Video Game Addiction

danshewan

Saw this on rockpapershotgun.com.

http://www.itv.com/ITVPlayer/Video/default.html?ViewType=5&Filter=102272

Linda Duberley catches up with young video game fanatics she first met three years ago to find out how their habit has shaped their lives.

Sensationalist televised 'journalism' at it's worst.

Anyone outside the UK will have to use some kind of arcane proxy server trickery to view this.

Thoughts?

Ferg

I haven't checked out the link... but it's definitely possibly to play video games too much, to the point where it is mentally and physically unhealthy. You can habituate anything if you do it often enough, and I think this is often confused with addiction, though it can be just as damaging. It's just not a physical dependency.

achillesian

video cant be viewed outside the U.K.

what the fuck is this all about anyways, the internet is suppose to be the largest free exchange of information in the world, why can't i watch and enjoy top gear, or other european shows? A page hit is a page hit no matter where you are isnt it? They get ad revenue no matter where you live dont they?

bullshit, i'll use a proxy i guess

t4paN

Man I just read about this shit on rockpapershotgun.com. Let's all just grab a flamethrower and some rocket launchers and go columbine on TV stations. They piss me off to no end.

t4paN

achillesian wrote: »

video cant be viewed outside the U.K.

what the fuck is this all about anyways, the internet is suppose to be the largest free exchange of information in the world, why can't i watch and enjoy top gear, or other european shows? A page hit is a page hit no matter where you are isnt it? They get ad revenue no matter where you live dont they?

bullshit, i'll use a proxy i guess

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/09/25/if-thats-not-addiction-i-dont-know-what-it-is/

crazyfingers

In my opinion video game addiction solves a lot of the world's problems. A bunch of people sitting in front of their computers doesn't pollute, overpopulate, or hurt anyone and teaches people to think critically from a young age relatively cheaply. My only fear is that a generation of video game players would contribute little to society, but a society that largely plays video games also doesn't require as much to sustain it. Lets go a little sci fi and think about how machines in all likelyness will replacing people for all manual labor in our lifetime. Video games are arguably the best education you can give children for the technological future.

...who knows though. But yeah, these uneducated local news teams can get bent.

achillesian

wow, lets focus and exploit the rare, off chance someone kills someones girlfriend because they met through a video game?

And lets completely ignore the real addictions that get people shot, maimed, killed and raped every day, yeah, drug addictions.

danshewan

crazyfingers wrote: »

But yeah, these uneducated local news teams can get bent.

Unfortunately, this kind of garbage occupies prime time positioning on national television in the UK. If only such narrow-minded, manipulative programming were restricted to a single region.

crazyfingers

Well, when you get down to it, most people will only watch what they want to hear. You can blame "journalism" all you want, but it's really not their fault, they're just giving the uneducated masses what they want. There's really no changing it. I just try not to watch too much tv, most of what i see is filtered by the internet anyway, there's nuggets worth watching here and there.