Monday 6 December 2010

Opinion in Words - Addicted to Games? Panorama Special

This is a new section of gamesJunction called "Opinion in Words". In these little rants I will talk about a topic that I believe needs more coverage and how I believe that the common view is either right or wrong. So lets talk about something that has just peaked my interest, the new Panorama episode, where they tackle the topic "Addicted to Games".

First I must stress, what said here is 100% opinion and is just what I feel. The main problem I had with it was the fact that they downplayed the positives of gaming, but then again it was particularly about addiction to games. This "addiction" however could be overshadowed by the various psychological factors of the average human mind, as well as environmental factors including parenting styles. This would mean that the games companies are not to blame entirely. The program's only attempt at making the game "World of Warcraft" seem more plausible as a good game, was the part where they mentioned that it had 12 million players, and they showed at most 4 people who were "addicted" to it.

I am not having a go at parents though for their styles of parenting, I am just trying to stress that cutting people off from their computer games is not the way to help them. Through moderation you can stop them from getting to this level in the first place. The main thing though is that every person has a different mindset, so no matter what people think, not everyone is going to become a serial killer just because they played "Doom 3". People need to stop trying to blame things like this entirely on videogames. They say that there are many things to do away from the computer, but they just raise the environmental factor on a child's mindset again. Unless you are willing to watch your child every waking second, you cannot protect them from everything thats out there.

The program also brought up and devoted a considerable chunk of the episode to being in South Korea and their attempts to bring the "addiction" under controll. Do they not realise that South Korea takes videogames very seriously. A percentage of the South Korea's population are the infamous "Gold Farmers", who someone across the world can hire to get gold for them.

Right, thats all I have to say on this subject, so once again its time to say..

This is Tyramatt, signing off.

EDIT: Dead to Rights: Retribution is coming, look busy.

1 comment:

  1. I found grammatical errors! Hire me as your editor ={D (Happy face with a moustache)

    ReplyDelete