rbm001's blog

Our guest speaker came in today and talked about how he does experiments with video games.  There were a couple examples that were pretty  cool and he explained them well.  One of them was for the game Bioshock and the participants had to either kill a little girl to make the game easier or let her live to make it harder.  I thought this was a very interesting experiment.  These experiments were very neat and I wouldn’t mind doing them myself.  Some of the results of the studies that he showed were surprising, however some of them were what I would expected.  I thought that he was a very good guest speaker.

I am doing my compare and contrast paper over addictive vs casual gaming and I found an article over why online gaming is so addictive.  This article was written by Kimberly Young and the title of it is Understanding Online Gaming Addiction and Treatment Issues for Adolescents.  One of the main ideas of this article is how gaming impacts the family life of those that around the addicted.  It also shows warning signs of being addicted and why the youth are now getting addicted to Massively Multiplayer Online games.

According to the article, approximately fifteen percent of all American youths are addicted to online gaming.  The most addicted tend to be younger youths who have emotional problems or low self worth according to the study.  The saddest part of the article is when a 28 year old South Korean man died from playing Starcraft for over 50 hours straight at a cafe.  Gamers tend to forego food, water, and other basic necessities just to play the game and that is because they are constantly being stimulated by the game itself.  An interesting part of the study was that gamers normally would build a strong relationship with other players in the game while neglecting those in the their family or other outside friends.

I thought this was a good article that really explained the addictions to online gaming.  I now know more about why gamers become addicted and how hard it is on their body.  I believe there is a fine line between playing a lot and getting addicted and some people clearly cross that.

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&hid=106&sid=672e2ee2-e59a-4cc3-b305-d7730234c2db%40sessionmgr112

I interviewed my roommate for this interview and he doesn’t game too much unless it’s sports games.  He enjoys gaming because of the joy it brings when all of our friends come to our room and play NBA 2K12.  Needless to say, there is a lot of trash talking that goes on when we play.  There is no better feeling than when you beat your friend on a last second shot or just plain dominate him.  My roommate said that he enjoys playing video games way more than doing any school work.

We  both agree that gaming gives us a good break from our real life.  It is not near as stressful to play a game as it is to do homework or go to a job.

According to Jane McGonigal, a game can be anything from something like the ancient game Mancala, to the latest Halo game on the XBOX.  Games are fun because they offer a escape from reality.  They are also fun because they offer competitiveness and also they offer companionship.  Nothing is funner than joining a group of friends in a game like Call of Duty and running up a huge match winning streak.  Everybody wants to be the best and that is where gaming can be really fun.  There are some really hardcore gamers that play all the time to be the best.  Games are also a great way to relieve stress because they have nothing to do with real life.  A lot of people that work nine to five jobs come home and play games until they go to bed because it offers a release from their everyday life.  There are also a lot of people that don’t really care about real life because they spend most of their time playing video games.  These are the “hardcore” gamers and they are usually very good at whatever they are playing.

Many people like to play mobile games on their phone.  Angry Birds has become a very popular game because it is a very simple game that you fling birds into evil pigs.  This game has grown into having lots of Angry Birds memorabilia.  The cool thing about mobile games like this one is that all different age groups can play.  Kids as young as 2 years old can play just as easily as someone who is 70 years old.

Video games have been a big part of my life growing up.  My best friend in junior high was a game called Runescape.  Runescape is a MMORPG that is browser based and also free.  However, the free version gave you only about 25% of the whole game.  For that reason, I bought the members game for only about five dollars a month.  Playing this game is really a love-hate relationship because it is very monotonous but I also made quite a few friends while playing.  I played a little during high school and I almost wish I still played because I knew the game so much.

The main reason I quit playing was because I got an XBOX 360, along with XBOX Live.  This opened up a whole new world of gaming.  I started playing games like Call of Duty, NCAA Football, and Fallout.  Unfortunately I am kind of a perfectionist when it comes to XBOX gaming because I like to get all of the achievements for a game.  I have completed most games that I’ve played and always try to play to get every achievement.  I am also a very violent gamer, meaning if I get angry at the game I may throw something, but I’ve learned to control that by yelling instead of throwing stuff.

I usually play video games about 2 hours a day, sometimes more and sometimes less.  I really enjoy the online gaming aspect of video games.  I used to play Age of Empires 2 and I would always play online because it was the funnest experience that I have ever had while gaming.  Most of the online players for that game were very, very good.  Players would create their own games where special units would keep spawning out of the castles so games would last for hours upon hours.

I also played a game called Guild Wars.  This is a game that I wish I still played but most people have moved on from this game and are waiting for Guild Wars 2 which is supposed to be released this year.  I can’t wait for this game to come out because I will be getting it and playing it a lot.

I think that I am a gamer because I love to play video games, especially online games.  I really enjoy the MMO games because you can join friends as well as fight against other people.  These games really give you the best sense of companionship in video games.  This is probably the funnest aspect of the game for me.