BBC Documentary to Investigate Videogame Addiction

Tomtitan

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Jun 7, 2010
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In the end there was a lot of bias, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it scaremongering or something. They did represent both sides of the case, but of course you know the show was about shock tactics (he played for 20 hours a day! they let their kid die!), so yeah...

But oh my God the reporter was so irritating I wanted to punch him.

He had a ponytail. 'Nuff said.
 

gibboss28

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Feb 2, 2008
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It was an interesting watch, there were some pretty interesting points that made sense and I agreed with.

On the other hand the way it was presented and the way it used the music when it was putting something across negatively....yeah, pretty one sided and it doesn't take much to guess the side.
 

JasonBurnout16

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Oct 12, 2009
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Musiclly enhanced said:
JasonBurnout16 said:
Yer well that was a pretty biased program.

Everything they said was positive about games they overshadowed by showing something horribly negative.

It also seems they only studied extreme cases. Two mentally unstable Koreans and a boy who plays 20 hours a day is evidence now? I don't see them interviewing someone who gets home from school and plays 1/2 hours a day?
People need to remember it's only isolated cases people get addicted. Not everyone will get addicted to a game.
i really agree with you its far too biased and so i have to do a gsce presentation tomorrw and im doing on violence in video games and how its not that effective its just afew people that the media pick out in their increddibly biased studies to scare parents into thinking that their children will turn into these 150 hour a week playing WoW nerds just because there child wanted to complete their game of CoD
Good luck in your GCSE presentation tomorrow :D
 

Pandora92

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Apr 2, 2010
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Cpt_Oblivious said:
miniwak said:
Daystar Clarion said:
Already read up on this and I believe Extra Credits mentioned it. The 'addictive aspect' is the same thing that gamblers suffer from. Blame the cheap mechanic, not the game.
agreeded. I shall be watching this tonight. Let's just hope the uk goverment don't try to pull a similar stunt to california has.
They won't, they know they're not doing too well right now and want to stay in power.

I will be watching this episode, though I'm not expecting much. Panorama isn't known for being unbiased.
Actually fairly sure that selling games to minors under the age rating already IS illegal in the UK, and the same applies to films and other forms of "creative media" as well and the system works fine, so I've never really got the problem with this whole court case in the US.

I actually missed the chance to watch this because my mum was watching the "anniversary episode" of Corination Street, but I recorded it to watch later. Anyone else find it ironic that they should this documentary the day Cataclysm comes out though? Rofl.
 

The Lunatic

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Jun 3, 2010
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Pretty biased, not directly, but, there was a definite indirect bias.

It's all in the wording really.

"We took our findings to the UKIE"

Because apparently you don't trust them in the first place and therefore are trying to prove them wrong?

"Gaming addiction isn't classified... Yet."

So, you think it should it?

All sort of stuff like that.
 

ph0b0s123

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Panorama had a lot of points in the bank with me, after they warned members of the public about the potenital danagers of the Digital Economy bill. Unfortunately the methods they used to demonstrate real dangers in that documentry. They also used to exagerate a very small danger in this documentry.

They did get some stuff right. Game addiction is possible, as is addiction to nearly anything, fishing for example. But very very rare. Addiction is more likely to happen with on-line games, that have a vested interest in keeping you paying subscriptions. But I bet the number of people addicted to WOW, is about at most 1% of players. And finally they said Perants should take more responsibility and keep an eye on playtimes hours better.

But any negative facts were sexed up to seem bigger than they are, by the program. I think you could have made the same program about being addicted to watching footbal or fishing. I don't see anyone giving the industry bodies there a had time for not doing more about addition.

To me any activity could be thought of as an addition if it starts to interefer with your job, school work, relationship with wife / husband or looking after your children. When thought of like this the amount of activities that could be considered as addictive is huge. But then videogames are new and people don't get them, so que the standard fear response.

Been playing for about 25 years and have never needed or had to give any game playing friends any 'interventions' over this. Cannot say that for other activites. That tells me how big a problem or not it is.
 

Stales89

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Dec 7, 2010
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Umm... quite interesting to read these comments actually.

I am this Joe Staley that you all seem to think so little of... and I will say that they edited it badly... to the extent where some information was either a blatent lie or out of context.

Anyway... I'm happy to discuss anything with you so feel free to drop me a message.
 

ph0b0s123

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Stales89 said:
Umm... quite interesting to read these comments actually.

I am this Joe Staley that you all seem to think so little of... and I will say that they edited it badly... to the extent where some information was either a blatent lie or out of context.

Anyway... I'm happy to discuss anything with you so feel free to drop me a message.
Welcome. Hopefully one of the Escapist staff / news posters will get in touch to get the whole unedited story from you. Hopefully they can do a better jornalisic job than the program...

Edit: I just looked back and I think it was only one person who had very negative things to say. Unfortunately you get that in any forum and is part of the price of fame. But any setting us striaght on how the program changed things would be much appritiated.
 

b3nn3tt

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May 11, 2010
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I think that it could have been more balanced, but at least it wasn't all the way over to the 'games are evil, we should destroy them' side. As some people have already said, they seemed to follow any positive coments straight up with some very negative ones

Throughout the program though, I couldn't help but think that a lot of the 'addictions' they talk about could easily have been avoided by the parents actually being aware of what their kids were up to. The kid that played WoW all day, when he dropped out of school, his mum should have gone to his bedroom and checked what he was doing.

