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Video game addiction

Video game addiction (VGA), also known as gaming disorder or internet gaming disorder, is generally defined as a psychological addiction that is problematic, compulsive use of video games that results in significant impairment to an individual's ability to function in various life domains over a prolonged period of time. This and associated concepts have been the subject of considerable research, debate, and discussion among experts in several disciplines and has generated controversy within the medical, scientific, and gaming communities. Such disorders can be diagnosed when an individual engages in gaming activities at the cost of fulfilling daily responsibilities or pursuing other interests without regard for the negative consequences. As defined by the ICD-11, the main criterion for this disorder is a lack of self control over gaming.

The World Health Organization included gaming disorder in the 11th revision of its International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The American Psychiatric Association (APA), while stating there is insufficient evidence for the inclusion of Internet gaming disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2013, considered it worthy of further study.

Controversy around the diagnosis includes whether the disorder is a separate clinical entity or a manifestation of underlying psychiatric disorders. Research has approached the question from a variety of viewpoints, with no universally standardized or agreed definitions, leading to difficulties in developing evidence-based recommendations.

Definition and diagnosis
In its report, the Council on Science and Public Health to the American Medical Association (AMA) used this two-hour-per-day limit to define "gaming overuse", citing the American Academy of Pediatrics guideline of no more than one to two hours per day of "screen time". However, the ESA document cited in the Council report does not contain the two-hour-per-day data.

American Psychiatric Association
While the American Psychiatric Association (APA) does not recognize video game addiction as a disorder, in light of existing evidence, the organisation included video game addiction as a "condition requiring further study" in the DSM-5 as Internet gaming disorder. Video game addiction is a broader concept than internet gaming addiction, but most video game addiction is associated with internet gaming. APA suggests, like Khan, the effects (or symptoms) of video game addiction may be similar to those of other proposed psychological addictions. Video game addiction may be an impulse control disorder, similar to compulsive gambling. The APA explains why Internet Gaming Disorder has been proposed as a disorder:"This decision was based upon the large number of studies of this condition and the severity of its consequences. ... Because of the distinguishing features and increased risks of clinically significant problems associated with gaming in particular, the Workgroup recommended the inclusion of only internet gaming disorder in Section 3 of the DSM-5." Some players become more concerned with their interactions in the game than in their broader lives. Players may play many hours per day, neglect personal hygiene, gain or lose significant weight, disrupt sleep patterns resulting in sleep deprivation, play at work, avoid phone calls from friends, or lie about how much time they spend playing video games.

The APA has developed nine criteria for characterizing the proposed Internet Gaming Disorder:

 * 1) Pre-occupation. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about games even when you are not playing, or planning when you can play next?
 * 2) Withdrawal. Do you feel restless, irritable, moody, angry, anxious or sad when attempting to cut down or stop gaming, or when you are unable to play?
 * 3) Tolerance. Do you feel the need to play for increasing amounts of time, play more exciting games, or use more powerful equipment to get the same amount of excitement you used to get?
 * 4) Reduce/stop. Do you feel that you should play less, but are unable to cut back on the amount of time you spend playing games?
 * 5) Give up other activities. Do you lose interest in or reduce participation in other recreational activities due to gaming?
 * 6) Continue despite problems. Do you continue to play games even though you are aware of negative consequences, such as not getting enough sleep, being late to school/work, spending too much money, having arguments with others, or neglecting important duties?
 * 7) Deceive/cover up. Do you lie to family, friends or others about how much you game, or try to keep your family or friends from knowing how much you game?
 * 8) Escape adverse moods. Do you game to escape from or forget about personal problems, or to relieve uncomfortable feelings such as guilt, anxiety, helplessness or depression?
 * 9) Risk/lose relationships/opportunities. Do you risk or lose significant relationships, or job, educational or career opportunities because of gaming?

One of the most commonly used instruments for the measurement of addiction, the PVP Questionnaire (Problem Video Game Playing Questionnaire, Tejeiro & Moran, 2002), was presented as a quantitative measure, not as a diagnostic tool. According to Griffiths, "all addictions (whether chemical or behavioral) are essentially about constant rewards and reinforcement". He proposes that addiction has six components: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. But the APA's nine criteria for diagnosing Internet Gaming Disorder were made by taking point of departure in eight different diagnostic/measuring tools proposed in other studies. Thus, the APA's criteria attempt to condense the scientific work on diagnosing Internet Gaming Disorder.

World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) had proposed and later included "gaming disorder" in the 11th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), released in June 2018, which was approved by the World Health Assembly in May 2019. The use and enforcement of the ICD-11 officially began on 1 January 2022.

Screening tools
The first psychometric test to assess IGD was the Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGD-20). This test includes 20 questions designed to assess the extent of problems caused by disordered gaming and the degree of symptoms experienced by gamers. The test was first published in a journal article published in the PLoS ONE journal on 14 October 2014.

The Internet Gaming Disorder Scale–Short-Form (IGDS9-SF) is a short psychometric test to assess video game addiction according to the American Psychiatric Association framework for IGD. Recent review studies suggest that the IGDS9-SF presents with robust empirical and clinical evidence and is an effective tool to assess IGD. Moreover, the scale was adapted in several languages as Spanish,  Chinese, Czech, German, and many more.

In 2019, the "Gaming Disorder Test", a screening tool for gaming disorder as defined by the World Health Organization, was published.

Risk factors
The Internet can foster various addictions including addiction to gameplaying.

Addictive playing of MMORPGs is associated with negative effects, whereas normal play is not. Individuals with low self-esteem use MMORPGs to compensate by creating an avatar that is powerful and competent in these online environments, which allows the player to overcome anxieties that may be impaired in the real world.

Younger people and men are more likely to experience a gaming disorder than older people and women respectively. Research shows that the average age of a gamer is 30 years old, and 32% of players are under 18. Adolescents are at a higher risk of sustaining video game disorder over time than adults. An international meta-analysis over 34 jurisdictions quantified the effect size of gender as small, with most effect in Asia, lesser in Europe and Africa, and null in North America, and further finding that economic factors, internet availability, social norms and addiction-related health factors mediate the effect of gender, with nations with a greater GDP per capita having less differences in video game addiction between genders.

Comorbid psychiatric disorders act as both risk factors and consequences. Indeed, there is a strong association between video game addiction and anxiety, depression, ADHD, social phobia, and poor psycho-social support. ADHD and its symptoms, such as impulsivity and conduct problems, also increase risks of developing video game disorder. Although internet gaming disorder has a strong relationship with obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is not specific and internet gaming disorder is both phenomenologically and neurobiologically distinct, which indicates that internet gaming disorder is more characterized by impulsivity than compulsivity. Familial factors appear to play an important role, although not well understood.

Some personality traits, such as high neuroticism, high impulsivity, and high aggressiveness are consistently significant predictors of internet gaming disorder, and combination of personality traits seem to play a pivotal role in the acquisition, maintenance and development of the disorder.

Mechanisms
Although there is much research since the 1980s on problematic online gaming use, the mechanisms are not well understood, due to inconsistent definitions used in studies.

Video game structure
Some theories focus on the presumed built-in reward systems of video games, such as compulsion loops, to explain their potentially addictive nature. The anticipation of such rewards can create a neurological reaction that releases dopamine in the body, so that once the reward is obtained, the person will remember it as a pleasurable feeling. This has been found to be similar to the neurological reaction of other behavioral addictions such as substance abuse and gambling disorder.

Mark Griffiths has proposed another reason online video games are potentially addictive is because they "can be played all day every day." The fact there is no end to the game can feel rewarding for some, and hence players are further engaged in the game.

Addiction circuits in the brain
Long-term internet video/mobile game playing affects brain regions responsible for reward, impulse control and sensory-motor coordination. Structural analyses shown modifications in the volume of the ventral striatum, possibly as result of changes in rewards, and video game addicts had faulty inhibitory control and reward mechanisms. Video game playing is associated with dopamine release similar in magnitude to that of drug abuse and gambling, and the presentation of gaming pictures activates brain regions similarly to drug pictures for drug addicts. Treatment studies which used fMRI to monitor the brain connectivity changes found a decrease in the activity of the regions associated with cravings. Although there are evidences that video game addiction may be supported by similar neural mechanisms underlying drug abuse, as video game and internet addictions reduce the sensitivity of the dopaminergic reward system, it is still premature to conclude that this addiction is equivalent to substance addictions, as the research is in its early stages. There is evidence of a dual processing model of digital technology addictions characterized by an imbalance between the reactive and the reflective reward systems. Other studies shown increased difficulties in decision making in specific contexts, such as risky situations but not in ambiguous situations, and an increased preference for short-term rewards. Although the number of neuroimaging studies on internet gaming disorder is rising, there are several methodological shortcomings, particularly in the inconsistency of psychometric assessments. Furthermore, the conclusions on reduced inhibition should be moderated, as only one study included a functional control, which then showed no difference in inhibition.

