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A Different Perspective on Gaming Addiction
Doomstalk writes "With all the negative press that gaming addiction has received as of late, it's interesting to see things from a different perspective. The Escapist has an article posing gaming addiction as a symptom of a larger problem: 'Are you doing it for the pleasure of the game, or the distaste of something else?'" From the article: "Why else would we routinely drop $50 on the latest iteration of games like Madden, Final Fantasy and Unreal Tournament - games that are, usually at their core, just like their predecessors? Why do we continue to spend upwards of $300 on the newest 'next generation' console? Why is it that, like kids who shovel out the basketball court in the middle of the winter, we line up outside retailers hours, if not days, ahead of time for worldwide console releases?"
Why do people shell out $25 for the latest and greatest books? Entertainment.
Because society has turned into a gigantic media whore. We're so engrossed in forms of entertainment, moreso than we've ever been before at least. The corporations don't help this, of course. They're out to make enormous amounts of money off our willingness to believe we need their products for a better life.
It all seems to boil down to getting people to stay pacified by moving picture boxes so we don't care about anything else. We may call this an addiction, but I'm sure from someone's eyes, it's plan gone far better than they thought possible. Call me paranoid, but I try to distance myself from anything TV / Radio related, not only because 99% of it is trash, but because I feel it just doesn't contribute anything healthy to one's life.
Obviously this isn't just related to games. It's all forms of media, really. I'm not saying it's all evil and bad, but people should step back and really analyze how they're living in the midst of it all. We used to own devices, the games, the tv programs, etc. Now, it seems, that they own us. That doesn't sound like such a good place to be.
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
Gamers are people who enjoy a particular activity, which is immensely fun and enjoyable, improves their hand-eye coordination, exercises their problem-solving skills, and lets them get away from the tedium of the real world for a while. IT'S JUST ENTERTAINMENT.
Before you convince me that gamers are "addicts", you'll have to demonstrate how gaming is worse or more evil than the couch-potato TV watching most of the rest of the population does for five hours a day. You'll also have to constrast gaming with ALL of the other hobbies people have engaged in over the past thousand years or so. Hobbies like fly fishing (mentioned in the article), model ship and plane building, wood carving, playing a musical instrument, and studying history.
Because THE TRUTH IS, human beings (and almost all other animals with any intelligence, like apes and large monkeys) enjoy spending their leisure time in imaginative, playful activities. We just do. We don't live to work, or eat, sleep and fuck, we spend a lot of our time simply exercising our brains. AND WE'RE MEANT TO. It's our inner nature! It's WHO WE ARE. And all of us, from the dowdy housewife who collects Beanie Babies to the military buff who lusts after R. Lee Armey, to the gamer playing Halo 2 online, ALL are simply behaving properly according to our species' emotional and intellectual needs.
The ONLY reason gaming has been singled out as "addictive" and negative in context is that the majority of our population is very closed-minded and can't wrap their mind around an activity that doesn't involve sports or television sitcoms. If you want to take the gloves off and deal with the issue honestly, that's it in a nutshell: gamers are "different and weird" and Must Be Stopped. It's the "You damn kids today!" mentality. A generation from now, we'll be pissing and moaning about some new technology and decrying IT as the end of the world.
It's boring, people; can't we talk about something more interesting?
P.S. YES, I know there are obsessive-compulsive people who game until their fingers bleed. But there are ALSO obsessive compulsives who engage in every other activity under the sun. It's not the gaming, it's the obsessive with a mental problem, correlation, NOT causation.
Final Fantasy games are hardly like each other.
> Why else would we routinely drop $50 on the latest iteration of games like Madden, Final Fantasy and Unreal Tournament
We don't. We're still trying to find the amulet of Yendor, you insensitive clod.
Why do people shell out $50 for a bottle of wine that they consume over the course of a couple of hours and then it's gone forever?
And somebody shells out $50 for the next version of Unreal Tournament because they enjoy the added features (like vehicles in Onslaught) which they get to enjoy for countless hours over the course of years, and some fool on the internet with an opinion takes offence? Why, oh why won't somebody think of the children!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
A co-worker bought a new boat. Or rather bought a not so new boat that he spend the entire summer stripping and painting. Super healthy stuff that standing in a shed sanding of marine paint and applying it in one of the warmest summers we have had in holland.
A friend likes to dive. In water with sharks. He spends all year saving up for a long holiday submerging his body exposing it to pressures it is not designed for breathing air under pressure surrounded by critters that think "Yummy, a hairless seal".
As for the people who party hardy shooting themselves full of drugs to dance throughout the weekend. Wohoo! Cheap chemicals, sign me up.
Oh and what to think of that image next to the article. That ever sane person who takes up fishing as a hobby. Standing with your balls in freezing water with a 1000 dollar carbon fibre rod to get a diseased posion laden half death fish. If your lucky.
Nah, gamers are the sane one. I have had this conversation more then once "Boss: You spend your christmas bonus on a vidcard?" "Me: yes thank you should last me all year." "Boss: insane Oh, you seen the new rubbers for the windows on my classic porche" "Me: yeah".
Life is short, enjoy it anyway you can. If it is gaming, well who cares how much it costs, is not like you have a girl to waste it on.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Ok, time to come clean: first off, the author of the article is my older brother; secondly, I edited the piece for him before he submitted it for publication. As such, I've read the article many times- enough to see that Zonk missed the point entirely when he selected a quote. Yes, the article posits that gamers are usually addicted to their hobby, and as such willing to sometimes do some extreme things- much like devotees of other amusements. But that's far from the main thrust of the article.
The point is that, when he let his gaming habits get out of hand, my brother didn't do it because it was fun, so much as it was better than what he was supposed to be doing. Instead of investigating <i>why</i> games are so addictive for some of us, he argues that a severe addiction can be a proverbial dead canary for your normal life. He wasn't doing something he really enjoyed, so he escaped into games instead (it didn't help that there were six PCs, two Playstations, two Saturns, an N64, an SNES, and six people in a space smaller than your average living room- but that's beside the point). Much like I said, his gaming was a symptom of a larger problem, rather than a problem unto itself. His tale is meant to serve as a warning: if you're spending too much time on your hobby, take a look at your life- you may find something in dire need of fixing.
Why does it matter if gaming is 'too popular'?
You sound like a high-school kid talking about his (former) favorite band, that he used to like, until they became 'too popular'.
If someone really likes gaming, they should play games. Then we all get more games, more genres, better hardware.
It's not an "I'm so cool" popularity contest- it's just plain entertainment.
No reason to lie.