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Study Claims 8.5% of Young Gamers "Pathologically Addicted"
schnucki brings word of new research which claims roughly one in twelve American children between the ages of eight and 18 are "pathologically addicted" to video games. The study, conducted by Douglas Gentile, director of the National Institute on Media and the Family at Iowa State University, says that "pathological status was a significant predictor of poorer school performance even after controlling for sex, age, and weekly amount of video-game play." However, Professor Cheryl Olson, who has conducted her own research into video game use, questioned Gentile's methodology, saying, "The author is repurposing questions used to assess problem gambling in adults; however, lying to your spouse about blowing the rent money on gambling is a very different matter from fibbing to your mom about whether you played video games instead of starting your homework."
I would have tried for a Frost Piste, but I was too addicted to Frozen Bubble ....
lying to your spouse about blowing the rent money on gambling is a very different matter from fibbing to your mom about whether you played video games instead of starting your homework.
Wrong. Parents and taxpayers sacrifice money, time and effort to pay for education; if students are too addicted to X to learn anything then it's money down the drain just like gambling.
"The author is repurposing questions used to assess problem gambling in adults; however, lying to your spouse about blowing the rent money on gambling is a very different matter from fibbing to your mom about whether you played video games instead of starting your homework."
I disagree. I would argue that there is no real difference. Both are falsehoods designed to misdirect the most important woman in the subject's life on the subject's activities, which are not only counterproductive but guaranteed to raise the woman's ire when/if discovered. There is a difference in the severity of the consequences but both lies are essentially the same. Lying liars and the lies they tell — souls in need of correction whether young or old. There's times lying might be justified, but neither of these are those times.
And yes, I do remember being a kid and lying about playing video games, and that I knew the difference between lying for a potentially justifiable purpose, and just lying to avoid getting in trouble. Thanks for asking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hey, how about maybe the poor school performance was due to the fact that school is boring ( it is pretty much just memorising facts and figures ) and the more bored the child is, the more likely he is going to do something interesting/exciting like, I don't know, gaming?
Seriously, why does the blame always go one way?
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
"The study, conducted by Douglas Gentile, director of the National Institute on Media and the Family at Iowa State University, "
Ya, that is a totally impartial source when it comes to video games.
My grades sucked and there were no addictive computer games in my youth (or if, no addicted youngster had the money to feed the machines). Some study...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
'Video games' is an extremely broad category, especially when talking about addiction. The differences between a mmorpg, a fps with no artificial progress indicator, and a puzzle game need to be noted.
Most of these studies just seem to take a few random popular titles and assume the results apply to all.
So, 91.5% of young gamers are completely fine and video games in no way have altered their academic or social habits? Cool.
Dare I say it? Learning is boring for the feeble minded.
School !== Learning, I know. But you still have opportunity to direct your learning to some extent. Geeks may be more interested in the algorithms used in Egyptian calculation techniques than in the types of candles they used; or the method of production of black powder rather than who was using it, etc..
If nothing academic interests you try and steer yourself towards practical subjects.
If you're not going to play the school game then you should spend your homework time working, working on what you plan on doing to earn money, contribute to society and feed yourself with. You have to be at school, you don't have to get good grades, YMMV.
Never played a game where you had to churn away at earning rupees?
A study has released figures suggesting 99% of US kids regularly brush their teeth. Said the researchers desparate for research funds "it is clearly outrageous that kids are spending so much time in the bathroom!!11"
Instead of this silly polarization of school vs. games, maybe the educators ought to support the positive aspects of gaming instead of turning generations of gamers against them. I personally have benefited from video games with regard to my education. I would never have learned English at such a young age (I am not a native speaker) if not for all those hours spent playing adventure games. Puzzle games have a definite positive influence on a child's logic skills. Even social skills can be developed through multiplayer games - provided that working against others has adverse effects to the player. Sure, most things simply have to be learned from school books, but the point is that games can support the learning process, not just hinder it.
Even if it is true, games cannot be villified by these findings. Addiction as described by TFA is used as a means of escape, it even says so in the body of text, and if games didn't exist then some other medium would fill the void.
Before the widespread popularity of computer games (yes I'm that old) it was TV that my parents were sure I was addicted to. Now my loved ones are sure it's games, and to a lesser extent alcohol. If you ask me I'm just finding things to pass the time...
