Science Says Gamers are Fat, Depressed Losers

[Hookman]

Strangely enough ever since I got my 360 back from getting fixed I have lost weight and been a lot happier. Beat that,moronic scientists!

 

[GhostKnifeFish]

I am not fat!

 

[Muffinthraka]

I would argue that this reported is (at least) slightly objective. It suggests that games are the cause of the problem when in fact they are often a sympton, and this creates a viscious circle.
A study on gaming addiction (in PCG) showed that the addiction was often the result of lack of parental support, low self-esteem and bullying.
The internet represents a social environment where there is a barrier between you and the person you are communicating with, this makes many depressed people feel safer and make friends more easily.
Ok, now to introduce myself; I'm a loner not because I have low self-esteem but because I am an introvert. This means I recharge my sense of self by being alone and being with other people takes energy out of me, this does not mean I never see anyone.
For example, if I am at a party I will stay with the large group of people for a while but will eventually find a quieter place for a few minutes before joining the party again. It also means I like to have a barrier between myself and the world which I can put up when I want.
I am obese because I have panhypopituitarism (look it up on wiki) although through exercise my bmi has gone down from 39 (hyper-obesee) to 31 (slightly obese) in the last year.
I'm not depressed, I am cynical.
This is the problem with studying psychology and media studies (I have a degree!)... I over analyse

 

[Jedamethis]

My mummy says I'm specail so there *stomps off*

 

[strangerdanger22]

i completly agree with the CORRELATION but im not really depressed any more, i was never really fat more scrony so scrony isee my ribs, i do 2 sports, i just do escapist and videogames because im bored.

 

[Deef]

Wow, way to stereotype.
I have only one thing to say about this.

 

[Burst6]

Well they're half right for me. I am fat, but my hope for the world still burns. (in a good way)
I guess the fat is not really bothering me, considering I'm 6'4 and pretty damn strong.

 

[Sewblon]

Nowhere in that article did he actually say what differentiated play and "play-like activities." I am fat, but I am not depressed, so par for the course I guess.

 

[skitzo van]

That's bull i'm skinny as hell!

 

[RelexCryo]

Go on gaming forums and you get lots of miserable persecuted people complaining that games that make them think or learn new skills to win are terrible. I'm glad that science has noticed this problem and is thinking of ways to help. I recommend experimental chemical compounds in the water supply.

I played Portal. It didn't cause me to think or learn new skills as I beat it. Played psychonauts. It didn't cause me to think or learn new skills as I played it.

I have never, ever played a game that did either. Period. I have, however, played games that made you question your definition of morality, and then force you to do what is immoral, in order to get ahead.

I have never played a game that challenged my SKILL or forced me to THINK or contemplate new STRATEGY. I have only seen games that make challenge your sense of MORALITY.

These are not the same. Am I saying games are immoral? No. Am I saying games are bad? No.

I am saying that gamers who talk with pride about how they enjoy overcoming challenge and being forced to strategize are liars. There are no games like that on the planet.

Example: I was playing band of bugs, a downloadable game on xboxlive. I decided to go for the spider hunt badge. But I quickly figured something out-the only way to get the achievement was to kill steal. To conserve precious, valuable turns, by letting the other team score the intial hit, and then finishing the spiders off. Kill stealing is wrong, and those who do it are scum. But that was the key to victory. It didn't challenge me or teach me new skills. It simply required me to do what is immoral and wrong.

Second Example: I was playing King Of Fighters 2007, and I ran into the usual insanely overpowered boss. I died several times analyzing his fighting style before beating him. But do-overs are dishonorable. It was supposed to be a single-elimination tournament. And I got do-overs, when no one else did. That wasn't honorable, or right. At least in the virtua fighter arcade mode "tournaments", you were forced to fight honorably- a single loss eliminated you.

Third Example: in guilty gear xx for the PS2, I was in Mission Mode, on Mission 50, with regular Ky Kiske vs. Gold Sol Badguy. His health regenerated insanely fast if you stopped hitting him. The solution? To camp his ass. Knock him in a corner, then do Ky's slide move to knock him off his feet every time he stood up, without giving him a chance to block. It was one of the cheapest things I have ever seen. The entire point of the mission was to teach how you how to be the cheapest Ky player imaginable, spamming that knockdown slide move over and over again until Sol died.

