Monday 6 October 2014

Impact of games on Society

Ethics


Excess playing time. Playing computer games is fun right ? well playing them for excess amount of time can cause you serious illness such as not knowing if you are in reality or if your still in the game and can lead to you not being social towards anyone around you. It can cause you to a job you've worked on all of your life and even your own family. However it can also advance and improve your day-to-day skills such as hand-eye coordination or improve the performance of your brain.


Social isolation. Do you feel happy and healthy being anti-social or isolating yourself from modern day society ? Well research suggests that people who have fewer human contacts are more likely to die-even if they are happy in their solitude-than the people who have rich social lives, in fact its said to be that the 'most social isolated' people are at a 26% higher risk of dying!!! So what is this terrifying thing known as Social isolation ? Social isolation is an objective condition where people rarely or do not talk to people including family and friends. However do not get this mixed up with l
loneliness because loneliness is an emotional state where people are not satisfied by there social life.


Cost. The cost of computer is not only the amount you pay for it or the financial funding the company gets. The cost is about the things your gonna end up giving up or losing such as your mates and loved ones or even your child hood hobbies that you have stuck with since you were a kid such as skateboarding, boxing or hanging around with your friends.


Separation from reality. Now I know the sub-heading may seem a bit weird. Do you get sucked into the virtual world and then disappear from the real one ? NO. It is where you think that you are still inside and playing the game but in fact you are in the real world and what you do in it will have major consequences if you do serious actions. One of these actions was a boy called Daniel Petric, 17, who could not understand the difference between re-spawn and reality. He played the game Halo 3 all day and all night so his parents banned him playing on it which soon led to their deaths. Daniel shot and killed his mother and shot but severely injured his father which soon killed him to due to too much blood lose. He was thinking they would re-spawn afterwards but soon realised the brutal shock of what he had done to his parents and that in reality...re-spawn does not exist.

Education. Gaming can be educational ? Well gaming can have a massive impact on education which can be beneficial or non-beneficial. The benefits gaming has on education is that it allows people to learn more easily and fluently without actually knowing they are being teached something new. This is mainly used in primary/secondary schools which allows kids to have fun while interacting with games as well as learning. However it is not just used in primary schools or secondary schools, the games can be accessible by anyone of any age so they too can also benefit from this easy learning style. The non-beneficial sides are that games can easily distract people when they get gripped into the story so this can cause people to loose track of time and end up being late for school and missing important parts. It could also lead to them not going school for a week because they were trying to level up their character on a specific game, this is known as leveling.

Think/strategy skills. Can games help improve the way you think and also help your strategy skills improve ? Yes they can because when you play a puzzle game you are using your brain and as you solve that puzzle and the next you will notice they will become easier because you are improving the way you think when it comes to putting jigsaws together. Also they can improve your strategy skills for real life situations such as the army. strategy games will help improve your skills more than just games that involve you shooting aimlessly the best strategy games are command and conquer: red alert 3 and Rome 2. These however will also help your strategy in the virtual world so you can become better and more advanced on that game. There are competitions all around the world that will test your strategy skills and also improve them.


Future Impact. Games didn't exactly do well when they were first released because of it being new and they did not know how the public would react especially to games with gore such as GTA. when GTA was first released it was banned in many countries including the UK because of the blood that was shown in it and people hadn't seen digital gore before. Today games still have problems due to too much swearing and too much blood but what about the future ? Games in the future may impact our society forever. Games in the future could help people learn a lot more easier than they would today and gaming technologies will be able to help police solve crimes by creating a 3D image of the crime. The head set or virtual gaming head sets will allow people to actually experience games more realistically which may cause them to play on games longer however that could make there health worse if they sit on games for more hours because of lack of exercise or even movement. Although there are also games that are being planned and made that allows the player to use their actual body movement to control the in-game character so that will have health benefits. There are games out today that use that type of technology called Kinetic.

Psychological Factors of games.
Use of sound. The use of sound can have a big impact on how a game is played and viewed. If there was a horror game that didn't have any scary music then you wouldn't really class it as a horror game would you ? To me a horror game is at its best when there is scary music involved in it because when there is a sudden music change you know something is going to happen it really does get you on the edge of your sit waiting and expecting for something to jump out at you.

High scoring lists. I don't know about you but I have at least once spent hours trying to get the best score on game. But spending too time on games can cause people to get obsessed with scores or levelling up. Most people get obsessed with scoring the highest amount of scores in order to reach the top on global and this can have serious psychological effects if it lasts for a long time. Some people do get so obsessed with games they end up starving themselves to near death or they have withdrawal symptoms which gets nasty when they are taken away from their score lists. This in turn can have serious psychological effects such as obsession, craziness and even paranoia.

Competitive gaming. mmmm ? I do get competitive when playing games with friends but not this competitive. Gaming has become a sport to some people and there are competitions where two teams compete on online games for countless hours and get paid for doing as well as winning it. If you win then you get the prize money but if you loose then you still get paid for doing it. One of these competitions is called Star league and it is one of the most active professional competition circuit, particularly in found in South Korea. Two channels form south Korea are involved, Ongament and MDC game that are sponsored by Samsung, SK Telecom, KT and many more famous south Korean businesses. The total prize money that has been given away in total is $4,000,000 in US dollars. It started in 2002 and now since October 2012 competition StarCraft: Brood war is no longer televised because of the release of the game successor StarCraft 2 taking its place. To some people this is an actual sport that they would happily watch all day. This is a highly expanding thing/sport and I expect this to keep expanding for a long time because games are becoming more and more popular
especially in the entertainment industry.

Peer pressure. some people do actually get pressured into playing games their not allowed to because their friends have it and they want to get involved in the same game as them so they can precipitate in the game as well. I myself have been tempted to buy a game because some of my mates wee playing it but I decided not and saved my money for something. Many people have been pressured into doing something whether it was for a loved one or just for your friends but everyone can also get out of being pressured into something by stopping going on the game or by saying no when they try to pressure you.

Fun. Games are fun and we all now it. They help us escape reality and jump into the virtual world of gaming however we all also know that they can be frustrating. Because more people are playing and enjoying games it may impact the way our society is because if everyone is too busy playing games to make them have fun then they will not be communicating to anyone around them and it will lead to social isolation. But do not get me wrong games are fun and they 'fun' does not have any downsides to it only positive sides that make us happy.

Educational value. The educational value of computer games vary between which games you play on. If you play on puzzle games or BBC bite size games then they will help you learn and have a good educational value. But if you play shooters or gory games then you will still be getting educational values but low educational values.

Expectations. The expectations of games have dramatically risen over the past decade. People are expecting amazing graphic with beautiful visual effects and good, smooth gameplay but most games these days are retro or indie developed games. Retro is a big business today in fact it is even bigger than when retro first came out. The future expectations of games however is a bit more advanced than just good graphics and beautiful visual effects it is expected to be a virtual reality where players wear a head mask/screen which makes the player believe they are in the game. The graphics are also expected to be dramatically improved as well but everyone is hyped for the virtual headset gaming.

Leveling. Leveling is where you try to level up and upgrade your character to make him/her the best. Some people compete with their friends and others compete against strangers around the world to see who can level up their characters the quickest and the to see who is the best on levelling up on that specific game.













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