Video Games Junkies
We’re sticking with the theme of computer video games after yesterday’s post on which there was a comment which directed me to this link.
So let’s get this straight. It seems, from this web page, that some games aren’t bought, they’re merely “rented”. (This reminds me of a nice piece of graffiti staring out at me from the wall of the gents urinal in a pub while relieving myself - “You don’t buy beer. You just rent it”.)
To me, the company who owns this WoW game can be considered in two different lights. If I’m kind, I’ll say they are equivalent to the owner of a golf course or a squash court, to whom you pay money in order to play the game, which is fair enough.
However, I believe a better and more accurate analogy is that of a drug dealer preying on the vulnerability of punters needing to feed their addiction. In fact the student who wrote the article admits that he is a “WoW junkie”.
Either way, it helps to explain why the video games industry is so lucrative, ($9.5 billion in 2007 according to our old friend Wikipedia).
But all this is several billion light years away from the way things were in the 1980s when this cartoon was published…..
(Cartoon taken from the Education section of Microholics)
Tags: no tags
Questions without answers
There’s always been a bit of a debate about computer video games. Are they harmful? Are they educational? Do they lead to anti-social behaviour? Do they enhance our quality of life? And so on.
There are two schools of thought about the effects that video games can have on the player. The one suggests that games can be beneficial and therapeutic by helping the individual to live out a fantasy, and thus relieve in-built frustrations and tensions. The other opinion is that, instead of the game being a substitute for the real thing it motivates the player to actually want to do the real thing - which is fine if the content and objective of the game is “good”, but not OK if it happens to be “Grand Theft Auto”!
Well, if you’re looking for answers to these questions on this blog, forget it. Go surf the net!
(Cartoon taken from The Domestic Scene in Microholics)
Tags: no tags
