The following post is an exploration of a theme about gaming and its affects on people. Particularly the evil affects of gaming on boys.
This is the sort of thing that gets discussed in our household a fair bit, and since I, according to Eldest, I am a filthy, filthy addict, I figured it'd be something to explore here.
We are a gaming family. At the moment, Dh plays hour upon hour of WoW. Youngest has switched allegiances to the new Star Wars MMO. Eldest used to play a lot of WoW, but she's stopped playing it altogether. These days, she mostly plays with doll building games.
I don't usually think of myself as a gamer. Certainly not these days, as I no longer play PC games or Xbox, and I never got into the online RPGs. Yet when I stopped and thought about it I realized that, yes indeed, I most definitely fall into the gamer category. I just don't fit the usual stereotype.
I think the first game I became thoroughly obsessed with was Civ II. The game was already old when I bought it. I had taken the Greyhound to Edmonton for a weekend seminar. I checked out of my hotel on the Monday morning and walked over to the Greyhound station, but had over an hour to kill. Looking around, I saw a Staples nearby, so I headed over. It was a place to fill time, looking at stuff. In my wanderings about the store I found a bargain bin. In it was a Civ II CD pack that I decided looked interesting. It was cheap, so why not?
It turns out that this is the sort of game I really, really love. I like empire building games, and soon I was building roads and cities, farms, mines and so on. At the end of the game, I would deliberately leave one opposing faction barely alive, just so I could finish building the space ship to Alpha Centauri. So many hours were spent on that game!
Then I discovered the Age of Empire games and their expansions. Then Alpha Centauri, which I enjoyed even more. Why that game never went on into new versions, I don't know, but I wish they had. Empire Earth came out, then its expansion. I think at some point, I even picked up Civ III. I spent so many late night playing these various games, it would be easy to label me an addict.
Dh, meanwhile, had no interest in such games. He preferred Diablo and Starcraft. As the girls got older, they preferred the games he played over mine.
Then we got an Xbox.
I didn't get into the Xbox at first, much preferring my empire building PC games. I had no interest in shoot-em-ups or snowboarding or car racing. I left those to Dh and the kids. Until...
Until...
KotOR.
Knights of the Old Republic.
When we first got that game, Dh played it obsessively. Every spare moment he had, he was in the game, pushing through the levels to the end, with the occasional hunt online to figure out how to accomplish certain goals. He reached the end, then immediately started over, playing a different character. Then he did it again. I'm pretty sure he finished the game 3 times before I finally gave in and gave it a try.
What sucked me in was the storyline. As Dh played the game (and the girls played while he was at work), different aspects of the characters stories emerged. The choices made in the game also affected things. My curiosity piqued, I picked up controller one evening, shortly before everyone else went to bed. Dh helped me figure out the controller, but I play very differently then he does, so it wasn't long before I had to tell him to stop back seat gaming while I played. *L*
Once I got into the game, I got into the habit of starting it after everyone else had gone to bed, and often played all night. I play very methodically, not leaving an area until I've explored every inch of it. I also questioned all the characters I could, and sought out the back stories of the NPCs that made up my character's team. By the time I finished the game, I had a character developed to a level Dh had no idea was available, simply because he had been more interested in pushing through to the end then exploring and digging. I discovered nuances to the storyline and game place that hadn't been explored.
The action and fighting in the game were tertiary to me. I played for the story. After finishing it, I played it again making different choices, which brought about different responses from the NPCs. Then I did it again. And again. And again. Eventually, I had figured out just about every possible variant of the game.
But only for half of it.
You see, there was one thing about the game I simply could not do. I could not be a Dark Side character.
KotOR allows the player to make a number of moral choices. These choices place the player's character on a scale between Light and Dark Side. Dh played it as a Dark Side character to get the alternate story lines, and see how it changed the way the NPCs interacted with the player's character, but for some of these choices, he actually felt bad making them. When I played and was faced with choices that would push the character towards the Dark Side, even when I *wanted* to explore that part of the game, I found I simply couldn't choose them. It was curious to find myself responding this way, since making such choices affect only the game play and have no real world consequences. Yet I still couldn't do it.
