I enjoyed this week’s reading titled “Video Games and Computer Holding Power” by Sherry Turkle. In the reading, Turkle explores the power and attraction of video games. Most of her work is based on hundreds of interviews with video players, and her observations of their interactions with video games.
I found this type of study much more revealing than laboratory studies that interview people and ask them questions about their video usage. She was able to provide anecdotes that provided concrete information about why people become addicted to playing video games.
One interesting nugget from the article is the ideas that video is more like an addiction than watching television. Turkle said when game players try to describe video games in terms of other things; the comparison is more likely to be with sports, sex, or meditation. “Television is something you watch. Video games are something you do, something you do to your head, a world that you enter, and, to a certain extent, they are something you ‘become.’”
Turkle argues that if there is a danger in playing video games, it is not the danger of mindless play but of infatuation with the challenge of simulated worlds. In the right circumstances, some people come to prefer them to the real. This danger is not specific to games; it reflects one of the ways in which the games are a microcosm of computation.
Another interesting point is most people don’t become addicted to video games just as “most people who diet don’t become anorexic.” However, Turkle says users are at risk of becoming addicted when they use powerful materials to measure themselves. Some people come to the material more vulnerable than others do. In other words, video addicts often believe they lack control of other aspects of their lives such as height, weight and job status.
“The greater the anxiety about being out of control, the greater the seduction of a material that offers the promise of perfect response.”
--Mia
--Mia