A meta-analytic review of the research concluded the evidence suggests video game addiction arises out of other mental health problems, rather than causing them. Thus it is unclear whether video game addiction should be considered a unique diagnosis.

Management
As concern over video game addiction grows, the use of psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, twelve-step programs, and use of continuing developing treatment enhancements have been proposed to treat this disorder. Empirical studies indeed indicate that internet gaming disorder is associated with detrimental health-related outcomes. However, the clinical trials of potential treatments remain of low quality, except for cognitive-behavioral therapies, which shows efficacy to reduce gaming disorder and depressive symptoms but not total time spent. Although there is a scientific consensus that cognitive-behavioral therapy is preferable to pharmacological treatment, it remains difficult to make definitive statements about its benefits and efficiency due to methodological inconsistencies and lack of follow-up. Since efficacious treatments have not been well established, prevention of video gaming disorder is crucial. There is some simple and effective coping methods individuals effected by gaming addiction could incorporate into their everyday life, these strategies included; setting a time limit devoted to gaming, keeping technology out of an individual's bedroom to create a healthier environment, and participating in physical activities and exercise. Some evidence suggest that up to 50% of people affected by the internet gaming disorder may recover naturally.

Some countries, such as South Korea, China, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and the United States, have responded to the perceived threat of video game addiction by opening treatment centres.

China
China was the first country to treat "internet addiction" clinically in 2008. The Chinese government operates several clinics to treat those who overuse online games, chatting and web surfing. Treatment for the patients, most of whom have been forced to attend by parents or government officials, includes various forms of pain including shock therapy. In August 2009, Deng Sanshan was reportedly beaten to death in a correctional facility for video game and Web addiction. Most of the addiction "boot camps" in China are actually extralegal militaristically managed centers, but have remained popular despite growing controversy over their practices.

In 2019, China set up a curfew, banning minors from playing between certain hours. In 2021, the government of China published a new policy to force corporations to only serve underage teenagers on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday between 8 pm to 9 pm.

Germany
Germany has many treatment centers for behavioral addictions but only a few that directly treat video game or internet gaming addiction. One of the first outpatient clinics in Germany to offer group therapy for computer game and internet addiction is the Sabine M. Grüsser-Sinopoli Outpatient Clinic for Behavioral Addictions in Mainz. It also offers group therapy sessions based on cognitive behavioral therapy approach, as well as counselling sessions for adult relatives of gambling and computer game addicts. In a representative survey of the German population about 2.1% of the leisure time internet users (n=1382) were characterized as addicted.

Netherlands
In June 2006, the Smith and Jones clinic in Amsterdam—which has now gone bankrupt—became the first treatment facility in Europe to offer a residential treatment program for compulsive gamers. Keith Bakker, founder and former head of the clinic, has stated that 90% of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted.

Canada
At a Computer Addiction Services center in Richmond, British Columbia, excessive gaming accounts for 80% of one youth counselor's caseload.

United Kingdom
In 2018, the National Health Service announced its plans to open a treatment center, run by the Central and North West London NHS foundation trust, that will initially focus on gaming disorder, but is planned to expand to cover other internet-based addictions. The specialist treatment center opened in 2019 for treating adolescents and young people aged 13–25 who are addicted to video games.

Physical health
The most frequent physical health-related outcome are alterations in physical functioning such as somatization and sleep disturbances. Preliminary evidence suggest that internet gaming disorder and the induced sedentarity may contribute to a lack of physical exercise, even though the relationship is not causal.

Epidemiology
The prevalence of internet gaming disorder range from 0.7% to 25.5% worldwide, or 1.0% to 26.8% worldwide, and 3.5% to 17% in China, and is higher among males than females and among younger than older people, with geographical region being an insignificant contributor. The prevalence was found to be 5.06% among a high-school student population from Sri Lanka, suggesting an increasing trend in low- and middle-income countries as well. A longer time spent on video games predicts a tendency towards pathological gaming in the future. The studies, however, used various methodologies and definitions, which renders consensus difficult to achieve and may explain the wide range of prevalence.

Debates on the classification
A meta-analytic review of pathological gaming studies concluded that about 3% of gamers may experience some symptoms of pathological gaming. The report noted problems in the field with defining and measuring pathological gaming and concluded that pathological gaming behaviors were more likely the product of underlying mental health problems rather than the inverse.

Barnett and Coulson expressed concern that much of the debate on the issue of addiction may be a knee jerk response stimulated by poor understanding of games and game players. Such issues may lead both society and scholars to exaggerate the prevalence and nature of problematic gaming, and over-focus on games specifically, while ignoring underlying mental health issues. However, Problem gamblers have a higher chance for getting mental illness as well.

Other scholars have cautioned that comparing the symptoms of problematic gaming with problematic gambling is flawed, and that such comparisons may introduce research artifacts and artificially inflate prevalence estimates. For instance, Richard Wood has observed that behaviors which are problematic in regards to gambling may not be as problematic when put into the context of other behaviors that are rewarding such as gaming. Similarly, Barnett and Coulson have cautioned that discussions of problematic gaming have moved forward prematurely without proper understanding of the symptoms, proper assessment and consequences.

Rather than video gaming disorder being a subtype of gambling disorder, a majority of researchers support the idea of video game addiction being a part of a more comprehensive framework of impulse control disorders with "pathological technology use" with similar characteristics, including the pathological use of video games, internet, computers and other interactive medias. Although internet and video game addictions are generally considered different from gambling disorder and substance abuse, there is a growing body of evidence indicating they share common features, including behavioral and neural features. Indeed, it is suggested that while behavioral addiction may differ with drug addictions in magnitude, they share several characteristics, with Hellman et al. proposing that the concept of addiction should be de-medicalized.

On the contrary, a literature review found that as the video game addiction develops, online gaming addicts spend increasing amounts of time not only playing but also preparing for and organizing their playing sessions, suggesting this addiction may be behavioral rather than a disorder of impulse control. There is recent evidence suggesting that internet gaming disorder can cause two distinct types of dysfunctions: cognitive and metacognitive.

Griffiths has suggested that psycho-social dependence may revolve around the intermittent reinforcements in the game and the need to belong. Hagedorn & Young have suggested that social dependence may arise due to video games occurring online where players interact with others and the relationships "often become more important for gamers than real-life relationships".

Controversy and alternative viewpoints
Common challenges involve the reliability of the methodology and validity of the results in some studies. Many rely on self-surveys from university students and also lack time frames making it difficult to study the impact, if any, of addiction on a long term scale. Other concerns also address the definition of addiction and how to measure it, questioning whether or not time is a proper unit to determine how addicted someone is to gaming. Daria Joanna Kuss and Mark D. Griffiths have argued the current scientific knowledge on internet gaming addiction is copious in scope and complexity. They state that instead, a simple framework should be provided to allow all current and future studies to be categorized, as internet gaming addiction lies on a continuum beginning with etiology and risk factors all the way through the development of "full-blown" addiction and ending with ramifications and potential treatment. In addition, they caution the deployment of the label "addiction" since it heavily denotes the use of substances or engagement in certain behaviors. Finally, the researcher promotes other researchers to assess the validity and reliability of existing measures instead of developing additional measurement instruments.

Other challenges include the lack of context of the participant's life and the negative portrayal of gaming addicts. Some state that gamers sometimes use video games to either escape from an uncomfortable environment or alleviate their already existing mental issues—both possibly important aspects in determining the psychological impact of gaming. Negative portrayal also deals with the lack of consistency in measuring addictive gaming. This leads to discussions that sometimes exaggerate the issue and create a misconception in some that they, themselves, may be addicted when they are not.

The evidence of video game addiction to create withdrawal symptoms is very limited and thus debated, due to different definitions and low quality trials.

