Father hires virtual hitmen to kill off his son online.

[jastius]

studies have shown that multi player games are attractive to a schizophrenic personality pattern. but I don't think that applies to you, Karn, because you don't like them. you may be a little like House on the TV, though, isolated by excelling. I think isolation among other traits is more of a compulsive thing or a learned survival skill then House's flirting with ashbergers syndrome. psychologists do use video games as a desensitization device for many phobias including fear of flying, fear of creatures like spiders snakes and bees. ( clowns...)

 

[Jack Parker]

I think that's hilarious.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

studies have shown that multi player games are attractive to a schizophrenic personality pattern. but I don't think that applies to you, Karn, because you don't like them. you may be a little like House on the TV, though, isolated by excelling. I think isolation among other traits is more of a compulsive thing or a learned survival skill then House's flirting with Asperger's syndrome. psychologists do use video games as a desensitization device for many phobias including fear of flying, fear of creatures like spiders snakes and bees. ( clowns...)

A little? The reason I enjoyed that show so much was because I related so well to the character. Even down to the bad leg-though for different reasons.


And yes, games can often have beneficial qualities, and I do enjoy playing games. But I suspect I have some mental issues as well, beyond depression...

 

[Rahl Windsong]

The first MMO I ever played was Ultima Online, and in that game they had a volunteer program where anyone playing the game could volunteer to become a Seer. The Seer's job was to write and submit dynamic fiction events to the developer, Origin Systems. If your story was approved by them it would be implemented on the server your Seer account was setup on.

Most Seer storylines were vast and would take the server population up to a year or more of real time to complete and the really good ones were even longer then that and may even have parts where the villain in one of their stories would appear again a year or more after their first event for the server.

During this time in UO, it was not a case of if I would login each day, I HAD TO LOGIN because my character was a part of this amazing storyline and I had to be there to be part of what happened next.

Keep in mind that all Seer storylines had to be open ended enough so that if the players took the story in a direction the Seer never even thought of, that Seer would have to rewrite and change their story to suit what the players had done.

I was addicted back then, no doubt about that. However it all ended because once EA bought out Origin Systems they proceeded to end the volunteer program and changed UO so much that it was no longer the ruthless world I was used to playing in...

 

[Gordian Knot]

This from the article:

"It's not the time you spend doing something, it's the impact it has on your life."

That's the bottom line in a nutshell. If you are taking care of your other responsibilities, what you do otherwise is your own business (as long as, obviously, it isn't illegal!). Whether it be watching the tube for hours on end, or gaming for hours on end doesn't really matter. Neither is better or worse than the other.

 

[BigJ]

No idea if anyone would still be interested, but I just saw this thread and thought of a couple links some of you might like to see.

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

A story about what an EverQuest addiction cost this guy
http://kotaku.com/5384643/i-kept-playing--the-costs-of-my-gaming-addiction

As far as my own personal experience, there has definitely been times when I have been addicted to games, I think mostly either as a form of escapism, or as a form of competition. Really any single player game with a story for the former, and some time spent playing competitive multiplayer games online for the latter. Though I've always deliberately stayed away from MMOs because, well, they frighten the crap out of me. I don't drink anymore because I couldn't control that, and part of me wonders if I possess some elements that make me vulnerable to some forms of addiction, and it just isn't worth the risk to take even one step into WoW or any number of similar games. At least a game you play for the story will inevitably have an ending.

 

[mosaix]

I liked the quote from Douglas Adams - "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."

Very profound.

I was born just after WWII and the whole planet, sick to the back teeth with with war, seemed a relatively peaceable place. Around me, in Manchester, were the bombed out shells of buildings and much effort was put into pulling them down and replacing them with homes, offices and factories.

It seemed to me, at the time, that war was the exception and humanity was striving to return the planet to it's natural state - peace.

How wrong I was. In the near seventy years of my life I don't think there's been a single decade in which the UK hasn't been at war with someone. Of course nearly always under the guise of bringing peace.

 

[Glisterspeck]

No idea if anyone would still be interested, but I just saw this thread and thought of a couple links some of you might like to see.

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

A story about what an EverQuest addiction cost this guy
http://kotaku.com/5384643/i-kept-playing--the-costs-of-my-gaming-addiction

As far as my own personal experience, there has definitely been times when I have been addicted to games, I think mostly either as a form of escapism, or as a form of competition. Really any single player game with a story for the former, and some time spent playing competitive multiplayer games online for the latter. Though I've always deliberately stayed away from MMOs because, well, they frighten the crap out of me. I don't drink anymore because I couldn't control that, and part of me wonders if I possess some elements that make me vulnerable to some forms of addiction, and it just isn't worth the risk to take even one step into WoW or any number of similar games. At least a game you play for the story will inevitably have an ending.

Great articles. I went through a period with FPS games, where I spent way too much time online, to the point where it affected my relationship at the time. I then began mapping for the games I was playing (RTCW, RTCW:ET), which ended up being much more fun for me -- talk about ultimate world building -- and taking even more time. That led to long nights of Battlefield and CoD, but I shook it. In part, because my friends started to play on consoles, and... forget that. Also, I wasn't about to put in the time they did to XP up, and the whole preservation of XP in FPS games didn't make sense to me (though it makes better sense after reading the article). I wanted a fairer playing field. The final straw was when the games abandoned the WWII theme for the contemporary battlefield. For some reason, I found it extremely unsettling to be playing at a war that I had friends fighting in real life.

Anyway. I don't game much anymore, though I did just spend my vacation playing through Zelda Skyward Sword. And I'll play on my mobile devices. In fact, I just started working on building my own endless runner!