Recently my sister allowed her 10 year old to start playing video games, of course I found out and raised more hell than a pet ape and it did no good. I saw my nephew after 6 months of the games at my mom’s birthday party and he has changed completely, from a outgoing kid, to one who would hardly speak to anyone because he wanted to play his games. I haven’t been around gamers very much but from what I have seen in my own family this stuff is more addictive then coke. I wonder if it was designed that way?
“I wonder if it was designed that way?”
Pretty much.
It’s probably more to do with the gadgetry and fantasy of the games, similar to men channel-surfing and hogging the remote. Is it any wonder that more women are graduating from college than men? But you couldn’t have asked for a better way to anesthetize half the population than video games.
I started playing video games in the late 1970s at the age of 5. Not only was I fascinated with playing them, I also was insanely curious about what made them tick.
I’ve been an electrical engineer for almost 20 years now (mainly do FPGA design and embedded software). My entire career basically all started thanks to video games (and pinball).
Its not the games, its the parenting.
They seem to affect people differently. I've tried a few times, but get bored after 5 minutes.
What concerns me is the "first person shooter" thing.
By 1946 the U.S. Army had completely accepted Marshall's World War II findings of a 15 to 20% firing rate among American riflemen, and the Human Resources Research Office of the US Army subsequently pioneered a revolution in combat training that replaced the old method of firing at bull's-eye targets with deeply ingrained operant conditioning using realistic, man-shaped pop-up targets that fall when hit.