The concept of video game disorder is itself being debated, with the overlap of its symptoms with other mental disorders, the unclear consensus on a definition and thresholds, and the lack of evidence raising doubts on whether or not this qualifies as a mental disorder of its own. Despite the lack of a unified definition, there is an emerging consensus among studies that Internet gaming disorder is mainly defined by three features: 1) withdrawal, 2) loss of control, and 3) conflict. Although the DSM-5 definition of video game disorder has a good fit to current methodological definitions used in trials and studies, there are still debates on the clinical pertinence.

Michael Brody, M.D., head of the TV and Media Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, stated in a 2007 press release that "... there is not enough research on whether or not video games are addictive." However, Brody also cautioned that for some children and adolescents, "... it displaces physical activity and time spent on studies, with friends, and even with family."

A major issue concerns the lack of consistent measures and definitions and of acquisition of follow-up data. Furthermore, the study design quality has not greatly improved between the 2000s and 2017. For instance, most studies measured internet gaming behaviors in terms of frequency of use (total time spent), without considering the type of game (e.g., MMORPG), the social context (e.g., physically or virtually with friends), nor the motivations (e.g., competitive, achievement-oriented "grinding"). Although the amount of time spent was postulated by Johanssonn and Götestam in 2004 to lead to pathological behaviors, it is unclear whether the time spent is a cause or a consequence of pathological use. These criticisms, however, mostly pertain to Western research since there is more data of higher quality available in Asian regions, where the Internet gaming disorder is more prevalent.

A survey conducted in 2019 of 214 scholars shown that 60.8% agreed that pathological video game use could be a mental health problems, whereas 30.4% were skeptical. However, only 49.7% agreed with the DSM-5 definition of Internet gaming disorder, and 56.5% to the definition of the World Health Organization. Most scholars were worried that WHO's and DSM-5's inclusion of Internet gaming disorder was "overpathologizing normal youth" and "precipitated moral panic over video games". This indicates a lack of consensus on the issue.

A study published in 2010 reviewed the findings of video game addiction by use of a motorcycle riding computer game with 17 users. 9 of the users were “abstinent ecstasy users” and the other 8 served as the control group. The 2 groups had their dopamine releases monitored throughout the test. After playing, the control group showed reduced dopamine D2 receptor occupancy of 10.5% in the caudate compared to former baseline levels. The abstinent group reported no changes in their dopamine receptors.

A suggested method of research called autoethnography is introduced by Xiao Hu and Hongzhi Zhang that may be a solution to the challenges of current studies on video game addiction. The autoethnographic research is based on the first author's life experience which goes over his reflection on the behavior and the possible solutions that aided in his ability to overcome the addiction. A model that displays motivation/functional needs and prevention/harm reduction factors from a study by Xu et al proposes ways to reduce the symptoms of video game addiction is included in the article to highlight similar methods the author himself had used. Six major indexes from the study are: attention switching, dissuasion, rationalization/education, parental monitoring, resource restriction, and perceived cost. While this research method is limited, it could still be possible with a group of participants who have already or is currently undergoing the addictive behavior.

In 2022, two studies by Jiaxing Chen, Guangling Zhang, and Qinfang Hu were conducted to test their hypothesis of "the integration of social responsibility with gaming strategies from the psychological perspective of game withdrawal, and the incorporation of social responsibility as an element in gamification design to reduce user withdrawal behaviour, thereby increasing individual’s environmentally sustainable behaviour". The results of both studies supported their theory as the participants felt a sense of guilt from their growing gaming addiction and in turn boosted their sense of social responsibility. This proves that the possibility to incorporate gamification strategies and social responsibility within general games can promote pro-environmental and pro-social behavior among users online and reduce the addictive behavior. Companies and the government have already been using gamification in several games for the sustainability of environmental protection with short-term success. Further research will need to be conducted with different participants and other game genres to see if the theory still works.

History
Video game addiction has been studied since the 1980s, and has seen a significant increase in the number of empirical studies since then.

The press has reported concerns over online gaming since at least 1994, when Wired mentioned a college student who was playing a MUD game for 12 hours a day instead of attending class.

Press reports have noted that some Finnish Defence Forces' conscripts were not mature enough to meet the demands of military life and were required to interrupt or postpone military service for a year. One reported source of the lack of needed social skills is overuse of computer games or the internet. Forbes termed this overuse "Web fixations" and stated they were responsible for 13 such interruptions or deferrals over the five years from 2000 to 2005.

In an April 2008 article, The Daily Telegraph reported that surveys of 391 players of Asheron's Call showed that three percent of respondents experienced agitation when they were unable to play, or missed sleep or meals to play. The article reports that University of Bolton lead researcher John Charlton said, "Our research supports the idea that people who are heavily involved in game playing may be nearer to autistic spectrum disorders than people who have no interest in gaming."

On 6 March 2009, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) national news magazine program the fifth estate aired an hour-long report on video game addiction and the Brandon Crisp story, titled "Top Gun", subtitled "When a video gaming obsession turns to addiction and tragedy."

In August 2010, Wired reported that a man in Hawaii, Craig Smallwood, sued the gaming company NCSoft for negligence and for not specifying that their game, Lineage II, was so addictive. He alleged he would not have begun playing if he was aware he would become addicted. Smallwood says he has played Lineage for 20,000 hours between 2004 and 2009.

In 2013, a man from China observed his son's addiction to video games, and decided to take action. He hired online assassins to kill his son's virtual avatar every time he logged in. He hoped that being relentlessly killed would help his son lose interest in this destructive habit.

A Kiwi gamer named Jacques Strydom spent a staggering $16,000 on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Loot Boxes. He then went on to regret how the addiction took a massive toll on his personal life.

Inclusion in the ICD-11
In the draft versions leading to the final ICD-11 document, gaming disorder was included alongside gambling disorder under "Disorders Due to Addictive Behaviors". The addition defines as "a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour ('digital gaming' or 'video-gaming')", defined by three criteria: the lack of control over playing video games, priority given to video games over other interests, and the inability to stop playing video games even after being affected by negative consequences. For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behavior 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. Research shows gaming disorders can be associated with anxiety, depression, loneliness, obesity, sleeping disorders, attention problems, and stress.

Vladimir Poznyak, the coordinator for the WHO Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, defended the addition of gaming disorder, believing the backlash against the addition to be a moral panic as they chose a very narrow definition that encompasses only the most extreme cases of gaming disorder. He said evaluating a disorder for inclusion is nominally done without any external feedback "to avoid interference from commercial and other entities which may have vested interest in the outcome of the process". Dr. Poznyak asserted that several medical professionals consulting on the ICD-11 did believe gaming disorder to be real, and by including it in the ICD-11, there can now be earnest efforts to define its causes and symptoms betters and methods to deal with it, and now include the video game industry within the conversation to help reduce the effects of video games on public health.

The addition of "gaming disorder" to the ICD-11 was criticized by gamers and the video game industry, while some researchers remained skeptical. Some of these researchers said the evidence remains weak and "there is a genuine risk of abuse of diagnoses." A group of 26 scholars wrote an open letter to the WHO, suggesting that the proposed diagnostic categories lacked scientific merit and were likely to do more harm than good. In counter-argument, a group of fifty academic researchers in behavioral science agreed that the evidence to support gaming disorder was weak, but it would be best that WHO identify gaming disorder in ICD-11 so that it could be considered a clinical and public health need.

A report, prepared by mental health experts at Oxford University, Johns Hopkins University, Stockholm University and the University of Sydney, sponsored by The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment argues that while there may be potential addiction associated with video gaming, it is premature to consider it a disorder without further study, given the stigmatisation that surrounds video, and ask the WHO to use caution when finalizing the ICD draft. This report was promoted by 22 video game industry trade organizations including the Entertainment Software Association of the United States and Interactive Software Federation of Europe

As the final approval of the ICD-11 neared, several video game trade associations issued a statement requesting WHO to reconsider the addition of "gaming disorder", stating that, "The evidence for its inclusion remains highly contested and inconclusive". The Entertainment Software Association had meetings with the WHO during December 2018 to try to convince them to hold off including gaming disorder within ICD-11, with more planned meetings to follow.

Parental concerns
According to ABC News, parents have many concerns about their children playing video games, including concerns about age appropriateness, the amount of time spent playing games, physical health, and aggressive behavior.

