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A very interesting piece of long form journalism cum memoir about the way video gaming has subsumed and changed the way we live, interact, and think.
To the uninitiated, the figures are nothing if not staggering: 155 million Americans play video games, more than the number who voted in November's presidential election. And they play them a lot: According to a variety of recent studies, more than 40 percent of Americans play at least three hours a week, 34 million play on average 22 hours each week, 5 million hit 40 hours, and the average young American will now spend as many hours (roughly 10,000) playing by the time he or she turns 21 as that person spent in middle- and high-school classrooms combined. Which means that a niche activity confined a few decades ago to preadolescents and adolescents has become, increasingly, a cultural juggernaut for all races, genders, and ages. How had video games, over that time, ascended within American and world culture to a scale rivaling sports, film, and television? Like those other entertainments, video games offered an escape, of course. But what kind?
In 1993, the psychologist Peter D. Kramer published Listening to Prozac, asking what we could learn from the sudden mania for antidepressants in America. A few months before the election, an acquaintance had put the same question to me about video games: What do they give gamers that the real world doesn't?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday March 06 2017, @01:31PM (2 children)
Thats a good rant AC, no sarcasm that was well written in its genre.
However it fails in the assumption that all gaming is hyper repetitive FPS infantry propaganda.
What is the morals, ethics, and mind control aspects of Tetris. Tetris is hardly the only purely abstract game out there. Arguably EveOnline when I was playing around 05 or so was just an accounting spreadsheet with a nifty 3d screensaver I donno if its advanced beyond that but a game that boils down to given spreadsheet number X grind to generate X+1 doesn't seem to have a meaning other than "addiction is fun".
How about heavily modded minecraft, what is the secret society aspect of making a really freaking nice enderIO and storage drawers based cobbleworks, I'm rather proud of mine? What is the morals and ethics of using RFTools mod to create a dimlet based dimension made of draconium to "cheat" the grind built into Draconic Evolution, as best illustrated by Direwolf20 over the course of about two hours of video to eliminate weeks of grind and jump right into mid-late game draconic? Or knowing that I can cheat the grind and not enjoying the grind at all, what if I just cheat in 100 stacks of draconium powder and call it good, save all that time and kilowatt hours?
Or maybe Zachtronics TIS-100 I still chuckle a little at the line "It's the assembly language programming game you never asked for!" Its sorta like rockeys boots from 1980 and Intercal had a love child and they wrapped it up in a strange story line. Maybe a better analogy is its project euler or that bio-genetic site (brain freeze, I love that site but blood caffeine levels are too low) got a video game UI. So what about puzzles? Maybe an even better analogy is TIS-100 is just an assembly language programmers crossword puzzle.
Here's a real mind bender... A bunch of my friends get together on google hangout weekly to get drunk and play Pathfinder. If my work and life schedule were a little more stable I'd be joining in. Now is that healthy socializing, problem solitary drinking, problem social drinking, video/computer gaming because it involves apps for dice and chat and shared map graphics, all of the above, or none of the above? And how do the secret societies fit into this?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday March 06 2017, @05:12PM (1 child)
What is the morals, ethics, and mind control aspects of Tetris.
Is "free software should never have existed because it destroys the market" (source [slashdot.org]) enough of a moral for you?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 06 2017, @06:49PM
More like a hollywood actor talking about politics or my plumber talking about astrophysics, an authority in one are doesn't apply too well to others. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Tetris author had weird opinions about FOSS or biochemistry or if zero point nine repeating is in fact equal to one or whatever.