Post: When Your Best Friends are Video Game Characters,
Maybe It's Time to Pull the Plug
When Your Best Friends are Video Game Characters,
Maybe It's Time to Pull the Plug
Most of the debate surrounding video games these days has focused on the impact of game violence. But there's another little negative side effect of video games that hasn't gotten as much attention as of late: they take up a huge amount of time. And sometimes "taking up too much time" can even turn into an addiction.
Two recent articles (here from CBS, and here from the Dallas Morning News) chronicled the opening of a new center in Amsterdam to treat video game addiction.
As the CBS article notes, excessive video gaming may seem like an innocuous habit, but it does have serious consequences:
"Too much gaming may seem relatively harmless compared with the dangers of a drug overdose, but (Keith) Bakker, (director of Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants) says video game addiction can ruin lives. Children who play four to five hours per day have no time for socializing, doing homework, or playing sports, he says. 'That takes away from normal social development. You can get a 21-year-old with the emotional intelligence of a 12-year-old. He’s never learned to talk to girls. He’s never learned to play a sport.'"
There are 5 replies to this post
Date: July 5, 2006
That 21 year old may never have learned to play a real sport...but he will be freaking awesome at NBA Street Hoops on XBox.
Date: July 5, 2006
...and all the chicks dig that, don't they?
Date: July 8, 2006
This is actually a well-documented myth that video game play leaves no time for socializing. Henry Jenkins debunks this idea:
7. Video game play is socially isolating.
Much video game play is social. Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play with spouses or parents. Even games designed for single players are often played socially, with one person giving advice to another holding a joystick. A growing number of games are designed for multiple players — for either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed players. Sociologist Talmadge Wright has logged many hours observing online communities interact with and react to violent video games, concluding that meta-gaming (conversation about game content) provides a context for thinking about rules and rule-breaking. In this way there are really two games taking place simultaneously: one, the explicit conflict and combat on the screen; the other, the implicit cooperation and comradeship between the players. Two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer as friends off screen. Social expectations are reaffirmed through the social contract governing play, even as they are symbolically cast aside within the transgressive fantasies represented onscreen.
You can read the full article here:
Link: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/i
Date: July 8, 2006
Thank you, Mr. Blond. Enough said. :)
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHBJf15V-mM&mo
Date: July 20, 2006
But what about socializing with members of the opposite sex...