Governmental concerns
The first video game to attract political controversy was the 1978 arcade game Space Invaders. In 1981, a political bill called the Control of Space Invaders (and other Electronic Games) Bill was drafted by British Labour Party MP George Foulkes in an attempt to ban the game for its "addictive properties" and for causing "deviancy". The bill was debated and only narrowly defeated in parliament by 114 votes to 94 votes.

In August 2005, the government of the People's Republic of China, where more than 20 million people play online games, introduced an online gaming restriction limiting playing time to three hours, after which the player would be expelled from whichever game they were playing. In 2006, it relaxed the rule so only citizens under the age of 18 would face the limitation. Reports indicate underage gamers found ways to circumvent the measure. In July 2007, the rule was relaxed yet again. Internet games operating in China must require users identify themselves by resident identity numbers. After three hours, players under 18 are prompted to stop and "do suitable physical exercise". If they continue, their in-game points are "slashed in half". After five hours, all their points are automatically erased.

In 2011, the South Korean government implemented a law, known as the Shutdown law or the Cinderella Law, which prohibits children under the age of 16 from playing online video games between the hours of 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. Later on, the law was amended and now children under the age of 16 can play after midnight if they have permission from their parents. In 2021, the South Korean government moved to abolish this law.

, there were three main types of governmental policies:

 * limiting the availability of video games (shutdown, fatigue system, parental controls),
 * reducing the risks and harm (warning messages), and
 * providing addiction help services to gamers.

Most of these policies were either not as efficient as intended or not yet evaluated for efficiency, which lead some researchers to prompt for a global public health approach to prevent the onset and progression of this disorder. Some researchers suggest that the video game industry should itself place preventive measures against video game addiction.

Deaths
There have been at least a few deaths caused directly by exhaustion from playing games for excessive periods of time.

China
In 2005, thirteen-year-old Zhang Xiaoyi committed suicide by jumping from the top of a 24-story tower block in his home province Tianjin. After previously having spent two straight days playing online role-playing games in an Internet cafe, Zhang had told his parents that he had "been poisoned by games and could no longer control himself". His parents sued Aomeisoft, the China-region publisher of the game World of Warcraft. The head of a software association said to gaming website Play.tm that same year: "In the hypothetical world created by such games, [players] become confident and gain satisfaction, which they cannot get in the real world."

In 2007, a 26-year-old man identified only as "Zhang" died of a heart attack following a seven-day gaming binge, while a 30-year-old man died in a Guangzhou Internet cafe after playing online games for three straight days.

South Korea
In 2005, 28-year old industrial repairman Seungseob Lee (Hangul: 이승섭) visited an Internet cafe in the city of Daegu and played StarCraft almost continuously for fifty hours. He went into cardiac arrest and died at a local hospital. A friend reported: "... he was a game addict. We all knew about it. He couldn't stop himself." About six weeks before his death, he was fired from his job, and his girlfriend, also an avid gamer, broke up with him.

In 2009, Kim Sa-rang, a 3-month-old Korean girl, starved to death after both her parents spent hours each day in an Internet cafe, rearing a virtual child in an online game, Prius Online. The death is covered in the 2014 documentary Love Child.

United States
In November 2001, 21-year-old Wisconsinite Shawn Woolley committed suicide; it has been inferred that his death was related to the popular computer game EverQuest. Shawn's mother said the suicide was due to a rejection or betrayal in the game from a character Shawn called "iluvyou".

Ohio teenager Daniel Petric shot his parents, killing his mother, after they took away his copy of Halo 3 in October 2007. In a sentencing hearing after the teen was found guilty of aggravated murder, the judge said, "I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever", in reference to his disconnection from reality allegedly caused by playing violent video games. On 16 June 2009, Petric was sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.

title: Video game addiction


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Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (also spelt Emily Kam Kngwarray) (1910 – 3 September 1996) was an Aboriginal Australian artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. After only starting painting as a septuagenarian, Kngwarreye became one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of Indigenous Australian art. She was a founding member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group and is known for her precise and detailed works.

Life and family
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, also spelt Emily Kam Kngwarray, was born c. 1910 in Alhalkere in the Utopia Homelands, an Aboriginal community located approximately 250 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs (Mparntwe).

Her family was Anmatyerre, and she was the youngest of three. She had no biological children of her own. She was the sister-in-law of the artist Minnie Pwerle and the aunt of Pwerle's daughter, artist Barbara Weir. Kngwarreye was a parental custodian of Weir for seven years until Weir was forcibly removed from her homeland under a government program to assimilate mixed-race children (see Stolen Generations). Kngwarreye's great niece is the painter Jeannie Pwerle. Her brother's children are Gloria Pitjana Mills and Dolly Pitjana Mills.

Kngwarreye grew up working on cattle stations. In June 1934 she moved to the MacDonald Downs Homestead, located approximately 100 km east of Alhalkere, to work in the house and muster cattle.

Kngwarreye died in Alice Springs in September 1996.

Art practice
As an elder and ancestral custodian of the Anmatyerre people, Kngwarreye had for decades painted for ceremonial purposes in the Utopia region. She became known for her precise and detailed approach she worked with batik for 11 years until 1988, when she was introduced to acrylics. She created more than 3,000 acrylic paintings over the next eight years, and became one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of Indigenous Australian art. She is particularly notable also for being a female artist, for having only started painting in her 70s, and for her prolificacy: over her eight years as an artist, she produced more than 3,000 paintings – around one per day.

She lived and worked at various places in the Sandover region.

Batik
In the 1970s, Kngwarreye undertook a short adult education course which it included various creative practices, including such as tie-dyeing and batik. In 1977, she began to learn batik under the early guidance of a Pitjantjatjara artist from Ernabella named Yipati and instructors Suzanne Bryce, Jenny Green and Julia Murray. According to Bryce, Aboriginal women in the region wanted to learn handcrafts because they were especially suited for a traditional lifestyle. Bryce and Green had imported the medium of batik to the Northern Territories from Indonesia in 1974.

By the time Kngwarreye was introduced to the technique, Aboriginal artists had adapted key parts of the process to suit their own preferences. The Indonesian technique of applying wax with a pen-like instrument called a canting, for example, had been replaced by brushes, which often produced broader, more animated patterns on the fabric. The introduction of batik marked a new era for Aboriginal women in the Northern Territories. Up to that point, their role had been to assist male painters, with only a few women ever creating their own works.

In 1978, Kngwarreye and other prominent Aboriginal artists founded the Utopia Women's Batik Group, comprising around 21 women. Initially a communal project, the program evolved into a framework where artists could develop their own individual styles. Kngwarreye's batik work shows elements that recur in her later paintings, including the awelye (body painting), emus, goannas, and other flora and fauna of her Country.

Acrylic painting
Kngwarreye began to paint on canvas in the summer of 1988, with a painting project initiated by CAAMA Shop in association with Utopia Art Sydney. Titled A Summer Project, it was eventually acquired by the Holmes à Court Collection in West Perth which then sponsored a program to allow Utopia artists to paint for a period of time unhindered by commercial imperatives. Rodney Gooch, manager of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), distributed 100 canvases and paints to the Utopia women, where they instructed the artists in the new medium. Over the summer holidays, (4 weeks) 80 painters completed 81 works. Rodney Gooch saw this as a new era for women. The Holmes à Court Collection purchased all 81 paintings and through their curator Anne Marie Brody, they were exhibited in April at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney.

Kngwarreye once described her transition to acrylic painting as a less labor-intensive process that better suited her advancing years:"I did batik at first, and then after doing that I learned more and more and then I changed over to painting for good...Then it was canvas. I gave up on...fabric to avoid all the boiling to get the wax out. I got a bit lazy – I gave it up because it was too much hard work. I finally got sick of it ... I didn't want to continue with the hard work batik required – boiling the fabric over and over, lighting fires, and using up all the soap powder, over and over. That's why I gave up batik and changed over to canvas – it was easier. My eyesight deteriorated as I got older, and because of that I gave up batik on silk – it was better for me to just paint."Her method was to place large sections of canvas on the ground and sit on them cross-legged. She applied paint using a long brush to reach across and into the creation. In one account, a dealer explained the presence of dog prints within a specific painting as a natural part of her ground-level method: "The dog walked across it," he said, "and she couldn't have cared less."

In 1995, in the last year of her life, she painted Anwerlarr anganenty ("Big yam Dreaming"), on a huge canvase measuring over 8 m by nearly 3 m.