When KotOR II came out, we bought it immediately. More obsessive playing.
It was glorious!
There's only so many times you can play a game, however, and by the time I'd explored all the avenues that interested me, I promptly got bored with it and stopped playing. Instead, I went back to my empire building PC games. Eventually, however, we upgraded computers and the old games no longer worked on them, and we weren't willing to spend the money to buy the newest versions.
I still like playing Civ II, but it's too obsolete to play on our current desktop, though I'm sure there are online versions available I can get. I miss Alpha Centauri, too. That was a good game.
I haven't touched the Xbox in ages, and while I can play Empire Earth on our current computer, I can't install the expansion version (lost the registration key), and I now find it very boring.
Instead, I play Facebook games.
When I first got on Facebook, I had no interest in getting any apps or games, but somewhere along the line, I discovered Hatchlings and started playing it. Before long, I was trading game tips and tricks with other people to get as many eggs as possible, feed all the hatchlings with only one egg, and get the rarest of eggs. When I was playing it the most, I would sometimes have two or three browsers up, each with 20-30 tabs open, using keyboard shortcuts to go through all the tabs as quickly as possible to get the eggs before someone else did. I never reached number one on the local leader boards, but I was able to get into the top 10. It was not unusual to find me up in the wee hours of the morning, hunting eggs on Facebook.
After a while, though, it got to be just too much. Too many new eggs, too many levels, too many hatchlings to feed. My play time dropped to just enough to keep my hatchlings fed, to allowing the hungry hatchlings to run away, to not playing at all anymore and blocking it from my feed.
There were a couple of other games I started playing as well, but only two others really caught my attention. Frontierville and Farmandia.
I had not intended to get into any of the "ville" games, but I'd accidentally clicked on "accept" on an invite instead of "cancel." Once I was in, I figured I may as well give it a try.
Before I knew it, I was playing it for hours at a time. As I increased in levels, new goals required more "neighbours," which required adding people to my friends list. I ended up adding about a hundred people I didn't know to get enough neighbours (though I vetted them somewhat). Hour after hour was spent tending my own Frontier, then visiting my neighbours - all of them - to tend their crops and help them reach their quest goals, too.
As the game play increased, with larger and larger Frontiers, I found myself spending more time waiting for things to load then actual playing. Ah, well. That's what tabs are for. While the game was loading, I'd be catching up on my email or reading the news or something in other tabs. Then they added the Pioneer Trails. Never really liked that one as much, and especially didn't like how long the game took to switch from one area to another. At Halloween, they added a whole other town.
By the time Halloween arrived, I'd stopped playing it altogether, and blocked the game from my feed. I also unfriended most of the people I'd added to my list because they were there only for gaming. I kept some of them, though. I've actually met some really great people through Facebook games!
Now, I'm down to just the one Facebook game, Farmandia. I like this one because I can set it to do things, then open other tabs and do something productive while the game plays itself in the background. I have only one "neighbour" that actively plays it. I've levelled up ridiculously high, but without more neighbours, there are certain areas I can't advance in. I also limit myself to visiting the game only once or twice a day.
So you'd think I am done with gaming, right?
Nope.
We picked up a tablet not long ago, and I upgraded my phone to something with a wi-fi hotspot so we can go online with it even when in areas without free wi-fi. As long as I can get a cell signal, I can go online. Tablets and phones, of course, come with apps. I ended up downloading a Solitaire app.
And discovered Forty Thieves.
How did I never encounter this game before?
Which means that I now sometimes find myself lying in bed with either my phone or the tablet, playing Forty Thieves in the wee hours of the morning!
Now, for all the gaming that I and my family do, none of us are "addicted" to games. We are obsessed with them, sure, and spend way too much time playing them. Time that, arguably, be much better spent elsewhere.
Game detractors dismiss these not only as time wasters (which I would have a hard time arguing against) but as harmful. Especially for children. Video games were being portrayed as being the cause of violence, ADD/ADHD, obesity, laziness, and general dysfunctional behaviour. "Experts" write books and articles about the evils of gaming (making a pretty penny to do it, too), just as they did for DnD, heavy metal music and TV in years past.