Now you might be thinking, "Well, figuring out the strategy needed to win is part of the fun of the game!" my point is: there is no legitamate challenge. These games do not teach new skills or challenge you to think. They challenge you to be a kill-stealing, camping bastard who relies on special status in competitions to win. maybe if these games actually did challenge you strategically or mentally, that would be a valid point. But they only challenge you to be the cheapest bastard you can be.

You can play games for the sake of being challenged to be a cheap bastard, or you can play games for godmode and empowerment, or you can play games to escape life, pure and simple. But playing games for legitimate challenge is a myth.

And keep in mind, I have a very positive mental image of videogames, because I like roleplaying, I like empowerment, I like to exist in another world.

But regardless of whether or not I enjoy challenge, I have never experienced a legitimate challenge in games, period.

 

[Raregolddragon]

Excuse me but where was the control in this experiment?

I have gone over this twice and can not find any talk about the control. I mean I find any experiment with out a control to real or up to scientific standers without one.

After all in page 1 of the reply's here I have noted 2 persons that are happy and skinny yet they are gamers like my self and get this I might be a little short but my fat is at 8% and I am rather happy and I am 132 LBS and height is at 5.6.

So we need controls in experiments like these. Send in the clones!

 

[OmegaTron]

Contrary to popular belief, I haven't met a single gamer who was depressed. Period.

As for them being overweight, I can see why they stated such conclusion, but arguably so.

Just another one of those stereotypical claims by science (the number 500 pretty much explains everything).

 

[WhiteTiger225]

I'd be more inclined to say that some people play video games because they're depressed - they're not depressed because they play video games. (Despite the health factor there.) For many, vidjma games are a method of escapism. Not that I need to tell anyone here that. (lulz)

"How do we simultaneously help the public steer away from imitation play-like activities, harness the potentially positive aspects of video games, and keep in perspective the overall place of video games in our society?"

Well, at least that's refreshing. It's usually an instant condemnation of "dem dern vidjma garms!"

I became fat and depressed when I was 10, because My parents divorced and my mother's monthly boyfriend would beat me. at Age 12, after being jacked up by 12 17-19 year olds outside my school because as my principle put it I was "Pickable" and that it was my own doing.. I put a shotgun in my mouth and pulled the trigger. The safety was on, and I quickly lost the guts to undo it and try pulling it again. At age 13 I picked up A SNES. It was one of the few entertaining things I could do in my life since my mother idiotically lost everything because she is retarded, and we had to move to a trailer park where mostly elderly crotchety people lived who hated the sound of my being outside and having a good time (I am not kidding here...) Well, the SNES was at first just a form of entertainement for me to help me forget those wandering thoughts of offing myself. But soon, it evolved into more, video games became social leverage, my way to actually communicate and interact with the people around me. This slowly gave me hope, and by the time I came to highschool, that leverage was all I had. See, because I was beat up by 12 kids, the state put me in sped schools despite my usual flow of B's-A's in grade school and middle school. Unlike what yuo think, sped schools in CT aren't used to put speds in anymore, they are used to put the people schools don't want to bother with. So I was plopped down in highschool, into a school FULL of the people the state thought they were protecting me from. But, seeing as video games had become a big part of american society, I was still able to find a niche among the assholes there, and even make friends. I weighed 382Lbs when I entered highschool, with the dying down depression Because I played games and used gaming to make friends, I became more physically, and socially active once again, It is 2 years after Highschool, and I now weigh in at 180LBs.

