I learned Sunday that one Hawaiian man was suing a South Korean video game developer, NCSoft, because the company made games that were too addictive, and the company “failed to warn him about the addictive nature of MMORPGs.”

Chances are you’ve heard what an MMORPG is but may not know what it means. For those who don’t know it stands for: massively multiplayer online role playing game.

If we took a game like “Pokemon” for the Gameboy and made it so that everyone in the world could play it online with each other, an MMORPG would be something like that.

Being primarily a computer gamer myself, it brings up the theme of addiction to the video game industry, as well as regulation of video games in countries like China.

It’s weird to think about addictions applying to something other than drugs, but it does tend to happen.

You’ve probably heard about a friend of a friend dropping out of college because he played video games instead of studying. Or what about people getting in financial trouble because they were taken over by “World of Warcraft”?

But does this really count as an addiction? There are no chemicals to abuse, and while the American Psychological Association considered adding video game addiction in its next DSM-V — basically a big book that lists any mental disorders — it stopped short of doing so.

So let’s define what an addiction is. Addiction is the “persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful,” according to Merriam Webster online.

Now, probably the worst thing physically that could happen to the person playing video games compulsively is gaining weight, which causes a whole host of other health related problems and probably a deteriorating social life.

Compared to drugs like PCP, which might want to make the user carve his or her own face off as well as creating dependency, it’s probably not that bad.

Or is it?

I read a Yahoo Games article that talked about a university professor who ventured onto “World of Warcraft.” He bought it on Amazon and decided to try it out just to see what the buzz was about.

Eventually he became sucked into this virtual reality to the point he contemplated suicide. He decided to play no more video games and went into withdrawal when he did not play video games.

Or what about the Fox News article on how a South Korean couple let their baby starve to death as they were too busy raising a virtual baby online?

The examples here are a little disturbing, but don’t they follow a similar pattern of what happens when you abuse drugs?

Personally I don’t know anyone who has been addicted to illegal drugs, but we’ve all heard stories about cases where people become addicted to the point where the drug consumes their lives.

So, if people are playing video games and letting it consume them to the point they lose jobs, neglect their children or even death, then shouldn’t applying addiction to video games make sense as well?

I will admit there are people out there that spend countless hours on video games, yet lead normal and happy lives. The key to balancing everything in this little thing called personal responsibility; to know when to stop and what your limits are.

I could also use alcohol as an example. There’s nothing wrong with having a few drinks once in awhile with friends to kick back and relax, but there are people who abuse alcohol to escape from their troubles.

Too much of anything can be a bad thing, and too many video games can also be a bad thing if it starts to interfere with your daily life.

So, before you buy that “Farmville” coin pack — and apparently people do buy them, according to iTunes — stop and think for a moment if it’s worth it and take a minute to see if your obsession is starting to consume a little bit of you. If you think it is, you might want to stop.