In the final two weeks of her life, Kngwarreye asked her nephew Fred Torres for materials to produce a series known today as My Country - Final Series, 1996. A gallerist of Indigenous art in Sydney once described the period as an energetic push to create: "With no other materials, she dipped her one-inch gesso brush into a pot of paint. Over the next few days Emily painted 24 canvases like nothing she had ever done before."

Subject matter and themes
Works by Kngwarreye stem from a deep connection her tribal homeland, Alhalkere. The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia describes her subject matter as the "essence" of that region, with references to flora, fauna and Dreamtime figures from her environment. These include:

The pencil yam, or anwerlarr, a vine with heart-shaped leaves and seed pods that resemble beans, was an important source of food for the Aboriginal people of the desert. She painted many works on this theme; often her first actions at the start of a painting were to put down the yam tracking lines. This plant was especially significant for her: her middle name, Kame, means the yellow flower and the seeds of the pencil yam.
 * Arlatyeye (pencil yam)
 * Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard)
 * Ntange (grass seed)
 * Tingu (a Dreamtime pup)
 * Ankerre (emu)
 * Intekwe (a favourite food of emus, a small plant)
 * Atnwerle (green bean)
 * Kame (yam seed pod)

Style
Works by Kngwarreye are rooted in marks painted on sand and the body during Anmatyere experiences within The Dreaming, a moral code based on "ancestral heroes whose pioneering travels gave form, shape, and meaning to the land, seas, and skies in a long-ago creative era." These ceremonial marks are therefore more than basic visual designs. They are a "ritual re-enactment of the Ancestors' Dreamtime travelling (sic) which, in Aboriginal mythology, is synonymous with the creation of the world."

Visual elements related to The Dreaming were important parts of the Desert Art Movement at Papunya Tula, where Kngwarreye first began to develop her skills as a painter. Formed by community elders in 1971 with the support of Geoffey Bardon, the school encouraged artists to develop their own ideas when painting on canvas. One familiar style was to overlap masses of tiny dots to create the optical effect of a heat shimmer, which appears in works by Kngwarreye as well as those of Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula. The influence of Desert Art also appears in her use of aerial perspective.

Her early works of the late 1980s used traditional colours such as red and yellow ochre, black and white. By 1990, she had expanded her palette to also include grey, purple, and brown, which amplified the atmospheric qualities of her work.

In 1992, Kngwarreye began to join her dots to form lines, creating multicoloured parallel horizontal and vertical stripes that suggested rivers and desert terrain. She also began to use larger brushes during this period, which produced heavier, less intricate dots on the canvas.

In 1993, Kngwarreye added patches of colour along with the dots, which created the effect of coloured rings. An example is Alaqura Profusion, which was made with a shaving brush in what she called her "dump dump" style, using very bright colours. That technique also appears in My Mothers Country and Emu Country (1994). The Alhalkere Suite (1993) was a huge installation comprising 22 canvases, depicting her Country after flooding and regeneration, in a style similar to Expressionist art.

In the mid-1990s, she started working with thick stripes of acrylic paint on paper and canvas, which look abstract but are actually derived from awelye, the designs painted on Anmatyerr women's bodies for ceremony. The interwoven lines frequently reference the track lines of yams within Central Desert communities.

For many years, her varied style attracted labels from the art world such as modernism and abstraction, placing them in the traditions of Western art. However, it is argued by Indigenous Australian curators that her work is deeply rooted in Aboriginal Australian traditions, in particular, connection to Country.

Recognition and awards
In 1992/3, Kngwarreye was awarded an Australian Artist's Creative Fellowship by prime minister Paul Keating and the Australia Council.

In 1993, Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie, and Judy Watson were chosen to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale.

She was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women, 2001.

Exhibitions and gallery holdings
The first public exhibition of Kngwarreye's silk batiks was in 1980, alongside works of Mona Byrne, an artist from Hermannsberg. The next year, Floating Forests of Silk premiered at the Adelaide Festival Centre, curated by Silver Harris. In 1982, her work was on display at the Sydney Craft Expo and the Brisbane Commonwealth Games Exhibition, followed by showings at the Adelaide Festival Centre and the Alice Springs Craft Council in 1983.

Kngwarreye's first solo exhibition was held in 1990 at Utopia Art Sydney.

Her work was included in a 1996 exhibition at Monash University Gallery called Women hold up half the sky: The orientation of art in the post-war Pacific.

Kngwarreye represented Australia at the 1997 Venice Biennale alongside Yvonne Koolmatrie and Judy Watson. Their exhibition, titled "Fluent", was a multigenerational show, chosen "to highlight the spectrum of Aboriginal experience and artistic practice in Australia at the time." A contemporary review described the show as an "affirmation of the continuing influence of Aboriginal matriarchs in a society that is often defined as a patriarchy ... with interwoven concerns about the nature of the land and their connections to it."

In 1998, her batiks were on view at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, in an exhibition titled Raiki Wara: Long Cloth from Aboriginal Australia and the Torres Strait.

Queensland Art Gallery held the first retrospective of Kngwarreye's work in 1998. It was curated by Margo Neale and featured a commissioned work by Kngwarreye for the opening. The exhibition was the first major national touring retrospective for an Indigenous artist in Australia, travelling to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the NGV, and the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra.

From June to November 2000, the NGA presented Aboriginal Art in Modern Worlds: World of Dreamings, consisting of works by Kngwarreye, Nym Bandak, Rover Thomas, John Mawurndjul, Fiona Foley, Tracey Moffatt, and artists from Ramingining and Wik communities. Prior to its opening in Canberra, the exhibit also traveled to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Her second retrospective, Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, was held in 2008. Also curated by Neale, it opened at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, before moving to The National Art Center, Tokyo, and then to the National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

From November 2010 to March 2011, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, presented "Remembering Forward: Painting by Australian Aborigines Since 1960". The show featured works by Kngwarreye and eight other Aboriginal artists, including Paddy Bedford, Queenie McKenzie, and Dorothy Napangardi.

In 2013 The Emily Museum, the first museum featuring a single Aboriginal artist, opened in Cheltenham, Victoria. It permanently closed three years later.

Wild Yam and Emu Food (1990), Kame Yam Awelye (1996), and Alhakere (1996) were shown at Gagosian Beverly Hills in 2019 alongside works by ten other Indigenous artists, most from the Northern Territory.

Utopia Art Sydney organised a major survey of Kngwarreye's career in March 2020. The exhibition was titled STRONG. Also in early 2020, D'Lan Contemporary staged an exhibition of her work in New York City at the High Line Nine gallery in Chelsea.

Kngwarreye's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.

In 2022, Gagosian Paris organised the first solo exhibition of her paintings in France, in collaboration with D'Lan Contemporary, Melbourne. The title of the exhibition was Emily: Desert Painter of Australia. It ran from 21 January to 26 March.

In January 2023, a major retrospective at the NGA, co-curated by Aboriginal curators Kelli Cole and Hetti Perkins, puts its focus on Country, community, and ancestral knowledge in Kngwarreye's artworks. In consultation with the artists family and elders in the community, 89 works were selected to show the link between Kngwarray's paintings and her Country, Alhalker. The exhibition aims to overturn the western lens which saw her art as abstract and modern, and place it within ancient Aboriginal art practices, which look again and again at the landscape, flora and fauna, and ancestral stories of the traditional lands.

Representation and commissions
Kngwarreye was part of the Utopia Women's Batik. In 1987 Rodney Gooch, manager of CAAMA shop in Alice Springs was asked to represent them, and they did so until 1991.

Christopher Hodges of Utopia Art Sydney represented Kngwarreye from 1988 until her death in 1996. from 1988 - 1991 through CAAMA Shop and following that directly through Rodney Gooch (Mulga Bore Artists)

In 1989, Delmore Gallery on the Delmore Downs homestead adjacent to Utopia commissioned 1,500 works from Kngwarreye. Delmore Downs operators Donald and Janet Holt sold Kngwarreye's work to elite galleries in Australia and gifted works to institutions.

By 1991 she was producing a range of work for a variety of galleries, including the Aboriginal Gallery of Dreamings in Melbourne and the DACOU Aboriginal Gallery - Dreaming Art Centre of Utopia, Adelaide.

Kngwarreye's earlier works with Delmore Gallery provenance tend to perform best at auction, but her late-period works with Rodney Gooch have also demonstrated significant market potential.

Sales and exploitation
Eight paintings by Kngwarreye in Sotheby's 2000 Winter Auction were sold for a combined amount of A$507,550, with Awelye (1989) going for A$156,500.