What is the point of telling my life's experience with video games? Well.. the point is that Video games are an escapism. That means they are the common place (2nd only to the interwebz) where depressed people go too in order to escape from their everyday woes, pains, and sadness. This study got it's numbers right, but failed to follow the main rule of science. Study your subjects in a CONTROLLED ENVIROMENT. Yes more gamers have depression then non-gamers. BUT... without brainstorming, these failures called scientists didn't quite grasp to actually look at how these gamers were when they TOO were non-gamers (Remember, to experiment properly they would need to know their life story to find out what they were doing, and how they felt BEFORE they played games, THEN compare their lives to the non-gamers lives, non-gaming being the control, the introducing of the test (IE video gaming) being the actual experiment)

 

[five4ever]

So now science is trying to say all gamers are fat, depressed, and anti social??? That's complete and utter bullshit! I play sports for school and keep a 4.0 grade point average and still am a hardcore gamer. (and no I don't play the fucking Wii or those stupid casual games like Guitar Hero(I'm talking about horror games and RPGs) just so no one calls me a casual gamer) Video games don't determine someones social life and outdoor activities. these people can take there experiment and shove it so far up their own asses to the point were it starts gushing out their eye sockets! Maybe them they will see the picture of how their fatty, depressant, anti social lives are. Then see why they can't get a girl to talk to them for more them 2 min! (random moment) Also the Wii sucks!

 

[maat]

well im depressed and a loser but not particularly fat, i play games because people hate me, easier that way.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I have never played a game that challenged my SKILL or forced me to THINK or contemplate new STRATEGY. I have only seen games that make challenge your sense of MORALITY.

These are not the same. Am I saying games are immoral? No. Am I saying games are bad? No.

I am saying that gamers who talk with pride about how they enjoy overcoming challenge and being forced to strategize are liars. There are no games like that on the planet.

...

And keep in mind, I have a very positive mental image of videogames, because I like roleplaying, I like empowerment, I like to exist in another world.

But regardless of whether or not I enjoy challenge, I have never experienced a legitimate challenge in games, period.

This seems like a pretty intense and tangential reply to my jokey post to this topic. Sort of interesting though.

First off, anyone who says that they use strategy in games and are ever challenged are liars? Wow. Why not call them child murders and treasonous slime as well. Or just dial back the rhetoric a notch or two.

I wasn't talking about challenge as much as learning skills which isn't exactly the same process but games technically do have challenges. You seem to have some heroic ideal of what a true challenge is that I'm not sure that I understand at the moment. I'll not address that so please don't follow the standard pattern of trying to explain it again without trying to understand what I am saying.

Learning new skills is a pretty modest thing that can happen in all sorts of ways so I am surprised that you are so vehement in insisting that no games could hope to do it ever. You can get games that train you to be proficient in addition and anagrams as well as games like Wii Fit that can teach you exercises. That's before you get to more mainstream action games that have their own sets of skills needed to play them properly.

As for no game needing strategy, band of bugs probably isn't the most well known computer strategy game of all time. I might have laughed along if you were saying that Total War games don't need any strategy because they are so easy on the hardest settings but the fact is that Total War games are easy if you have experience playing strategy games. They still need some strategic thought.

Strategic layers in games can add anther layer to the morality aspect of games. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had seven factions based on different philosophical positions and you were encouraged to relate the morality of the faction you were building with the principles of the philosophies. I like that. In most "role playing" games you are just asked if you want to be good or evil based on the philosophy of whatever trashy pulp fiction novel the game creator was reading at the time.

 

[Bofore13]

These people were probably obsessive gamers, I myself am a hardcore gamer but knows when to put the buttons away, and yes I may have a bleak outlook on life, but that is due to the vast gap in intelligence between me an many people that I meet, and it's hard to have a good outlook on life wen you can come up with a better (but significantly more difficult) solution to environmental problems than the people in charge of your country that would also vastly improve the economy.

Edit
Also I don't have a great deal of friends but the ones that I do have are close ones.

Another edit
And one more thing who will survive the long nuclear winter months when there is little food to go around? ill give you a hint it will be the fat ones.

Once more just for laughs

But regardless of whether or not I enjoy challenge, I have never experienced a legitimate challenge in games, period.

First off don't put a period just after you type period comma, and second that is what the DIFFICULTY setting is there for, try any survival horror game on the hardest difficulty, if you can even unlock it, then reply to this.

 

[Ryuzix]

You needed scientists to prove this? Man, how can you not get a job nowadays, just become a scientist and generalise the population.

 

[BladeOfAkriloth]

For the love of... before these so called "experts" talk, let's see the portrait of the tipical scientist.... damn arseholes... damn eggheads!

 

[SeksEin]

So my scale has been lying to me all along? I knew it!