Can gaming become a problem? Absolutely. When gaming takes over a person's life completely, it can definitely be a problem. The mistake being made, however, is blaming the game for this. If the games themselves were the problem, all people who played them would show these signs. Of all the misconceptions and myths about gaming, this idea that the games themselves are addictive and causing harm is dishonest and misleading. They may be part of the problem, but the are not THE problem.
There is no doubt that people, adults and children, develop an unhealthy obsession with gaming. But who defines what that limit is in any individual? How much is too much? Dh, in his WoW gaming, has got to know some other players outside of the game, too. One has become a pretty good friend. She's a nurse, with husband and family, who plays the game obsessively. Is she playing too much? I have no idea. Another gamer friend also played obsessively, but he also recognised him himself an addictive personality. He ended up turning his account, with everything in it, over to Dh and stepped away from game playing completely and almost all computer activity as well. They still keep in contact, and this guy is really turning his life around and getting ahead.
Did WoW cause all the problems he was having? No. He had the problems first, and obsessive game playing was simply a symptom that helped reveal the problem to him.
The more we learn about addictions, the more it become clear that there are people who, for some reason (which seems to have a strong hereditary component) become easily addicted. Where one person can go out and get drunk every weekend and never become an alcoholic, the addictive personality is endangered by a single drink. Some people can smoke for years, then quit cold turkey without any side effects. Others are never able to quit, no matter how hard they try.
People don't just get addicted to "bad" things. Anything can become a source of addiction. Here's just a list of things, off the top of my head, that people become addicted to.
TV
Video games
musical genres
shopping
yarn
arts and crafts
gossip
eating "healthy" (orthorexia)
sleep
tidiness
overeating
exercise/fitness
movies
books
dieting
illness
work
play
sex
surgery
keeping up with the Joneses
travel
social causes
shoes
fandoms
That's just a short list. The point is that people can become addicted to just about anything. Some of these things, however, are considered "good" and others "bad." I contend that, whether someone is so addicted with being "healthy" they starve themselves to death, or someone buy so much yarn their houses are jammed and their bills aren't being paid, they are not really any different than someone addicted to alcohol or cigarettes.
So for parents, what about when it comes to our own children?
My personal philosophy is that, in the end, even kids who are absolutely obsessed with games and gaming are going to be fine. They're going to get bored of them and move on eventually. Or, they might end up becoming game designers and start their own companies. Who knows?
A concern that had been brought up is that gaming affects developing brains. Well of course they do! So does everything else. But gaming doesn't *cause* the addiction. It reveals it.
So when does a parent know it's time to intervene? At what point does an obsession with an activity cross over to being harmful? That is up to the individual. You, as a parent, know your child best. What is a problem for one child may not be for another.
Our personal philosophy has been to give our kids a lot of autonomy. We made sure they knew what certain things were expected of them (we expected them to do their chores, eat regular meals, and get out and about for fresh air and sunshine, for some examples). Beyond that, we left them free to make their own decisions. We didn't always like the choices they made, but they were theirs to make. Only rarely did we have to put our foot down and tell the kids it was time to stop, get off the game, put down the book, or whatever, and move on to something else. I honestly can't remember the last time we had to do that.
This would not have worked for a friend of mine. She recognised an addictive personality in herself. Her sister is addicted to TV, and she knew she herself could easily fall into that trap, so she didn't watch it at all. She had a computer, but it was almost never used. She recognised the same response in her daughter, so she allowed only rare times of TV watching (movies, actually, as they did not have access to any channels where they lived). As her daughter got older, she was able to cautiously allow more screen time.
She knew her own limits, and she knew her daughter's limits. It wasn't TV that caused the problem. The risk was there, with or without TV or computers. By using controlled exposure, she was able to teach her daughter how to control her addictive tendencies towards anything with a screen, something I never had to do.
That's the call we parents have to make.
Now excuse me. I have some crops to harvest.
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