Hardcore gaming may be bad?  No way, it rocks.  I loved this series about hardcore gaming and the people that do it.  based partly on a true story and all that jazz.  If you haven't seen it, watch and enjoy it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guild

I have a friend which is an hardcore CoD player for 2 years now.

He doesn't have a life.

Now people you need balance in life

gaming isn't all bad, that guy in the video could of got the same effects from watching too much TV, gambling, alcoholism, drugs, excessive muscle building, addiction to about anything can do those effects.

But its all about Balance

Social -> Entertainment -> health

You must balance your social life by social interactions with people, right now with a socially interacting with each other as a community, online games such as FPS onlines have social interactions, Facebook etc.

Entertainment: Gaming is entertainment and people need entertainment or else you get depressed and live unhappy, entertainment comes in many ways but for around 500 million people Gaming is there Entertainment.

 Health: you must keep healthy, Walk every day, exercise every day, eat healthy. healthy body = healthy lives. 

Keep your balance and you will be find. 

people might say i am a gaming addict, but i have social interaction with people 6 days a week or almost every day, and for hours a day. I play Sports and run every day, and on top i enjoy video games as my main source of entertainment. 

This guy went over board and its sad but people can learn from there mistakes. 

Exactly. Balance is key.

If gaming is interfering with your productivity, your social life or your health (ie. lack of exercise), you have to cut back on it.

All of those elements are important. Don't just think that being productive and healthy is enough. Having a social life is very important. Even if deep down you really don't care about going out with people on the weekends, you have to force yourself to because if you don't give yourself enough opportunities to socially interact with others it's going to bite you in the ass once you start working at a 'real job'. Trust me. Social skills are very important. Work isn't just about being productive and competent at what you do. You have to be a good conversationalist and in order to be a good conversationalist you need a lot of social practice and a variety of interests and life experiences.

Given that I've spent almost all of my weekends in high school and college in front of a computer screen (and to a lesser extent game console), I haven't had as much social practice as most people my age and my interests and life experiences are quite narrow compared to most people my age. This makes me a poor conversationalist and a dull individual in the eyes of most people. As a result, I'm pretty quiet at work and I have difficulty chit-chatting with my boss and co-workers (trust me on this, this will fuck you if you want to advance your career). I have been trying to improve my social life but it's hard to do when you barely have any real friends (people you hang out with on a regular basis. Facebooking and instant messaging with old friends you met in school and chat with online but don't hang out with doesn't count).

So in a way if you have a natural inclination to introversion, you kind of have to "sell out" yourself in order to be successful. That means cutting back on the videogames and computer/internet use and devoting your time to more mainstream'd and social interests (like watching network television, mainstream movies, going out with friends, clubbing, camping, travelling, etc.) The realization that I have to "sell out" my self a bit does make me feel bitter. But that is the world we live in. You have to fit into a mould that society expects. So recently I've been trying to build more of a social life. In order to do that I'm going to have to make new friends as well since I've drifted away from a lot of my old friends and they are pretty much all busy with their own social lives to include me anymore.

So recently I've been cutting back on the gaming and I've been thinking about imposing a "gaming budget" on myself to prevent myself from gaming more. Next gen I'm probably going to just get a couple Next Gen systems (the next Xbox and Playstation most likely) and that's it. It sucks when you can't play an exclusive on a system you don't own but it's not the end of the world.

Even when it comes to gaming habits, I am trying to be more mindful of the social element behind it. For eg. A friend of mine is really into playing FIFA and NHL online. The REAL me in this situation thinks, "fuck sports games, I want to go import Last Window (DS Hotel Dusk sequel). I've been dying to play this game!" (its this kind of thinking that has led me to not having many friends left after all. lol) But the more rational me thinks, "I should probably do the social thing and spend the money on those sports games to play with him rather than blow said money on my geeky niche videogames all the time." Of course I could just spend on all of it. But spending more money on videogames isn't really the solution to achieving balance. It just leads to even more imbalance (spending so much time in front of a screen relative to other stuff).