Being a gamer myself and actually knowing something about the game world from the inside, I always found it funny when mass media talks about games from the evil point of view, especially when they throw the addiction bit in. My position on this is that games are not drugs, games are not alcohol, games are not some other sort of chemical substance, so it is impossible to have physical addiction to games. Yes, one can get used to games a lot psychologically, but the extent of this addiction is not even comparable to anything “real”, like smoking for example.
My opinion is based of course on my personal experiences and interactions with many other gamers. They all are different people with varying level of “addiction” to games, but they are all sane people.
However, today I was enlightened. And that reminded me of something else. I used to listen to BFBS radio (British Forces Broadcasting System) a lot. And I remember there was a period when they were discussing a problem they have in UK with pubs and early closing hours. A lot of semi-drunk people are kicked out to the streets all at once and they don’t have anywhere else to go, but home. I never thought of it as a big problem. After all, how many pubs in the area can you have and how many people that could be. I, of course, was thinking in terms of pubs we have in Cyprus, where the worst case scenario would be somewhere around 200 people. Until I’ve heard the radio mentioning some pubs which host as many as 4,000 people. Than I understood the problem properly. Indeed, if you have a couple of pubs like that in the area and you kick all those people out at midnight, you’ll have a problem on the street with noise, crowds, and probably a few broken properties and a few wet walls.
In the same way I was today enlightened about the “game addiction” problem within younger generations. How did that enlightenment come to me? By means of this video (via The Next Web blog):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc]
This opens a totally different perspective now, doesn’t it?
invalid parameters, it said, but could watch the video at the other site you’d linked… man that poor guy really redefines ‘majorly freaked out’ ROFL!! I wonder what happenned to his brother once he found out about the online video…!!
Somewhat vaguely but fondly reminded of the Star War kid, though of course he was just having fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
remade into
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
and in the process I also saw a version i hadn’t watched before – the Matrix version!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
(PS: btw I think in the list of plugins you’re restoring, you’d better remember the ‘follow up by email’ checkbox plugin else Ill probably never remember to visit this page again in case there are any further comments)
Sanjay,
which browser do you use? Cause the video seems to work fine in mine (I’m using a plugin to add the link).
Also, the “subscribe to comments” plugin added – thanks for the reminder.
Oh yeah – the star wars kids is the classic! :)
mustve been a temporary glitch – works fine now (Firefox 3)
omg, this better be a fake…
MMORPGs like WoW are the most addictive kind of games. They never end..they are not like a game of Quake that after 15 minutes finishes and gives you the option to choose if you will play another one or not. You can log out of MMOs, but the thought that when you log back in you’ll find your character just how you left it and will be able to work on it to improve it further..well it just makes you not log out in the first place. It makes you dedicate insane amounts of hours to the game, just because there’s always someone who dedicated more time and is stronger than you, and if something ever happened that would destroy your character (thus the time you put into it), well, that would mean the end of the world to some people.
Stefanos,
somehow I believe it is not a fake :)
Yeah the exact focus of the camera is pretty good to be a coincidence but still if it was a fake, that guy would get the oscar for his facial expressions alone and would be serious competition to Jim Carrey – so yeah I dont think its a fake! :)