No business would welcome being compared to Big Tobacco or gambling. 【C1】_____that is what is happening to makers of video games. For years parents have casually【C2】__that their offspring are “addicted” to their PlayStations and smartphones. Today,【C3】__, ever more doctors are using the term【C4】_____.

On January 1st “gaming disorder”—in which games are played compulsively, despite causing harm—gains【C5】_____from the World Health Organization (WHO), as the newest edition of its diagnostic manual【C6】__. A few months ago China, the world’s biggest gaming market,【C7】__new rules limiting children to just a single hour of play a day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and none the【C8】__of the week. Western politicians【C9】__publicly about some games’【C10】__to gambling. Clinics are sprouting【C11】_____the world, promising to cure patients of their habit in the same way they might cure them of an addiction to alcohol or cocaine.

Are games really addictive? Psychologists are【C12】_____. The case for the defense is that this is just another moral【C13】_____. Some people in the past issued similarly serious

【C14】_____about television, rock ’n’ roll, jazz, comic books, novels and even crossword puzzles. As the newest form of mass media, gaming is merely enduring its own time in the stocks【C15】__it eventually ceases to be controversial.【C16】__, defenders argue, the criteria used to【C17】__gaming addiction are too loose. Obsessive gaming, they suggest, is as likely to be a【C18】__(of depression, say) as a disorder【C19】__its own right. The prosecution responds that, unlike rock bands or novelists, games developers have both the motive and the means to【C20】_____their products to make them irresistible.

【C6】