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Baffled By the Obsession With Pretend-Business Games
theodp writes "Newsweek's Daniel Lyons confesses to being mystified by all the people tending to their virtual farms and virtual pets on Facebook. Even stranger, he says, is their willingness to spend real money to buy virtual products, like pretend guns and fertilizer, to gain advantage in these Web-based games. Pretend products are a serious business, estimated to grow to $1.6B next year, and have captured the attention of economists and academics who view the virtual economy as a lab for modeling behavior in the real world. Still, Lyons can't help but question whether the kind of people who spend hours online taking care of imaginary pets are representative of the rest of the population. 'The data might be "perfect" and "complete,"' says Lyons, 'but the world from which it's gathered is anything but that.'"
You are one cruel, mean man. And depending on the ability of the workers it might even be the bigger security risk. Trust me on this one, filtering popular pages in a company filled with highly skilled network engineers who couldn't care less whether they get fired is ONLY a good idea if you're trying to figure out whether your firewall is actually secure. But I wouldn't do it in a production environment...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
>>>I probably have more social interaction with a 1 minute conversation with the clerk at the convenience store...
if you believe that your ignorant and lack a big picture view. the clerk is payed to interact with you to some extent, and they have to play nice to maintain their job, but in reality you are just another problem in their life that they have to deal with, the more you think there is some sort of real social interaction going on, the more the clerk is forced to deal with a crazy stalkerish person that has no clue about real social dynamics.
there are places people go to chat online, be it in a game or on a board, because it is easy to match interest and comfort level, and part of what breaks the ice is you can walk away at any time and not be followed if you find yourself in the wrong crowd.
as far as video games in particular, except for the niche 5-15 minute games that people with lives play, the majority of "serious" gamers are people who have lost "the game" aka life. the reasons are many, they can be poor, ugly, disfigured, socially inexperienced, or otherwise desperate for human interaction, and the more they grasp the more society keeps it's distance. things are made worse for them by as***** that pretend to be nice to them such as classing them as "just friends" because those people are ignorant and desperate enough to believe it, and it all eventually comes to a head, where they are forced to realize the truth, leaving them devastated.
when they finally do realize that society has no place for them they retreat to artificial worlds, games, books, porn, etc.