On 23 May 2007, Tim Jennings of Mbantua Gallery & Cultural Museum purchased Kngwarreye's 1994 painting Earth's Creation I at auction for A$1,056,000. The sale set a record for an Australian female artist. In 2017 Earth's Creation I sold again for A$2,100,000 at a Cooee Art Gallery auction, breaking its own record.

In 2019 the Tate Gallery in London purchased Untitled (Alhalkere) (1989), Untitled (1990), and Edunga (1990).

The rise in market demand in the 1990s for works by Indigenous artists spurred the growth of inexperienced, and, in some cases, fraudulent art dealers. Utopia became particularly attractive to outsiders seeking fast money through the acquisition of Indigenous art without understanding the culture that produced them. She was later documented saying that those who sought a quick profit from Indigenous art were employing a "strategy of producing bad quality paintings for bad people."

During her life, and after her death, authors and journalists reported that many of the works purportedly painted by Kngwarreye were, in fact, fakes. In 1997, the Northern Territory News suggested an organised "school" of painters had created works in her style.

In 2018, British artist Damien Hirst was alleged to have copied Kngwarreye's style for his "Veil" series. The artist claimed to have had no prior knowledge of her work, even though observers from the Utopia community viewed the similarities as too close to have been a coincidence. According to Hirst, the series was rooted in Pointillism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. Bronwyn Bancroft, an Indigenous artist and Arts Law Centre board member, said: "You can't actually copyright style... [but] in many ways it's what's called a moral copyright element".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Emily Kame Kngwarreye


text:
User:Maczor

Welcome!
Hello,, Welcome  to Wikipedia! '''I hope you like working here and want to continue. If you need help on how to name new articles, look at the Guide to Layout, and for help on formatting the pages visit the Manual of Style. If you need general help, look at Help and the FAQ, and if you can't find your answer there, check the Village Pump (for Wikipedia related questions) or the Reference Desk (for general questions). There's still more help at the Tutorial and the Policy Library. Also, don't forget to visit the Community Portal — and if you have any more questions after that, feel free to post them on my New-Users' Talk Page.'''

Additional tips:
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 * If you want to play around with your new Wiki skills, try the Sandbox.
 * Click on the Edit button on a page, and look at how other editors did what they did.
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 * You might want to add yourself to the New User Log
 * If your first language isn't English, try Contributing to articles outside your native language
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There's also a regular group introduction to Wikipedia for new users on IRC.

Happy editing! --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 09:47, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Image:Twhs.gif
Thank you for uploading Image:Twhs.gif. Its copyright status is unclear, so it may have to be deleted. Please leave a note on the image page about the source of the image. See Image copyright tags for a list of copyright tags that you can use. Thank you. --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 09:46, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

title: User:Maczor


text:
Talk:Olaf the Stout (character)

Redirect
(This person hardly justifies an article - make redirect instead)
 * I agree. Punkmorten 09:47, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Wait a second!
Well, the previous section was edited three years ago. Izno, before you make this article redirect, you need to listen to me. Olaf is an important character of The Lost Vikings series. Although Vikings have appeared in many Blizzard Entertainment games, making cameos but Olaf has also made solo appearances in games (like Rock N' Roll Racing), which justifies that he is an important character because he has made more additional appearances in games than his fellow Vikings, which makes him one of the important characters in Blizzard and it should be ruled that he deserves an article of his own.--The Gamer of Games (talk) 11:41, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Olaf the Stout (character)


text:
Gafsele

Gafsele is a small Swedish village in Åsele Municipality, Västerbotten County, in the province of Lapland in northern Sweden, old spelling Gavsele. Gafsele was founded by the Nils Andersson from Finland and his wife Brita in 1674.

Nils arrived from Finland (that was a part of Sweden at the time) as he wanted to avoid being drafted into the war with Russia. Instead, he worked his way up the Angerman river until he reached Lapland, where the government promised any man that settled to be tax-free for 10 years. At that time, Lapplander (Sami) people already lived in the area, but as they were raising reindeers and Nils was farming, they could live together mainly without conflict.

Nils and his wife Brita are said to bring one cow, that they kept during the summer on a small island in the river called Koholmen (small cow island). Before the winter they built a small cottage on what is now called Skoludden, and settled. Brita, Nils wife was famous for her hot temper and for bringing some non-Christian behaviors to the village, such as blessings of the crops, and was brought to justice for this, but Nils talked the court out of it. It could otherwise have been fatal, as the penalty for such behavior in principle was death.

The most famous story about Nils is the day he saw a small splinter coming down the river and he understood that there was some other settler upstream. He immediately went there and scared the person off, as he believed that everything upstream belonged to him. Later, of course, more settlements were done upstreams, but Gafsele remained one of the bigger.

Today Gafsele has seen its heyday, and have a population of around 120 people, most engaged with forestry, farming, working for the municipality or retirees. There is one potato farmer. The village is spread out on both sides of the Ångerman river, with a bridge built 1967 in between. Near the bridge, on the east side, is the community house of the village, and on the west side you can visit the old sawmill that is still functional. Both places are open for many activities during the year.

Most popular sports in the village is fishing, hunting, and snow mobile riding. Other buildings of interest are the school with its park. The school is no longer in use, and is now transformed into a hostel. There is also a small village bakery with an old fashioned stone oven that is still used by the village people to bake the traditional flat bread.

title: Gafsele


text:
Akinfiy Nikitich Demidov

Akinfiy Nikitich Demidov (Акинфий Никитич Демидов) (1678 Tula - 5 August 1745 Yatskoye Ustye, Menzelinsky Uyezd, Orenburg Governorate) was a Russian industrialist of the Demidov family.

Life
He was the eldest son of Nikita Demidov and increased the family fortune, raising it to one of Russia's most important industrial dynasties. He studied the secrets of metallurgical production in Saxony.

He zealously set to work and became the creator of the "empire" of the Demidovs, which by the middle of the 18th century produced 52% of all Russian metal. He set up at least nine steel foundries and munitions factories from 1717 to 1735, and had 25 by his death. He also created iron and copper mines in the Urals and Western Siberia to supply them and mines for precious and semi-precious stones, silver and gold.

In 1720, having bought from Nikolai Fedorovich Golovin an estate in the Barminskaya volost of the Nizhny Novgorod district, the Demidovs received a letter of nobility from Tsar Peter the Great rewarding his services by making him a hereditary nobleman, as he also did with Akinfiy's brothers.

He commissioned the Leaning Tower of Nevyansk, with its underground rooms and secret routes towards one of his factories. By the end of his life Akinfiy was the richest man bar the Tsar. In 1734 he founded the Nicholas-Zaretsky Church in Tula.

In 1740, Akinfiy Demidov received the rank of State Councillor (статский советник), and in 1744 a Privy Councillor (действительный статский советник). Empress Elizaveta Petrovna granted a special patronage, that the Demidov brothers were exempted from compulsory military service and many taxes. The Demidovs turned out to be the freest, according to one of the biographers of the family, people in Russia.

Family
He married firstly Avdotya Jevdokia Tarassovna Korobkova (1688-1728), and married secondly in 1723 Jevfemia Ivanovna Paltseva (1713-1771). He had five children:
 * Maria Akinfievna Demidova (1706-after 1760), married Fedor Petrovich Volodimerov and had issue.
 * Prokofi Akinfiyevich Demidov (1710-1786); married firstly Matryona Antipovna Pastukhova (1711-1764) and secondly Tatyana Vasilievna Semyonova (1746-1800). Had nine children with the first wife and two children with the second wife.
 * Grigory Akinfiyevich Demidov (14 November 1715 - 13 November 1761), married 23 May 1731 Anastasia Pavlovna Surovtzova (16 December 1713 - 3 December 1763), and had issue;
 * Nikita Akinfiyevich Demidov (1724-1789); married three times, had issue.
 * Jevfemia Akinfiyevna Demidova (17??-1772), married Ivan Mikhailovich Serdukov and had issue.

title: Akinfiy Nikitich Demidov


text:
Călinești, Maramureș

Călinești (Felsőkálinfalva or Felsőkálinfalu, קאלינשט) is a commune in Maramureș County, Maramureș, Romania. It is composed of three villages: Călinești, Cornești (Somosfalva) and Văleni (Mikolapatak, וואלען).

