In an ideal world, we’d all get paid cash money to play games. Sadly, that’s not the reality for the majority of us. Well, that is apart from 14-year-old Griffin Spikoski (AKA Sceptic) who has raked in $200,000 so far – just by playing Fortnite.
Nine months ago, he was relatively unknown in the gaming community. However, after he collaborated with extremely popular Fortnite streamer, Tfue, in a YouTube video – that all changed.
The video currently has over 7 million views…
Now, he has over a million subs, and his videos regularly amass hundreds of thousands of views. His Twitch account is also wildly popular.
According to WABC-TV, he now spends eight hours a day playing Fortnite. You might be wondering how he manages that, as well as school. Well, he’s enrolled in some online high school courses. Which is fair enough when you’re making that much money.
Apparently, on weekends he can play as much as 18 hours a day, but he has said that he knows that’s too much time.
His dad, Chris Spikoski, explained: “I want parents to know that, you know, if their kids do enjoy playing games and they have a passion for it and they’re really good at it, they should treat it as any other sport.”
That’s a great dad right there.
However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently announced that Video Game Addiction is a mental health condition.
After qualifying it as such, children in the UK will have access to treatment on the NHS. WHO estimates that up to six per cent of children are affected with the condition.
The UN health agency said that classifying Gaming Disorder/Addiction as a separate condition will ‘serve a public health purpose for countries to be better prepared to identify this issue’.
It will also be added to WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), reports NME. The 11th edition of ICD covers 55,000 injuries, diseases and causes of death.
The proposal was accepted it as a condition after Dr Shekhar Saxena, director of WHO’s department for mental health, told ITV that this is in addition to “the need and the demand for treatment in many parts of the world”.
WHO defines Gaming Disorder as:”Impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.
“For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.”
Dr. Vladimir Poznyak, a member of WHO’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, said: “Millions of gamers around the world, even when it comes to the intense gaming, would never qualify as people suffering from gaming disorder,
However, Dr Joan Harvey, a spokeswoman for the British Psychological Society, has criticised the move. She says that it will cause unnecessary panic among parents.