Parents’ fears over ‘addictive’ iphone game
A VIDEO game that has been described as the biggest phenomenon since Pokemon Go has launched on iphones, amid concerns it is too addictive.
Fortnite: Battle Royale is a mass multiplayer online game where 100 players are dropped by plane on to an island littered with weapons. Players are left to fend for themselves, with the last player standing crowned as the winner.
Suzanne Sellman said that her son’s personality changed when he played the game. “When you pull them off, they are screaming at the television, they’re hiding, they’re calling each other, they are living in it with their friends,” she told This Morning on ITV.
A video of Drake, the Canadian rapper, and Tyler Blevins, a gamer, playing Fortnite broke all records on Twitch this week, with 635,000 viewers.
Matthew Preece, of UK Addiction Treatment Centres, said the game preyed on the brain’s dopamine receptors. He added: “When dopamine is released you get a feeling of euphoria or comfort, much like if you eat sugar or smoke a cigarette. It ties into the brain’s pleasure and reward system.”