Mother blames 'EverQuest' for son's suicide

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By Fennec Fox

(IDG) -- A woman in Wisconsin is planning to file a lawsuit against Sony Online Entertainment under the charge that popular online game "EverQuest" made her son commit suicide in November 2001.

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The woman, Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola, Wisconsin, claims that her son Shawn shot himself as a direct result of the 12 hours he spent every day playing the highly addictive online game. She said that Sony had refused to give her information about her son's playing habits, which she hoped would give some insight into his suicide.

"Shawn was playing 12 hours a day, and he wasn't supposed to because he was epileptic, and the game would cause seizures," Woolley said. "Probably the last eight times he had seizures were because of stints on the computer."

Although Woolley admits that Shawn had mental problems stemming from before he began playing EverQuest, she believes some social event that occurred in the game caused her son to go over the brink. She has hired an attorney and plans to push Sony to put warning labels on their games.