At the 2002 census, 99.8% of inhabitants were Romanians. 53.9% were Romanian Orthodox, 34.7% Greek-Catholic, 5.9% belonged to "another religion" and 4.5% were Pentecostal.

title: Călinești, Maramureș


text:
Jean-Pierre Bouyxou

Jean-Pierre Bouyxou (born 16 January 1946) is a French film critic, author, filmmaker and actor.

Career
He started his career as a writer in 1964 when his article was published in fanzines (Mercury, Lunatique). Some other magazines he wrote for were Vampirella, Sex Stars System, Zoom (1969–1976), Métal hurlant, L'Écho des savanes, Penthouse, Lui, Hara-Kiri, Paris Match''.

He was editor-in-chief of Fascination for thirty issues, from 1978 to 1986.

He participated in the happenings of Jean-Jacques Lebel.

He worked with Roland Lethem, Étienne O'Leary, Jesus Franco, Jean Rollin and Alain Payet.

title: Jean-Pierre Bouyxou


text:
User:Hamstersanonymous/Sandbox

Works in progress and drafts here. Feel free to drop comments in discussion or fix minor errors, but no major changes please. (collaborators exempted) Thanks.

=Nicoll Highway collapse=

At approximately 3.30 pm on 20 April 2004, a road section along the Nicoll Highway in Singapore collapsed suddenly, killing 4 people and injuring another 3.

The collapse happened at a construction site of the underground Circle MRT Line. The supporting structure for the deep excavation work failed, resulting in a 30-metre deep cave-in that spread across six lanes of Nicoll Highway.

The Victims

 * Vadivil s/o Nadeson, crane operator A Malaysian of Indian descent, his body was the first to be recovered. The 44-year-old had reportedly tried to escape by jumping out from his crane when the incident struck. He was found caught between a pick-up truck and a container.

 * Liu Rong Quan, construction worker The body of the 36-year-old Chinese national from Jiangsu province was found wedged between the wheel and chassis of a 10-tonne truck. Liu had started working at the site just ten days before the incident. He leaves behind a wife and daughter.

 * John Tan Lock Yong, Land Transport Authority engineer The third victim to be found, Tan was due to finish his contract with LTA at the end of this year and was planning to migrate to Australia or New Zealand then. He leaves behind his wife, a grown-up daughter and a son.

 * Heng Yeow Peow, foreman The body of the 40-year-old Singaporean was not recovered. According to survivor accounts, Heng had selflessly hurried his workers to safety but was himself trapped when the collapse occurred. Heng leaves behind his wife, two young children, his 70-year-old mother and nine siblings.

Cause of the Incident
The reason behind the collapse was attrributed to the failure of the strut-waler support system, which held the diaphragm walls for in place.

TODO
 * expand on causes and criminal liability found by COI

useful refs:
 * http://www.mom.gov.sg/NR/rdonlyres/B8FF53FC-C249-4E7D-9C58-27D2D7323FF7/2016/Report_CapExecutiveSummary.pdf
 * http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/147451/1/.html
 * http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/140199/1/.html

title: User:Hamstersanonymous/Sandbox


text:
Chitralada Royal Villa

Chitralada Royal Villa (พระตำหนักจิตรลดารโหฐาน; ) is a royal villa located within Dusit Palace. This villa was permanent-residence of King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), the longest-serving monarch of Thailand and Queen Sirikit. He moved there after the death of his older brother, King Rama VIII in the Grand Palace. The palace grounds, which are surrounded by a moat and guarded by the royal guards, also contain the Chitralada School, initially established for the children of the royal family and palace staff. Chitralada Royal Villa has a Chitralada railway station which served for the royal family who lived in the villa. Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti was a pupil in the Chitralada School, the school is considered the most exclusive in Thailand.

Queen Mother Sirikit resides in this palace.

History
The main building of the palace is a two-storey building, built in the reign of Rama VI. The palace was the residence of Rama VI. Chitralada School, was founded in 1958.

A dairy farm and factories were built as the King Bhumibol Adulyadej was interested in agriculture and agricultural industries. Research centers on agricultural products were also founded to provide training for farmers. "Chitralada" is used as the brandname for many products from the palace.

Visitors need to obtain a pass to enter.

title: Chitralada Royal Villa


text:
Richard Jones (New Zealand cricketer)

Richard Jones (born 22 October 1973) is a cricketer. He started well, captaining the New Zealand Under-19s cricket team in 1993/4. He went on to represent the full senior side in one Test match and five One Day Internationals.

Representing Auckland in a match against Wellington, he scored a century – the day before his wedding to Kelly Herbert. He was also the captain of the Auckland Aces, and played for the North Harbour cricket team in the Hawke Cup. In February 2001, he took a wicket with his one and only delivery in a first-class cricket match.

title: Richard Jones (New Zealand cricketer)


text: File:Polish Scouting Association.png

title: File:Polish Scouting Association.png


text:
User talk:Xen0phile/sandbox

Test --Xen0phile | (talk) 10:00, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Test Xen0phile | [[User_talk:Xen0phile|(talk)]] 13:45, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Xen0phile/sandbox


text:
Generator (Foo Fighters song)

"Generator" is a song by American rock band Foo Fighters, released as a single in 2000 from their third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999). The single was only released in Australia, and it was also released as a limited-edition single in Europe.

The song is unique among the band's work because of Dave Grohl's implementation of the talk box in parts of the song. The usage of the device was partly inspired by Grohl's admiration of Peter Frampton and Joe Walsh, both of whom helped popularize it in the 1970s.

Australian CD
(The EP also contains an enhanced segment containing exclusive documentary footage and photos)
 * 1) "Generator"
 * 2) "Learn to Fly" (Live 24 January 2000 Sydney, Australia)
 * 3) "Stacked Actors" (Live 24 January 2000 Sydney, Australia)
 * 4) "Breakout" (Live 23 November 1999 Glasgow Barrowlands, Scotland)

European CD
(This version was available for only 1 week between March 6 and March 12, 2000, each CD was a limited, numbered edition and at the end of the week of release all remaining stock was deleted. As well as the music tracks it also included a multimedia 'enhanced' segment containing exclusive documentary footage and photos)
 * 1) "Generator"
 * 2) "Ain't It the Life" (Live Acoustic at 2 Meter Session 22 Nov 1999)
 * 3) "Floaty" (Live Acoustic at 2 Meter Session 22 Nov 1999)
 * 4) "Fraternity"
 * 5) "Breakout" (Live 23 November 1999 Glasgow Barrowlands, Scotland)

7-inch

 * 1) "Generator"
 * 2) "Fraternity"

Music video
No video was filmed for the single. Instead a live performance of the song recorded on February 1, 2000, at the Chapel Off Chapel in Melbourne, Australia was overdubbed with the studio version to promote the single and album. The performance was filmed and broadcast by Seven Network, with editor Scott C. Wilson making a new cut with the various different camera angles.

The music video for "Breakout" features the song "Generator" at the beginning on the video.

title: Generator (Foo Fighters song)


text:
Nested

Nested is the seventh studio album by Bronx-born singer, songwriter, and pianist Laura Nyro. It was released in 1978 on Columbia Records.

Following on from her extensive tour to promote 1976's Smile, which resulted in the 1977 live album Season of Lights, Nyro retreated to her new home in Danbury, Connecticut, where she lived after spending her time in the spotlight in New York City.

Nyro had a studio built at her home and recorded there the songs that comprised Nested. The songs deal with themes such as motherhood and womanhood, and Nyro is notably more relaxed in her singing on the album. The instrumentation is laid back and smooth, similar to that of Smile, but perhaps less jazz-inspired and more melodic. Nyro was assisted in production by Roscoe Harring, while Dale and Pop Ashby were chief engineers.

Critics praised the album as a melodic return to form, and Nyro supported the album with a solo tour when she was heavily pregnant with her son Gil, who was born two months after the album was released. Despite acclaim and a melodic, arguably more commercial sound, Nested was not a commercial success and became Nyro's first album since her 1967 debut More Than a New Discovery to miss the Billboard 200, then known as the Pop Albums chart.

Such was its commercial failure that for years it remained out of print and is unquestionably Nyro's least-known and most rare studio album. After the birth of her son in August 1978, she retreated once again from the limelight after a three-year return to raise her son. She did not record for another five years, and her recording pattern became increasingly intermittent. Nested is recognized as one of her most underrated works.

