Video Games: Special Interest or addiction?

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I've played video games before but I never got hooked on them but to the Aspies who are and play them for hours on end, how do you know it's a Special Interest and not an addiction?

Many NT kids are hooked on video games but it's not a Special Interest for them. They're not Aspies. They're just addicted.

How do you differentiate it as a Special Interest as apposed to video game addiction?

Gaming is one of the most engaging ways to entertain yourself. I think It can be both your special interest and addiction. The problem is that It's hard to make an actual use of your passion, ofcourse you can become a video game reviewer but It's still a different experience than playing the game for enjoyment. Actually It's become quite a problem in modern age.

If the focus is on playing the games rather than learning everything about about them even if one never played any at all, then I wouldn't think it were a special interest.

It's both.... and as an aspie I took video games to the next level... made art... wrote fan fiction... I was crazy enough that I used to write informal guides to some video games... I was crazy enough to write one general and two in-depth guides to Sonic 2006 and that was a pretty bad game...

Me too I started when I was elementary school and went on to freshmen year when an over zealous teacher saw one of my comic strips and deemed it too graphic thus I got detention (so much for the freedom of expression).

I think it becomes an addiction when one focuses so much on the game that real life starts to suffer (lack of sleep not eating/going to the bathroom and/or missing school/work)

Yeah, I think I've got it now! I posted my question around 4am this morning and went to bed and thought some more about it and figured the difference would be something like - if you did art work, learned all about it, wrote about it, thought about it all the time, talked about it non stop - all the ways other Special Interests manifest themselves in us, then that would be different from someone who was just addicted to playing them.

Thank you all! Happy gaming!

Gaming? Of course, but not an addiction, I just think it's more of an escape from the chaos of the world. I mod games, probably better than I can play them.