Computer Games: Addictive and Time-Consuming
Uploaded by Gix on May 03, 2006
Entertainment plays a big role in everyday life. “Games, video, computer, online games, Playstations, etc can be used as entertainment and stress relief by many.” (Woolley). Games are created to give people some time of pleasure and fun, time to get away from the world and don’t think about the problems they face. But entertainment has become a business. Companies dealing with entertainment business make millions of dollars by (for example) putting a single computer game on sale. Their success depends on their products, and if the product is an MMO (mass multiplayer on-line) Game then their success will be great. Because even though MMO Games are created with the same purpose of a normal game – to entertain, they do cause addiction.
Marie Winn says “the essence of any serious addiction is a pursuit of pleasure, a search for a 'high' that normal life does not supply.” in her Plug-In Drug (“Electronic Heroin.”) She presents watching television as a serious addiction, comparing it to heroin addiction and alcohol addiction. Accordingly MMO Games addiction is very similar to what she explains about television addiction in her essay. She says “television experience allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state. The worries and anxieties of reality are as effectively deferred by becoming absorbed in a television program as by going on a 'trip' induced by drugs or alcohol. And just as alcoholics are only vaguely aware of their addiction, feeling that they control their drinking more than they really do, people similarly overestimate their control over television watching.” (“Electronic Heroin”) MMO Games share this very serious problem with television addiction. They give people pleasure, and can be used as an escape of the real world entering that “passive and pleasurable mental state” in the game’s fantasy world the same way the television gives the ‘escape’ to television viewers. The main reason MMO Games rise the addiction issue is the way their game-play is arranged.
Single player games offer players a set of objectives and when it is completed then the game is over and the fun and pleasure of that game is over. Unlike single player games, MMO Games give the player a character and place him in a fantasy world where he can experience virtual adventures. All players from the whole world are placed in this fantasy world with the help of...