Get real - gaming in the real world

It seems to me that adding another processor to a computer is becoming a bit of a fad these days...

First there was SLI, adding another video processor.
Then came the X-fi, which is a rather powerful sound processor.
And then came the Physics card, and the ATI and nVidia physics-on-GPU systems.
And after that came Quad-SLI!
And now comes an AI processor.

I don't know about you, but I'm running out of PCI and PCI-express slots...

As for the rest of the article, I'm inclined to say that regulating everyone because of the actions of a tiny minority is stupid. I play WoW, UT2k4, HALO, and a few RTS games, but I understand the difference between reality and game-space. I'm also in rather good shape: I ride my bicycle the eighteen miles (29 km) from home to work and back every day I can.

 

I have a cousin who is addicted to WoW. His parents don't really understand what is causing him to change his behaviour but I've seen the effects. He gets very withdrawn and uncommunitive. When he isn't playing, he isn't happy and when he is forced to stop then he gets angry and violent. One time when his mother told him to stop so she could do some work, he trashed his room. The symptoms he gets are very similar to the symptoms I have seen in some of my friends who became addiced to canabis.

To me this is a very serious problem but as far as I can tell it is only multiplayer games that have that level of addiciveness. Unfortunatly any restrictions also penalise people who occasionally have the time to spend several hours on games at a time. I don't normally spend more than an hour on any one game before stopping but if I have nothing else to do then I might spend 6 hours on it, simply because I'm bored. So with the Chinese system I'd be reset to the lowest level even though I have no addiction to the game.

In the end it is not the game's content that is the problem, however controvertial it may be. The problem lies in our attitudes towards games, both as a society and as individuals. Society needs to gain more understading of the issue and individuals need to take more responsibilty. I imagine in a few decades we may even have rehab centres for game addicts if the current state of affairs continues.

 

I hear that Even with my e-ATX server motherboard I still only have one slot left after two video cards and the X-fi, and that's reserved for a physX card. I think adding the AI to the phys card would be a smart move since the target marked for both will be about the same and few people will need one but not the other.

 

I think this is getting rediculous. I can't believe people are suggesting moving towards a more regulated society, where someone has to tell you what to watch/do and for how long. I play games - sometimes I can be playing for a whole day (with food breaks etc.), other times I won't play a game for weeks - it just depends on what mood i'm in. I enjoy diving into a different world and experiencing different things, and sometimes I love violent games as they provide a release for stress/frustration. IMHO games are good, and I would like to see someone try to stop me from endulging in an all-night LAN party with my friends - I'd fight tooth-and-nail for that right. Just because some tw*t can't tell the difference between a game and reality, or can't remember to breathe, I don't see why I should have to pay, or even care. If he's stupid enough to get himself in that state, than he probably deserves what's coming. See, the problem is not the games is the people, and all people are different, so I don't see why everybody's life should be regulated due to the actions of handful of people.

-ed out

 

or the "warning, does not enable user to fly" on super man capes for little kids.

no, i wouldn't mean to that extreem, if anything the warning could be taken as a boasting point, or as a gentle reminder, and it would only have to appear in the combat log or chat pane anyway. subtle as you like.

 

SPORE!

...that is all...

 

I’ve clocked 124h:51m:16s on Elder scrolls IV: Oblivion and some time I wish there was a
*Ding* “A friendly reminder that your gaming session has exceeded: X Hours. It is now 4:43AM”

 

Man, speaking of crazy addicting games...Iheard that some kids in Korea (south obviously), actually Literally died from playing WoW so much. Appearantly their parents thought they were sleeping when they were playing, and after skipping meals and getting 4 hours of sleep in 14 days, the body is so weak that a common infection or flu, even an episode of food poisoning, can actually kill you!!!

I don't know how acurate this is and I'm not sure where I heard it but atleast i can validate that It is very possible. Ok so the game didn't necessarily kill them directly, but it caused them to lose so much sleep and nurishment that a simple cold leveled em' off!!

And I'm sure the companies will protest against regulation timers, but something should be done to keep people sane. I'm actually starting to think that some people might have somekind of undocumented psycological condition where they litterally are incappable of stopping something (like playing a game), and for those people there should be some kind of test they have to take to determine wether or not they have it before they can purchase the game.

Or I could piss millions of people off and hopefully save some teens social lives by writing a virus that renders every online persons copy of WoW useless...

But they might arrest me...or worse.

No here it is, with every copy of WoW purchased, a mandatory PCI card should be sold with it that has a web cam with a tiny hidden sleeping gas dispensor that attaches to the top of the monitor via the PCI card which has the sleeping gas tank and pump on it, With an internal clock that puts the gamer to sleep after a certain amount of play, regulated by a clockchip on the PCI card. And the card would have to be onstalled otherwise the game won't work.

{jusk kidding}

And i'm sure it's not just WoW that's the culprit, I'm sure it's loads of other games too.

And i've seen Dateline NBC special reports, and Nightline documentaries on husbands with kids and a wife that loved them who were divorced because all the husband did all day was play video games.

I'm sorry but If you are over 35 years old and have less than 1 million dollars you should NOT be playing video games, you should be working and raising a family.

CONSPIRACY THEORY: the government really made WoW and are gaining control of us, our minds, making us digital zombies and the game is just a portal into their mindcontrol network.

{just kidding}

 

Actually I take that all back

YEAH, actually, I agree more with eddtox.

It really isn't the games it's the people who can't control themselves: Maybe there should be some kind of diagnostic test when you install the game that automatically determines if you exhibit enough self control to decide how long to ply for before it has been too long. I havn't any clue how that test would work acurately though.

NO SERIOUSLY here's the solution...If you purchase a new copy or if you already have the game it won't matter. The player must agree to a 2month monitoring period where the user's gaming habbits are uploaded to a server that monitors how long each person plays the game during those 2months. Than maybe doctors or some kind of special analists decide which users have tendancies to play for too long, and then restricts them with a clock system set to various limits based on the extent of that particular user's habits/abuse. THAT would work pretty well acutally, and people wouldn't complain unless they were the ones that got restricted. It's all such a mess.

 

Yea but when you get a new game you tend to play it a lot more than you would normally so it doesn't accurately represent your habits. I'm not sure thats its ever going to be possible to find an adequate solution that everyone is happy with.

 

So Im not the only one with WoW addicted friends. My friend and his brother play it all night and sleep all day. Some people just get way too involved.

This whole article reminds me of the family guy where the fcc was censoring everything. Good read though.

 

My brother used to do the exact same - we eventually found out that it was because all his friends on the game were American (as he played on a US server), so he slept when they did and played when they did.

 

This is kind of an interesting coda to the article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5191678.stm