Overall, the message that I got from the programme was that games can be addictive, but only in a small minority of cases, and often only if you have an addictive personality, in which case it could be anything that you get addicted to
 

WolfLordAndy

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Sep 19, 2008
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I personally found it totally unbalanced... yes they said the occational positive statement, but the whole emphasis was on the negative extreme cases, playing sinister music to make us feel like what we're watching is bad/evil. Its tv psychology 101, and while us as informed gamer types arn't effected by it at all and take heed of the positive comments I wonder how many people who don't know or understand gaming as a form of entertainment and over protective parents will take it.

Fortunately I'm doing a games based project in January where I'll be surveying as many parents as possible to do with game ratings and if/how they monitor their kids... will be interesting I'm sure.
 

RobJameson

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Mar 18, 2008
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It was an unbalanced program, I'll disect it as thus.

Firstly they went into a totally unproved medical condition which is nowhere near being confirmed or even called an addiction as it has shaky evidence at best and no peer reviewed evidence or anything more than hyped news stories backing it with the assumption it was true.

Fundamental...Scientific...Flaw

If someone makes a claim, you don't assume it's true unless proven otherwise you assume it's FALSE until proven otherwise; see Russels' Teapot or any basic philosophical thought experiment.

All in all it led to massive confirmation bias, all the sources were for and even then they were few and very, very shaky. Mostly saying 'it may be a problem' and that games are addictive 'in a small minority of cases' and they acted like it was a worldwide epidemic (BBC journalism alarmism at its best)not only that but the presenter was a constant source of slippery slope and no true scotsman fallicies. His entire argument was 'Kids these days don't do what we used to' 'The only acceptable thing for a child to do at 18 is go to parties' etc then didn't defend those positions from the growing rate of teen deaths from alcohol poisoning and Britains alcohol problems, the idea that children 'should' be going to parties or playing football is also laughable. In the 12th century the same argument could be applied to a child playing football, a 12 year old in that era would be expected to be a squire and begin training to become a killer. If they were a girl they could probably expect to be married within 1-2 years, imagine how that logic would go today, the entire argument is subjective and of no value in any intellectual debate. Opinions =/= Truth.

Secondly they used South Korea as an example yet their national sport is basically Starcraft/Gaming and they have a huge culture built up around. It's almost insulting bigoted to declare an entire countries sport/culture *wrong* because its not what you think is the norm. Times change, some people hate football and sports, some people love them. Now those who aren't athletic have a different 'sport' to play which involves just as much skill but far less work. I know people who just play sports and nothing else, who just read and do nothign else or do work and nothing else. People are different and one human might find reading for 10 hours a day fun while another may play 10 hours of games a day, it's their own fault if their reading/game playing/sports get in the way of their schoolwork/work, these people aren't addicted they just want to do something fun and easy rather than actually do work, just like y'know, the majority of the human race. Sometimes you get someone who can't pull themselves away from a game/book/sport, it's just since games aren't socially acceptable yet because 'Back in my day they didn't exist' they get massively demonized and anyone who plays them for more than a few hours a day is destroying society and responsible for all murders in the nation.

Then the program goes on to say that kids get mad when you take something they enjoy away from them (NO! REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY?) hasn't any of the editors been around or had a child, they go into tantrums when you stop them going out/watching tv/playing football/playing yet when one has a tantrum because of a game or the internet its ADDICTION!!!!!1111!!!ONEELEVEN!!!1.

And to sum up they say internet speed = video game addiction, facepalm. Talk about a hilariously bad false syllogism.

1) Video game addiction exists (Assumed)
2) Video games are on TEH INTERWEBS (Just no.)
3) Therefore More INTERWEBS SPEED = Moar ADDICTION

Eurgh, sometimes I think that they are actually just the ultimate trolls.

Then at the end he makes some kind of Palin-esque appeal to hearts 'I will monitor my childrens game activity because I'm a good parent, ARE YOU A GOOD PARENT'or 'YOUR CHILD COULD BE ADDICTED RIGHT NAOOOOOOOO'.

But yeah, the BBC haven't had the best reputation in their Journalism. They put a guy on the news with a 'Machine that creates more energy than you put into it' (Srsly) and pitted Ben Goldacre against some random homeopath amongst other stupid, stupid things.

- As a side note how hilarious was the scary music with face portraits 'People actually pay more concentration in a game than they do to watching TV' Ok, thanks for that insight Panorama, you pay more concentration while doing something that requires at least some skill/coordination/thinking than you do while watching some terrible TV Soap, I didn't know this and why is it EVIL?
 

Iggy Rufflebar

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Mar 26, 2008
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lee1287 said:
I'd rather my son sit at a computer and be "addicted" then do what the rest of kids do around here, which is walk the streets with a bottle of alcohol in there hands. Waiting to get beaten / raped.

Seriously? Go sort out the worst addictions before tackling "gaming addiction" which in my mind, people only spend that much time on games because there is nothing else too do.

Exactly this, although I hate COD and WOW with a passion, how the hell can the host guy say why don't you go out make some friends, do what normal guys do to that one guy is beyond me and honestly made me feel quite angry.

5 people died from playing video games too much over several years? they are just dedicated gamers. How many hundreds if not thousands of people die/cause serious injuries or kill other people due to alcoholism/drug overdosing every year?

if we want to play video games leave us to it, if you think lieing in a puddle of your own vomit is a good weekend go nuts.

I'm happy enough running around the rooftops of rome/blowing shit up in random generic shooter #19/digitally ruling some random countries or zerg rushing people from here to korea.

Find some more pressing issue to focus on, like asprin apparently being able to help prevent cancer if taken daily. side effects may include stomach bleeding... what the hell bbcnews?