Rajat Manandhar

Sec-A

Roll-18

Review of Article Gamer Widow: A Phenomenological Study of Spouses of Online Video

Game Addicts
This is a research based article written by Jason C. Northrup & Sterling Shumway. The
purpose of this article is to describe the lived experiences of the spouses of online video game
addicts via qualitative, phenomenological methodology. The article was published online by
Routledge, The American Journal of Family Therapy on 22 Apr 2014. The article has a brief
analysis on the experiences of participants of being married to an online video game addict
A person who considers their husband or wife pays more attention to gaming (online
games, MMORPG, console games etc.) than they do to them is known as gamer widow.
Therefore making them a widow. The writer has pointed out how the gaming addiction affects
the players emotional intimacy in the relationships, hobbies, sleep, work, education, or
socialization a decrease in communication as a result of the addiction. In addition, the writer has
cited several views of the spouses who are the participants of the research. They were mainly
wives. The data were collected through online and open-ended questions by researching 10
participants. Thus, rigorous method was applied for the findings by selecting three categories:
Changes in My Husband, Changes in Me, and Changes in the Marital Relationship. Among these
categories, seven themes and 12 subthemes emerged.

The writer has given opinion on how to stop this addiction by determining the familys
stage, removing of the game for an extended period so that the gamer can detox. Similarly, it
has given opinion on the impacts of the method listed above to stop this addiction. According to

the research, the gamers couldnt stay away from gaming for longer period of time which
resulted in more vulnerable emotions like loneliness, rejection, and fear.
All the cases of gaming addiction may not be like this situation which made the spouse of
the addict gaming widow. This research was conducted among 10 spouse only. The participants
should have been more for more variable results. The data were collected online. The researcher
couldnt ask immediate follow-ups to the responses given by the participants. Moreover all the
participants were female. If there were addicted wives the findings could have had different
results.
In conclusion, the paper is very crucial in terms of study of spouses of Online Video
Game Addicts. The writer is very successful in delivering the information in terms of message.
The presentation of the paper seems good and readable also. The main strength of the paper is
that it has clearly explained the ideas of effects of gaming addiction on the addict. It also adds to
the literature by describing how marital relationship gets affected. The main weakness of the
paper is that it has taken very few sample i.e. only 10. So the result might be different if the
samples were more. Moreover the sample were only female. If the participants were male the
result would have been completely different. So in overall the article would have been more
effective if the weakness had been avoided.