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I'm tired of this story.
who in her civil service job would ring her mother at 9:00 AM and talk to her to 11:00 AM about Coronation Street and eastenders. Would she be judged to be pathologically addicted to soaps?
A nurse in Saint Vincents Hospital refused a patient pain medication because of what Bella did on Fair City.
Would you want someone like that in charge of your healthcare?
A study performed by a [self-proclaimed] scientist revealed that all computer games are good, even the most violent ones. The study originally appeared on Slashdot, a very popular source of news for nerds:
All games are fun and entertaining and they don't have any negative side-effects. 100% of the tested players [me] confirmed it.
Is pathological addiction when you get lower than average grades, or is it when you sell your body for the next 15 minute rush from an illegal neurotransmitter mangler? I know a young lady who was addicted to crack for a while, ended up living in a crackhouse (and you can guess the rest) and she would probably object strenuously to the characterization of "pathological addiction" for low-school-grade getting because a kid spends time on a leisure activity instead of doing homework.
How does that compare to general addiction exposure ? For example to people doing gambling how many % are addicted ? To those doing drug from time to time, how many % are addicted ? How many doing any hobby fall into an addicting loop ? Or evena re addicted to TV ? If the aforementioned % are lower or higher maybe it would tell something, but 8.5% EVEN if the methodology was correct, is a nonsense absolute number telling us nothing.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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Sounds a bit disturbing they were controlling for sex of 8 year olds.
Wouldn't a certain percetange of the general population be susceptible to such an addiciton anyway?
So now we're trying to measure the impact.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
And you can tear my fingers from around my controller from my cold dead hands if you disagree...
Seriously, its up to parents to make sure that this doesn't happen, not Government. The problem is that there are too many lazy parents that prefer to keep their kids quiet with TV and Video Games than actually play together...Eductation doesn't stop at school, parents have an equal, if not more important, role in educating their children.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
The final study conclusion will be that Fukitol (the new shizzy wonder drug from Smith-Kline-Glaxo-Bayer-Bendover) will alleviate all symptoms...for a mere $6.66 per day.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
... journalists who mindlessly reprint "studies" released by the "National Family Institute of somethingsomething and the Family" one week, and then write articles bemoaning the lack of respect for professional journalism the next.
That a professor can use words like 'repurposing' TBH.
Back on topic though, I was probably addicted to them when I was a teen. I even used to hop on my moped and whizz over to the arcades in my lunch break when I was at work then spend hours on my Atari 400 in the evenings. All my money went on games (and when I wasn't playing video games I was probably shaking the D6's in a Traveller game). OTOH, I had peers who just spent all their money on getting drunk or buying new albums. Almost everyone, especially at that age has something that they really get attached to. That's not the problem. Making sure you ALSO do the important stuff is the key.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
you don't have to get good grades
You do if you don't want to be labelled as a "game addict".
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
I played video games as a teenager and it never affected me at all HEAD SHOT!!! as a matter of fact my grades were above average MULTI KILL!!! and I feel that it's totally fine for kids to play video games as long as they get their homework done WICKED SICK!!!!
Anything you enjoy can become "pathologically addicting". When you do something you enjoy, the happy chemicals in your brain get released, the very same chemicals released through the use, of say, heroin. If we are to villify video games for being addicting, then we must also villify every recreational activity known to, at some point in history, with at least one person, be enjoyed. I'll admit I get very addicted to turn based strategy games. I go crazy if I don't get "my fix". But anyone who passionately enjoys anything also can have the potential to get addicted to their activity of choice. Some peoples' brains are just more easily addicted than others.
. . . it's a lifestyle choice.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...it's safe to go back to crack-smoking now?
Jack Thompson must just love that this has come out just after his appeal was rejected without hearing...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I am curious why they state "pathologically addicted" - sounds a bit tautological to me? Do they mean pathological as in compulsive, because "compulsively addicted" seems strange. Or do they mean pathological as in a disease? I agree (as does the medical profession nowadays I think) that addiction is a disease in the medical sense of the word, so again tautological.
"I always assume Psychology students are hiding in the bushes"
Look at addiction rates for tv, newspaper reading, pro sports, repetitive formulaic movies, reading infotainment/complimentary copy magazines, shopping for Chinese junk you dont need, and listening to top40 music.