Nested was briefly released on CD in Japan only and was out of print for many years. On April 8, 2008, it was reissued on CD in the US in remastered form by Iconoclassic Records.

Guitars were played by Vinnie Cusano, who later became the guitarist for KISS from 1982 to 1984 under the name Vinnie Vincent.

Overview
Nested is the first of two "maternal" Laura Nyro albums, and she appears to revel in her new domesticity. Her marriage had broken down, but she had found love again and the sound is notably more relaxed than before.

Felix Cavaliere returns to play piano and organ on some songs, while Nyro produces with Roscoe Harring. The origins of Nyro's political and social explorations in her lyrics of the 1980s and '90s can be traced back to Nested.

Track listing
All tracks composed by Laura Nyro.

 * 1) "Mr. Blue (Song of Communications)" – 5:01
 * 2) "Rhythm and Blues" – 2:57
 * 3) "My Innocence" – 3:24
 * 4) "Crazy Love" – 4:18
 * 5) "American Dreamer" – 4:08
 * 6) "Springblown" – 4:24
 * 7) "The Sweet Sky" – 3:32
 * 8) "Light" – 2:53
 * 9) "Child in a Universe" – 4:09
 * 10) "The Nest" – 2:27

Personnel

 * Laura Nyro – vocals, electric and acoustic piano, church organ, guitar, strings
 * Will Lee – bass guitar
 * Andy Newmark – drums
 * Vinnie Cusano – guitar
 * John Tropea – guitar
 * Nydia "Liberty" Mata – percussion
 * John Sebastian – harmonica
 * Cyril Cianflone – bass guitar on "Mr. Blue (The Song of Communications)"
 * Tony Levin – bass guitar on "American Dreamer"
 * Felix Cavaliere – electric piano on "The Sweet Sky", organ on "The Nest"

Technical
 * Dale Ashby, Frank Koenig – engineer
 * Adger W. Cowans – photography

title: Nested


text:
Kingisepp

Kingisepp (Ки́нгисепп or Кингисе́пп), formerly Yamburg (Я́мбург), Yam (Ям), and Yama (Я́ма; Votic: Jaama ), is a town and the administrative center of Kingiseppsky District of Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located along the Luga River 138 km southwest of St. Petersburg, 20 km east of Narva, and 40 km south of the Gulf of Finland. Population:

14th century
The town was first documented in 1384, when the Novgorodians under Patrikas built there a fortress against the Swedes. It was called Yama or Yamsky Gorodok, after the Izhorian (ethnic Finnic group) name Jaama. The environs of the town are still cited as the main location of speakers of the nearly extinct Izhorian language. The citadel withstood sieges by the Swedes in 1395 and by the Teutonic Knights during the 1444–1448 war.

15-16th century
The town became the most important economic center of the Vodskaya pyatina of the Novgorod Republic. There were 201 homesteads in the 15th century in the town; its total population can only be evaluated roughly based on the estimates of three to five persons per homestead. At the end of the Livonian War, it was ceded to Sweden, only to be returned twelve years later, in 1595.

17th century

Following the Treaty of Stolbovo, it again passed to the Swedes, who kept the name which in Swedish orthography became Jama or Jamo. The town was completely destroyed by Russian armies during the war of 1656–1658, after which only the citadel remained intact. The Swedes demolished the citadel in 1681. It is questionable whether the town, with its exclusively Russian population, ever recovered.

18th century
First held by the Russians for a month in late 1700, what was left of the citadel was finally taken by the Russians in the course of the Great Northern War in 1703. On May 14, 1703, Yam was renamed Yamburg (a German version of the name). Five years later, Peter the Great granted the town to Alexander Menshikov in his capacity of the Duke of Izhora. In the course of the administrative reform, Yamburg was included into Ingermanland Governorate (known since 1710 as Saint Petersburg Governorate). In 1780, Catherine the Great re-approved with some changes a previously existing coat of arms. Uyezd town status was granted to it in 1784.

Russian Civil War
Vladimir Lenin reportedly stayed in Yamburg in January 1919, when he ordered the Bolshevik troops to retake the town of Narva from Estonian forces. In October 1919, the anti-Bolshevist commander, General Nikolai Yudenich captured Yamburg, which marked the beginning of the push by the Northwestern White Army towards Petrograd. However, the Bolsheviks subsequently re-captured Yamburg on November 14, 1919. On November 16, 1919, the forces of General Yudenich were "crowded together in a small space near Yamburg" "in a serious state of disorganization", reported The New York Times.

The German form of the town name was retained until 1922, when the Bolsheviks renamed it in honor of the exiled Estonian Communist leader Viktor Kingissepp.

Kingisepp–Gdov Offensive
During World War II, Kingisepp was occupied by German troops from August 16, 1941 until February 1, 1944, when the 109th Rifle Corps captured the town, forcing the German 18th Army into new positions on the eastern bank of Narva.

Administrative changes
In the beginning of the 20th century, Yamburg was the seat of Yamburgsky Uyezd of St. Petersburg Governorate (later known as Petrograd and Leningrad Governorate). On May 17, 1922, Yamburgsky Uyezd was renamed Kingiseppsky, simultaneously with the town.

On August 1, 1927, the uyezds were abolished and Kingiseppsky District, with the administrative center in Kingisepp, was established. The governorates were also abolished, and the district became a part of Leningrad Okrug of Leningrad Oblast. On July 23, 1930, the okrugs were abolished as well and the districts were directly subordinated to the oblast. Between March 22, 1935 and September 19, 1940, Kingisepp was the administrative center of Kingisepp Okrug of Leningrad Oblast, one of the okrugs abutting the state boundaries of the Soviet Union. After Kingisepp Okrug was abolished on September 19, 1940, Kingisepp became a town of oblast significance on December 17, 1940. In 2010, the administrative structure of Leningrad Oblast was harmonized with the municipal structure and Kingisepp became a town of district significance.

Administrative and municipal divisions
Within the framework of administrative divisions, Kingisepp serves as the administrative center of Kingiseppsky District. As an administrative division, it is, together with the village of Porkhovo, incorporated within Kingiseppsky District as Kingiseppskoye Settlement Municipal Formation. As a municipal division, Kingiseppskoye Settlement Municipal Formation is incorporated within Kingiseppsky Municipal District as Kingiseppskoye Urban Settlement.

Industry
The economy of Kingisepp is based on chemical, glass, and food industries. It is the location for the EuroChem Northwest ammonia plant which has the largest single-train production capacity in Europe, at 1 million tpy.

Transportation
The railway connecting St. Petersburg with Tallinn passes through Kingisepp and has a railway station in it. There is infrequent suburban service to the Baltiysky railway station in St. Petersburg and to Ivangorod.

The A180 Highway, connecting St. Petersburg and Ivangorod, passes Kingisepp as well. It coincides with the European route E20 connecting St. Petersburg via Tallinn. Kingisepp is also connected by road with Volosovo and Slantsy.

Culture
Kingisepp contains thirteen cultural heritage monuments of federal significance and additionally seventeen objects classified as cultural and historical heritage of local significance. The federal monuments include the Yam Fortress, the Saint Catherine Cathedral, Kingisepp (by Antonio Rinaldi), and the complex of military barracks of the 19th century.

Kingisepp has a local history museum. It was open in 1960 and is located in the buildings of the St. Catherine Cathedral. In 1990, the cathedral was transferred to Russian Orthodox Church and the museum was closed until 1999, when it re-opened in the former building of the commercial school, an architecture monument.

Twin towns – sister cities
Kingisepp is twinned with:

 * 🇵🇱 Bielsk Podlaski, Poland
 * 🇪🇪 Jõhvi, Estonia
 * 🇳🇴 Narvik, Norway
 * Pitsunda, Georgia
 * 🇫🇮 Raisio, Finland
 * 🇨🇳 Renhuai, China
 * 🇩🇪 Sassnitz, Germany
 * 🇧🇾 Svietlahorsk, Belarus

Notable people

 * Aleksei Ionov (1989), association football player
 * Vera Karelina (1870–1931), labor activist and revolutionary
 * Aleksandr Kerzhakov (1982), association football player
 * Mikhail Kerzhakov (1987), association football player
 * Pavel Mogilevets (1993), association football player
 * Grigory Spiridonovich Petrov (1868–1925), politician
 * Ivan Shpakov (1986), association football player
 * Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann (1861–1938), scientist

title: Kingisepp