Saturday, August 16, 2008

Addiction in Computer Games

I never play computer games, so i have no idea how easily people will addict to them. I saw other people playing sometimes, but it has no appealing to me. First, those games are so violent and continuous killing others or monsters. It's too boring to do these things repeatedly (maybe there are very interesting parts but i don't know). Then, when people playing games, the game takes up the full screen which make me feel dizzy. I can't tolerate staring at it for a long time. Also, i bet if i do play online games, i would be a terrible one. HA...HA...
However, i heard from TV that there are quite a few teenagers who addict to online games and cannot get themselves out. There was a piece of news about this that i heard many years ago. A boy whose family was poor addicted in computer games. He was the only boy in his family, so his mom (his father dead) loved him too much and spent a large amount of money buying a computer for him. In his room, there was nothing except a bed and the computer. Everyday he did nothing but playing games. He droped from school, ate and slept very little and never talk to families. His mom realized how serious the problem was but she was helpless. He never listend to others' advices and had a rather bad mood. She felt into despair and smashed the computer. But he stole money and went to the internet bar. Sometimes he beat his mother for not giving him money. At last, the mom need to find assisstance from a speical organizion. The boy totally lost in the virtual world and it would take a while to "rescue" him.
Unfortunately, my memory about this news stopped here, and i forgot what happened next.

In my opinion, designers of online games have part of responsibilities. They design those endless games which "force" players to invest their money and energy constantly. Players always have something to do and the upgrade never stops. The more they play, the harder they can stop. Last year, the anti-addiction system put into practice but it had little help. If those games have limits and will finish at a resonable level, the number of people who addict to online games would decrease dramatically.
More importantly, players are the first ones to blame. They allow themselves to give up leisure and study time just for those games which are useless to them. How stupid!

3 comments:

Fawaz said...

My god how much I like your writing Wendy..! I totally disagree with you from the role of the designers because this is their job to make people more interesting about their products. If some people can't control themselves this is their problem not the designers one. However we 'll talk more Wednesday.

Green Tree said...

Wendy, I think anti-addiction software is a great solution!

I think the software companies could share the market to two parts; the first part produces the addictive video games and second part produces the anti-addition software to help the players to get rid of addition!

These companies just take advantage of individuals and their problems.

mohammad_313 said...

Hhhhhh.Funny endless story combined with endless games…nice writing, Wendy.