I get it. You decide to play some online games, get so hooked that not a minute goes by that you don’t feel the itch to play, feel suicidal when you cannot, and then sue the gaming company for turning you into a nut case.
Erik Estavillo of San Jose, California is suing World of Warcraft’s maker Activision Blizzard for a million dollars for “deceitful business practices.”
He claims that the wildly popular multiplayer online game—described by critics as “a careful blend of cartoon, fantasy art, and realism”—maintains a “harmful virtual environment” which led to his physical and mental decline.
Estavillo is irked that it takes forever for players to move from one place to another within the WOW setting. The slow pace with which players can walk or run prolongs the game and enables the company to rake in more subscription revenues, he whines. The game’s resurrection process is also another obvious ploy for the company to make money, says Estavillo. Picture this: In order to be brought back to life, players travel in spirit from cemeteries to the spot where they died, causing them more aggravation. And for all their troubles, hapless players have to pay a monthly access fee of $14.99!
Estavillo, who claims he suffers from depression, agoraphobia, OCD and Crohn’s Disease, fears his obsession with WOW and his annoyance at all the factors that hamper his enjoyment of the game might cause him to take his own life.
The WOW fanatic claims in the lawsuit that he does not want to end up like the EverQuest gamer, Shawn Woolley, who felt so alienated from the rest of the world after getting hooked on the game that he killed himself in 2001.
Adding a bizarre twist to this already bizarre story is that the obsessed gamer has requested the court to—hold your breath—subpoena actress Winona Ryder and songwriter Martin Lee Gore of Depeche Mode. He wants them to testify not because the two are also WOW addicts but because he believes they can shed light on the topic of alienation which the two are supposedly experts on. His evidence: Like him, Ryder is also a fan of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye while Lee Gore has written songs that speak volumes about loneliness and isolation.
Ryder, says Estavillo, can best “explain the significance of alienation in Catcher in the Rye and will also testify to how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real live/video games such as World of Warcraft.”
Estavillo has gained notoriety as a serial suer. He once sued Sony’s PlayStation network for banning him from playing Resistance: Fall of Man after engaging in “trash talk” during the game. He claimed then that his fragile emotional state and phobias (fear of crowds and public places) made him solely dependent on the game for social interaction. The court, however, dismissed the suit.
Estavillo also slapped Microsoft and Nintendo with charges for a broken XBox 360 and blocked access to a third party program. He said such instances had caused him undue stress.
In his lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, Estavillo demands $1,000,000 as punitive damages as well as for the company to make WOW players walk or run faster in the game.
Are you done laughing yet?
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