Those are supposedly mainstream activities (although far less than a majority participates in each) so they are not classed as addictions even if they have very severe negative consequences. Gaming is now a mainstream activity, therefore by popular definition it can't be an addiction. Making the original article meaningless.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Who'd care to bet that Dr. Gentile has an Xbox 360 hidden at the bottom of an old golf bag in his basement?
But of course there is a difference. 'the most important woman in the subject's life' expression hides the crucial difference in power relations.
One's partner is 'the most important woman in one's life' by choice, one's mother not. One's partner has exactly as much power over you as you agree to give her, one's mother (when one is a child) has quite a lot of power regardless. And when the latter power is abused, it is in my opinion entirely fair game to defend oneself with the means at one's disposal, and yes that includes lies if more savory means are exhausted. If one's mother thinks all computer games are evil for example, yes I think it's entirely justified to mislead her as to what exactly one was doing when visiting a friend.
Not all mothers are control freaks, but enough of those I've met are, to make your simile silly.
"I, for one, think that games are the better education. Schools focus nearly entirely on the left hemisphere of the brain"
Yeah , because you're really going to learn newtons laws or how to solve quadratic equations from playing super mario.
Perhaps the arty farty girly crap could be learnt better through games , who knows, but subjects that actually require you to THINK and LEARN require being TAUGHT.
And if you think those subjects are irrlevant you might want to go find out how the computer you wrote your post on was designed. It wasn't through a load of emotional discovery bullshit.
It isn't surprising that 8.3% of American teens are addicted to video games, especially since some video games such as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs) require vast amounts of time to be invested in order to progress and compete. In the majority of MMOs you progress by gaining levels, usually by killing X amount of enemies for X amount of experience creating extremely time consuming and repetitive gameplay. As MMOs are by definition massively multiplayer the competitive element means that in order to compete you need to have equal or better equipment/level/skills as other players, which means that the people spending 40 hours a week grinding game content set the bar for the other players. Also there's the social aspect, many tasks in MMOs require players to work in groups, so there's the pressure of playing in order to appease/help out your friends. Combine that with the fact that the game developers are constantly moving the goalposts with every patch/expansion, thus reducing the relative value of your equipment/achievements/money requiring you need to invest even more time to remain competitive, and it's no surprise that hardcore gamers are neglecting work/school/family duties. And the problem compounds itself. Say you get a D on an assignment because you stayed up the night before playing games. Disappointed with your grade, you're likely to go and play the computer game because being successful at a game gives you a sense of achievement and results in increased confidence. However, while you're busy spending hours gaining virtual achievements you're not completing your next assignment, so you fall into a loop of confidence highs and lows. It all comes down to self discipline and good time management. I speak from experience as someone who spent 3 years between the ages of 16 and 19 putting in 35+ hours a week to World of Warcraft and EVE Online, having to retake my A level exams and still ending doing on a foundation year. I don't use games as an excuse of my failure because it's down to lack of self discipline, but I'm sure that the nature of the games I played compounded the situation.
My grades sucked and there were no addictive computer games in my youth.
So based on a sample size of one, you conclude the exact opposite of the study presented?
Pardon me for not being convinced; you do get that the study doesn't say "every single kid in the room will be hopelessly addicted to games and get the worst grades possible if there's as much as a single game available", right?
A single data point which disagrees with the study doesn't disprove its conclusion. A healthy lump of data points, from a reasonable sample size, might. Emphasis: might.
I'm no statistics whiz-kid, but with n=1 you get a confidence in your conclusion that's very low.
Another study from those evilish ISA in order that we abandond the trenchs! HA HA HA IT WON'T BE THAT EASY, YOU MORRONS!!
It would be very interesting to me to see the percentages as stratified across age ranges from, say, 6 to 26. I think folks (like myself) who grew up in the days of Atari and Nentendo were on the "ground floor" (so to speak) of the video gaming revolution. To many of us still, we'd rather spend our free time playing video games than watching TV. I wonder how game time compares to TV time for those who are not "pathologically addicted"? We also can't forget the internet in this modern day and age - are the kids who are not spending lots of time playing video games simply wasting their time elsewhere (on facebook for instance?)
I think it's narrow minded to accuse games like this. If a child is not doing his/her homework - that blame lies at least partially on the parents. Let's quit blaming the "latest thing" culturally and take some responsibility for raising our children!
