary even within the narrative world of the film? Not very exciting. A (non-documentary) movie like that presumably couldn’t even be about a real game, as I can’t imagine the game companies would be in a hurry to license their trademarks for use in a movie about video games destroying people’s lives.
I’m also struggling to think who, aside from the Maude Flanders types of the world, would even want to watch a movie about how video games destroy lives. I expect that a pretty large percentage of regular filmgoers also play video games of some sort, and consider them harmless entertainment.
You don’t have to make the main character the addict. There have been some movies and shows made where the damaged person (whether they be an addict, murder, whatever) is a secondary character, or even a plot device whose sole purpose is to give the primary characters a purpose and a motive.
Hundreds of millions (billions, maybe?) of copies of these games have been sold and played. We don’t seem to have that many people going down the dark path to trolldom. Most of the people who seem to have gone that way had plenty of other reasons to do so, and those other reasons make for much better stories (“I became a teenage axe murderer because I was traumatized as a child by watching a farmer cut a chicken’s head off” works better than “I finally got my dual-wielding rogue to level 90 and have become the Wood Chipper of Death, and now I shall take axes to school and show people how it works”).
However, see The Guild.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been movies where the protagonist has a loser brother or something who’s a video game addict.
I just checked TVTropes and there are a few tropes relating to video game addiction. “Just One More Level” has several television examples, although only one from a movie. “Murder Simulators” covers stories where someone’s obsession with a violent video game leads to real-life violence, although again there are more TV than film examples. “The Most Dangerous Video Game” covers video games that are themselves dangerous to the player, usually in some supernatural or implausible sci-fi manner. There’s also the broader trope “New Media Are Evil”.
That last one includes some examples of '90s movies about the dangers of the Internet. It’s my recollection that none of these were huge successes, that they were often considered laughably inaccurate even at a time when fewer people used the Internet as part of their daily lives, and that some depicted technology that was already outdated by the time they were released. They also struggled with the problem of how to make scenes of people using computers seem interesting. We could probably expect more of the same if Hollywood decided to make video game addiction movies.
It’s pre-videogames, but Mazes and Monsters is the Reefer Madness of D&D.
Yeah, DH has been playing MMPORGs since Everquest back in ~2000. We’ve seen a couple of marriages whose ends were aided and abetted by these games, but they had massive other problems. The vast majority of people we know who play may have it as their main hobby, but it isn’t destroying their lives. I just don’t buy the accusation that they’re dysfunctional and life-absorbing across the board.
That’s the first thing I thought of.
But that’s true of addictions in general. Most people who ruin their lives with addiction – whether MMO or alcohol or whatnot – come to it from other issues. So saying that people who are addicted to MMOs don’t make good subjects is begging the question because movies and other works about other types of addiction certainly do sell.
I, for one, know up close and personal how a wife being addicted to an MMO can destroy a marriage. It’s why I live on my own know – with my children – instead of the woman I first started dating at 19 and was in a relationship with for 27 years.
I’ve heard the same kind of thing about Internet pornography. Anyone who would spend every waking moment doing ANYTHING, no matter what it is, has serious problems.
The A&E series “Intervention” has had a couple of video game and pornography addicts on, although with one exception they also had massive substance abuse issues.
BTW, for me, interest in these games would be a deal-breaker for me in a dating relationship. It does seem that a huge percentage of the people who play them, especially men, are hopelessly addicted.
I know a woman who realized that “Farmville” was becoming a problem when she cancelled plans with one of her children because she had to feed her crops. She realized that no, she didn’t, so she walked away from the game and let her farm die.
Earlier today, I went to a local casino because I had a coupon for $5 of free plays. What the heck, KWIM? Anyway, I did win $4 but it just wasn’t worth it and drove home why I find gambling less exciting than watching paint dry.
In case someone wants some reading…
Me too.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned The Guild yet. It’s an online TV show starring Felicia Day about an MMORPG guild, and though they never mention what the game is, it’s pretty clearly a stand-in for World of Warcraft. A lot of real-life hijinx involving dysfunctional people, despite the title focus being the game.
That’s still boring, though. Instead of an addict stealing shit, bringing unsavory people around, fistfights, etc., you just get an annoyed spouse/parent bitching about the gamer being in front of a computer screen all day.
In fact, when the series opens, the lead character has been “fired” by her psychiatrist because she can’t quite gaming. She has attempted to cut back on her hours, but she finds she can’t, what’s more, she seriously does not want to leave her house. So, very much an addicted person, however, the show is not really about quitting gaming or gaming addiction.
And IMO, the show undercuts the argument people are making in this thread about how watching addicted gamers is not entertaining - The Guild is genuinely funny. I don’t think entertainment value is inherent in any specific subject matter - it’s all about how it’s written and presented.