The floor of his Wisconsin apartment bore testament: fast-food wrappers, dirty clothes, chicken bones. He rarely answered his phone, He had stopped going to work, instead staying home to play EverQuest, an online role-playing video game. Wolley was an epileptic, and his marathon sessions triggered frequent seizures.
The 21-year-old had been evicted from his previous apartment after he sequestered himself to play the game. "He stayed in his apartment from July until the end of September," explains his mother, Liz Wolley. "All he did was play. He didn't work. He quit buying food. He wasn't bathing." Without an income, he was forced to move in with his mother, where he reimmersed himself in EverQuest, staying up for days. His obsessive playing concerned his mother enough that she placed him in a group home for people with addictions. A doctor diagnosed his depression, said he had a schizoid personality disorder and put him on medication, but because residency at the home was voluntary, Shawn was free to leave. "When I took him in for his problem, they just said, "You should be glad he's not on drugs or alcohol,"" says Liz. To her dismay Shawn rented another apartment. This time he shut his family out. Shawn chained the door, refused all visitors and disappeared into the game.
Guiding a character across the Permafrost Caverns of EverQuest makes it easy to understand how the game can drain hours of a player's time. The game's structure pointedly avoids competition. There are no scores, no designated means of winning. The open-ended story line liberates players from following a plot, leaving them free to live through their characters. They can sit in a tavern and chat with other characters or band together to explore an ancient cavern. There are no wrong choices. The more you play, the stronger you character grows, opening even greater opportunities.
With names such as EverQuest, Ultima Online, Lineage, Anarchy Online, and Dark Age of Camelot, these are called persistent world games or massively multiplayer online role-playing games.