Sweet Judas Priest, this is bullshit.
Parents (or spouses) get lied to because they LET themselves be lied to. It is the parents responsibility to manage (and zOMG!!!111 participate in perhaps) their children's time and activities.
If kids are playing games 24 hours week and fall into (or perform poorly in) the risk categories defined in TFA, then there is clearly no adult paying attention. This is not a pathological condition, this is a case of stupid parents.
Children want to be entertained. Games are entertaining. Duh.
I guess "may be pathologically addicted" doesn't get as much attention as "are pathologically addicted".
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
I for one welcome our new Pathologically Addicted overloards.
shouldn't he, & the other ringleaders of the corepirate nazi illuminati be on trial for war crimes somewhere? it would make US look almost human again?
I've been playing for years and I ain't hooked yet!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Hello, my name is Mishotaki and i'm addicted to using the computer...
By that, I mean that all my spare time goes to using a computer to entertain me. Therefore, i spend all my week-ends on the computer...
Are they trying to fool us into telling us that playing videogames is less interesting to kids from 8 to 18 than studying? because i'm sure that it seems that the people sponsoring the researchs wants us to think so... videogames are fun, studying isn't. Kids prefer to have fun than not to... nothing new in that...
I'm pretty sure that if we had to conduct a study on ... i dunno ... stamp collectors - we'de find that 8.5% of them are "pathologically addicted" to collecting stamps .... dangerous ppl those stamp collectors!
As someone in your same boat, /agree completely. But if MMOs are the problem, what is the solution? Thoughts anyone?
The medical community now makes a careful theoretical distinction between physical dependence (characterized by symptoms of withdrawal) and psychological dependence (or simply addiction). Addiction is now narrowly defined as "uncontrolled, compulsive use"; if there is no harm being suffered by, or damage done to, the patient or another party, then clinically it may be considered compulsive, but to the definition of some it is not categorized as 'addiction'. In practice, the two kinds of addiction are not always easy to distinguish. Addictions often have both physical and psychological components.
Hmmm Eight POINT five percent. Very precise. Must not be any subjectivity in this study.
I_Voter
A work in progress Political Power in the U.S.
Please, this is now as useless as doing studies to see how much tv is being watched in each household....in the 70s ok, it was when it was become the staple for home entertainment.
Now we all know the TV is as much a part of a household as the toilet. No need to review any more
studies about how TV is this or that, we have all accepted it as normal part of our American culture.
Now , we move on to computers, since the 80s it has become more and more popular, to the point now of having multiprocessors at home (mini mainframes if you will). Even if you do no play games, but you download mp3s or listen to music, or download movies or watch them on your computer, or email, or read the news, or read up on specific information for homework related stuff, you will still have a sh*t load of time spent on the computer per week.
It does not need any more studies about what it does, we know what it does, it educates the masses with controlled information. If I were to get you hooked on a game about learning special ops techniques, and warfare, and masked it as a regular game, guess what you could be a NAVY seals (yes they have their own game/war simulator).
So it all depends on how we apply ourselves, and what we teach our kids about the use or pitfalls of computers. DO not blindly give a kid a computer, instead learn with him what is possible for his age, and let him see the possibilities that are there other then playing mario kart!!!
The onus falls on the parents, and also teaching the kid the difference between fun and practical.
have an accurate understanding of this one unless you have been playing 5+ hours of Doom, mortal combat, mega man a day since you were a young child. I definitely have had to deal with this one.
Kids dealing with current generation games will only have more issues. No ones really beats GTA. The fun never ends, till mom says it's time to wash the dishes.
Wow, well i'm 27 and i'm still addicted to video games... and then what?
Wait, a Craig Anderson cronie finds something bad about videogames? That's amazing!
There's no story here. Gentile has published lots of papers with Craig Anderson (here is Gentile's list of publications http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~dgentile/publications.htm ). Anderson has never met a form of media that didn't have negative effects. This is like Jack Thompson saying videogames are murder simulators.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
So that means 91.5% are just fine. Honestly, that number is fine with me. I mean seriously, you can find that level of addiction probably in almost anything. I'm sure 8.5% of them are also addicted to cartoons, Britney spears, toy cars, and barbies..
