You know, it makes sense that 'kids these days' would have a great deal more difficulty dealing with gaming addiction than those of us who grew up on the NES, PS1 and older.
When I first played video games, they were a fun, different type of distraction...frequently played with my brother. Our major games were Battletoads and the various mario games. These games are not particularly riddled with story or competition. It's just simple fun for a few hours at the most, even as a young kid.
Honestly, can any of you say you can sit down and hungrily play through 8-10 hours of Super Mario Bros. 3, reluctantly go to bed and think of nothing else but going back to play for many more hours? Maybe when it first game out to -really- big geeks.
Yet 10 hours is still a standard volume of time to devote to an afternoon raid in WoW, or any RPG with a good story, or even multiplayer games where your friends and enemies berate you for your lack of skill, driving you forward.
Games today are MADE to be as addicting and immersive as possible, to provide as much entertainment as possible, to hook you in and make you say 'just one more quest, just one more job, just a few more hours and I go up in rank and can get a better gun...'.
Because I grew up on games that played similar roles to movies...a few hours of entertainment, I easily learned the sort of restraint and sense of time passing while gaming needed to keep me from starving to death in front of Dragon Age Origins (though you can tell it's a good game when time flies, I still went to bed at a decent hour last night even as I neared the final battle).
I know some kids who do very little else but play games in their free time...no reading, drawing, running around outside...why feel the limitations of your own imagination, skill and human form when you can do anything you want in a game? As they get older and feel rebellious against their 'good for nothin' parents, it's so much easier to just lose yourself in a game and ignore the cruel world of high school and indignant slavery to oppressive parents...it becomes a haven, rather than a distraction, and young teenagers become so emotionally vested in their gaming world that all their energy and aggression, formally spent outdoors or something, is funneled right into their microphones.
There are plenty of adults out there who lose themselves to games like WoW, because they have no willpower for whatever other reasons, but personally I think it's 10 times harder for a kid growing up today on these addicting games to understand why it's important to learn restraint and time management for the adult world.
I'm just kinda rambling here, so my apologies for the wall of text. It's something I spend a lot of time thinking about, as someone who is equally bonded to gaming and creative expression (two hobbies which do not always compliment each other).
When I first played video games, they were a fun, different type of distraction...frequently played with my brother. Our major games were Battletoads and the various mario games. These games are not particularly riddled with story or competition. It's just simple fun for a few hours at the most, even as a young kid.
Honestly, can any of you say you can sit down and hungrily play through 8-10 hours of Super Mario Bros. 3, reluctantly go to bed and think of nothing else but going back to play for many more hours? Maybe when it first game out to -really- big geeks.
Yet 10 hours is still a standard volume of time to devote to an afternoon raid in WoW, or any RPG with a good story, or even multiplayer games where your friends and enemies berate you for your lack of skill, driving you forward.
Games today are MADE to be as addicting and immersive as possible, to provide as much entertainment as possible, to hook you in and make you say 'just one more quest, just one more job, just a few more hours and I go up in rank and can get a better gun...'.
Because I grew up on games that played similar roles to movies...a few hours of entertainment, I easily learned the sort of restraint and sense of time passing while gaming needed to keep me from starving to death in front of Dragon Age Origins (though you can tell it's a good game when time flies, I still went to bed at a decent hour last night even as I neared the final battle).
I know some kids who do very little else but play games in their free time...no reading, drawing, running around outside...why feel the limitations of your own imagination, skill and human form when you can do anything you want in a game? As they get older and feel rebellious against their 'good for nothin' parents, it's so much easier to just lose yourself in a game and ignore the cruel world of high school and indignant slavery to oppressive parents...it becomes a haven, rather than a distraction, and young teenagers become so emotionally vested in their gaming world that all their energy and aggression, formally spent outdoors or something, is funneled right into their microphones.
There are plenty of adults out there who lose themselves to games like WoW, because they have no willpower for whatever other reasons, but personally I think it's 10 times harder for a kid growing up today on these addicting games to understand why it's important to learn restraint and time management for the adult world.
I'm just kinda rambling here, so my apologies for the wall of text. It's something I spend a lot of time thinking about, as someone who is equally bonded to gaming and creative expression (two hobbies which do not always compliment each other).
