Interesting comic, and I think it applies to many other MMORPGs as well. And I've seen how it can take over an Aspie's life; it took over mine for a long time and it still controls my ex-friend. It's sad, for a long time my ex-friend commented on how he felt that ingame life felt better than real life, how he felt more accepted in the online world. One time he took a two-month break from the game because he "wanted to do things more with people," but for whatever reason he came back to the game. I guessed that he missed real life interaction, but once again felt rejected or put off by it, that he retreated back to the virtual world. He's still hooked, and I think that it's sad. His social skills with people face-to-face are utter s**t, and those skills won't get any better without practice... online interactions are one form of interacting, but they certainly don't replace real life interaction. It'll be unfortunate to see in a few years or so when the servers for the game close, or the community that he interacts with breaks up, because he'll be left with nothing to show for all that time he spent. He'll be a level 75 ingame, but when he gets back to the real world, he'll only be level 3 in real life knowledge and experience when he could have been level 35, so to speak. A lot of lost time that could have been spent making real life more fulfilling, rather than trying to be a superstar in a transitory, artificial world.
I honestly hope one day that he will wake up, but I have the feeling that when the game ends, he'll go through some serious problems readjusting to real life... not sure if he will be able to do that at all. And the fact that his primary interest is video games makes leaving a video game-based life all that much harder.
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Won't you help a poor little puppy?