By the criteria they used in that study, probably 80% of the world's males are "pathologically addicted" to watching football/soccer too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Where is the superficial study that links the pathological addiction to sports with low grades? 'Cause I think you'd find more data in that one.
I just type sequences of Dwarf Fortress commands in random text boxes periodically to maintain my uber micro. bwz bTl dbd mvt
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
What should be done, really should be done is a comprehensive study of non-chemical addiction. I cannot imagine a person who is pathologically addicted to video games acting normal with some other stimulus substituted for video games. The problem with a study like this is it isn't going to be used to fix addiction; if it is used at all it will be used to control video games in some way. Just look at the headlines and see how the media is spinning it to get their headcount: http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=video+game+addiction
8.5% is a likely blood alcohol level for many older gamers!! :P
UR doin' it rite !
Squirrel!
It may or may not be that there is such a thing a game addiction - I don't think it is so unlikely, personally, although the question remains, as always, whether obsessive behaviour is the result or the cause.
But I think there is another issue that is rarely touched in any depth: What is it actually that motivates this preoccupation with drug use and addiction? It is of course true that drug abuse incurs a huge cost on society as well as on the individual, but that is clearly not the motive for most of those who have strong opinions against these things; otherwise we would now have tobacco and alcohol placed under much stricter controls than cannabis and possibly ecstacy.
I think we can guess some of it from looking back over history - in Victorian times when there were few restrictions, there were, on one hand, immense problems with opium (and alcohol) in particular, which created a strong backlash against drug use, but there were also strong and growing puritanical trends, which I think were rooted in the Reformation and perhaps most notably Lutheranism - it is interesting to note how Protestant churches traditionally are much more austere than Catholic ones.
It seems to me that there are some, who simply find it hard to enjoy life and who are jealous of enjoyment in others.
Study's are always flawed. Carrots are healthy.
Everyone who ate carrots in 1858 is dead.
Carrots are 100% fatal.
My mom told me playing DND would rot my mind.
Now I play Oblivion and WOW and make over $78,000 a year as a network engineer. I don't worship Satan either. I met him once he was a scientist doing flawed studies used to control and manipulate people into doing his bidding by passing legislation under the guise of public protection to make money for a bureaucratic government.
If you want to learn Newton's Laws, you'll need a game with a better physics engine :-)
But quadratic equations are a good example of what's wrong with school learning. You spend the better part a year in algebra class factoring equations of the form ax^2 + bx + c = 0, and then completing the square, and then finally at the end of the year they tell you that this has all been busywork and the answer is -b +/- sqrt(b^2-4ac)/2a. I spent some time writing a program to do the factoring busywork for me, and fortunately had an algebra teacher who didn't object. Lots more time for video games (Ultima IV, I think) that way. Seriously, you could teach everything from factoring to completing the square to the quadratic equation (including its derivation) to a reasonably bright set of students in a couple of weeks or less, save months of factoring busywork, let them play video games the rest of the time, and still come out on top educationally.
8.5% is a good start but I'd like to see those numbers up to 12+% within a few years.
Gonna go out on a limb and assume their building is in the shape of a giant cross.
The most common symptom was children skipping household chores to play games.
That is not a symptom of any kind of addiction. That is a symptom of chores sucking, as they have throughout history.
If children went out and played baseball instead of doing chores, it'd clearly be a symptom of children being addicted to baseball or outdoor activity, right?
Do they have a control group full of kids who willingly do their chores without being told? I'd be surprised if they found even one kid who enjoyed chores, much less a whole control group of 'em.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
A kid is only a kid of a few years.. They need to use the time to grow, accumulate interesting experiences and accomplish real things.
I've seen a kid who was an accomplished musician at the age of 10 or so just totally lose it and become incapable of doing anything as he grew into teen years. I'm sure video game addiction wasn't the only factor, but it was a big one.
My wife and I are a little addicted to the internet. Its affecting our financial position, the condition of our house, and the amount of work I'm able to get done.
My kids are toddlers now. Possible addiction to media and games is a huge concern to me as they grow.
is reading. I can't seem to stop. Why doesn't anybody study my addiction?
solution is simple if you dont have the Fking time to properly raise your kids dont fking have any mmmmkay? lazy biatches
The National Institute on Media and the Family is not at Iowa State University. Gentile works at ISU, but this group is not affiliated with them.
This group is not too different from the Parents Television Council, which does a better job of hiding it's intolerant religious agenda than the Family Research Council
The written word
Clothing
Housing
Electricity
Because I have lied about how much I use those things, use them to 'escape' my problems, become irritable if you take them away. (If you try to strip my clothing I will punch you.) I have also been known to avoid work to use electricity, read, etc. And trust me there are days when I use all four of those things and then do poorly at work.
Morons come up with a crappy definition then try to use it to attack things they dislike.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I look at this, and I see that this study might not be as flawed as it is stated to be. Like- it isn't like the only question asked was "do you lie to your mom about your homework to play video games"
It measured a whole bunch of factors- and most likely, there are those who have skipped school, bring their DS / gameboy / tomogatchi / PSP to class... have gotten suspended for repetitive electronics violations yada yada.
As most people can figure out- the more someone does xyz instead of school, the lower school grades are going to be for most individuals.
91 % of children play games and are perfectly fine. But, there is that 1/12 kiddo that is seariously suffering because they can't / won't put the game down. Yeah, I've known kids to miss meals because of games... I've known college kids to flunk out.
There are all kinds of addictions in the world. From drugs, caffeine, cigarettes, gambling to oh things like anorexia, bulimia, cutting, speeding...
Video games probably fall in there somewhere. The question really is how many? And, is there a way to reduce addictive behaviour in children? But- there are simply people out there who get addicted to things. Some manage just fine in the world, 'functional addicts' and some end up on crack on the street corner talking about bugs. It just depends. Overall though, on the scale of addiction harmfulness, video games probably isn't that high on the list on the road to self destruction.
Surprisingly, I actually found this to be a really good study. I was about to spout off with the usual response that "Correlation is not causality", when I found that the study's authors already had!
From the discussion:
"The primary limitation of this study is its correlational nature. It does not provide evidence for the possible causal relations among the variables studied. It is certainly possible that pathological gaming causes poor school performance, and so forth, but it is equally likely that children who have trouble at school seek to play games to experience feelings of mastery, or that attention problems cause both poor school performance and an attraction to games."
What I take from the study is that "pathological" gaming provides a pretty good predictive indicator of other issues with the child. This is what parents need to know; don't just take away video games and think "yay, I'm being a good parent!"
Figure out why the child is playing too much and address those issues.
Watch your damn kids and make sure they do what they're supposed to be doing. It's bad parenting to glare over their shoulder at all times - but it's equally as bad to NOT hover over them until they do what they're supposed to do. Make them do their damn homework.
If I'm 75 years old and the world is like Idiocracy, I'm going to punch every parent I see.
Any pleasing and distracting experience is a potential addiction. So, yes, gaming is addictive.
... of Garbage. Now leave me alone, I need to go play FarCry2.
What a charmingly adult thing to say :o)
Learning!=Boring, the whole reason any type of game is fun is because the players are learning patterns.
School==Boring, not learning.
Do I have to take your comment serious?
Whaddaya think? That I thought that you learn newton's (outdated by the way ^^) laws from playing super mario. For real???
I can't decide if you are so stupid that you really think I could possibly mean it that way, or if you just are a smart spin doctor, who twists everything until he can attack it.
Ok, enable your brain, because this is going to be hard for you:
Imagine a game, where you can learn the mathematics and physics (formulas, how you use them, and how it all works) while still not being cheesy but actually fun and thrilling.
Can you? Because I can.
Ok, I am a professional game designer, so I may have an advantage here. But believe me, if you give it some time and study, you can absolutely come up with something like that.
The only reason it isn't done right now, is because it would be too hard on players, who are not used to solving equations every day.
But you do in in school, for years. So why not make a game that expects stuff that is *that* hard. If you either start very easy, or know that your players are already good at that, and therefore, they will be in perfect balance between to hard and too easy... you will have a working game.
(I recommend adding a story that they can relate to, a teamwork aspect, and a good portion of humor. Like a good action adventure.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
... makes me want some Vicodin. I only have five left. Anybody got any Percs?
So, if I spend my time on slashdot instead of doing my homework, am I addicted?
Fuck Beta
At that age, there's a certain bodily function you're finding that is pent up inside of you... I think that 'gaming' addiction is a cover up for this other function they are finding more interesting :-)