Project1 Thanisorn

Game Addictions, Effects, and How to overcome.

Introduction

Game is one of the human creations that has been created a long time ago. It would be a good hobby for people to enjoy themselves and have fun with it alone or with friends or family. However, the problem started when people start to binge playing games and getting addicted to it. I am one of the people who love playing games and it becomes my main hobby. However, when we get into games then we tend to forget things surround us and concentrating on the enjoyment of the games. This topic is interested in myself because I am such a gamer that might need to know about how games could impact my life. It would also help other people who might need ways to get out of the game zone and exploring our beautiful world. In this project, the topic will be based on game addiction researches, the creation of useful Apps that would help people to get away from games, positive and negative effects that happen to our brain, and how to overcome game addiction.

Context

It is important to be aware of when the hobby that you love started to take over your life. However, playing a game is not a bad thing but it is important to limit ourselves to it. There are many pieces of research that talked about how the game could also give us a positive effect on our brain like problem-solving and logic, hand-eye coordination, planning, resource management and logistics, multitasking, quick thinking, and etc. These are some examples of good effects from games. However, we know one common mistake that people know is that “too much is not too good”. It is actually worked on everything. If you did anything too much it will not really work out well and that also goes with games. As I have grown up, technology has been developing rapidly along with me. From the time that everyone has to wait to telephone line internet to connect and be able to browse something to now where everything in media is connected super fast and take away our dissatisfaction from us which in the sense that it is good. As it would show how humans and technology developing together speedily. The interesting research about games shows that “It’s likely that video games have both positive (on attention, visual and motor skills) and negative aspects (risk of addiction), and it is essential we embrace this complexity,” Marc Palaus. Hence, games could provide a positive effect on our brain however, it is difficult to control ourselves from it. It is complex to answer to the question that how games would help affect good skills in real-life said “We focused on how the brain reacts to video game exposure, but these effects do not always translate to real-life changes,” notes Palaus. The research into the effects of video gaming is still in its infancy and scientists are still scrutinizing what aspects of gaming impact what brain regions and how. As it said the effects might not really translate to real-life changes but we should consider the negative effects that might happen to us. We can still control the limits of our usages.

As I am one of the game lovers. I used to spend a quite amount of times playing video games all day. The effects that happened to me is that I started to have short eyesight and started to way glasses. It happened when I was in sixth grade that I used to play games like 5-10 hours per day. Almost, every day that I spent my time after school on gaming. I started to see things blurry. I concentrated too much on the screen for long hours which is not an ideal way to enjoy the hobby. It also happened that I felt like I am being introverted. Because my world is becoming games. I enjoy living in the virtual rather than being outside. My online friends that I met seem to be good and fun to talk with. It might sound amazing to have a virtual online friend that you do not even know their real identities. The problem might be because the virtual world is satisfying more than the real world where people surrounded did not understand me. This is something that I found out later when I spent days, months, and years on gaming. People love to be in the community that pleases them or at least makes them happy.

The worse experience that happened to my friend back there in my hometown when he even quit school to play games. Later on, he met a group of friends that went to the game center with him. He turned himself into a bad situation where he did drugs, loss himself, and never come back to the same as before. This is also important to know that the community can change people into something that can be a good one or a bad one. I agree with the point that games are good and bad just like a sword where it might be used to protect yourself or kill yourself at the same time.

Tech

Re-designing the applications or platforms that would create a better way for the users are important. In this case, I would like to create an extension. This extension will work in each and every application, game, or platform that user likely use. This extension is designed to keep away the user from the computer or things that they are doing on the screen. This will limit the time that users consume. The extension will track the activities of the users and store it. Then, it will look into the user’s data and limit the time consuming on the screen. Likely, if the users stay on the screen for more than one hour it will lock the screen and will not allow the user to use it. Even, when the user tried to cheat by restarting the PC. This is the idea of how it would work.

As seen above, this is the idea of how the screen will get locked and will be able to use it after an amount of time given 15 minutes. It is important for us to somehow limit ourselves and get away from it for a decent time. Using computers and technology is good but it should not use us and spoil us in a bad shape. This extension will be able to download and install the browsers even working on each and every platform to make sure that it would help users to limit themselves and getaway, take sometimes to see the outside or relax their brain and eyes from the screens. However, this software extension might also have pros and cons to the users. The pros are that users are allowed to step away from what they are doing and not be able to use the screen. However, we will not be able to track what they are doing during the break and can not really control their activities after that. The users will be able to do anything that they wish to do. They can change to use different techs to get away from this extension.

The redesign will not work well if the user could not find the main reason that if they are addicted to it. In the class, my teacher showed me an interesting website called “game quitters”. This site is created for the community that helps people to quit gaming. There ask you to the quiz to check out if you are addicted or not. There are many ways to quit gaming. It is not bad to play games but to reduce the usage of times on gaming is important so you can do something else that uses rather than playing games. They are also people who change and making use of game addiction to create their real-world path and skills. However, now a day playing games can make huge tons of money. The era has changed and they are introducing eSports where professional players can make money from it. This makes some parents change their attitude on games from their kids. Some are supporting them to play or even buy games for their kids like a famous battle royale game called “Fortnite” that makes a big hit and young kids are earning million dollars after winning the world tournament. It is not wrong if games can make money for you but it is not right if games control all your activities. This should be a big consideration that we all have to be aware of.

Values

The main value that I want to promote is “the community”. As I mentioned before that games might make someone becomes introverted. why is that so? It is because an online virtual community is better than the real-world community. I think that everyone should respect each other’s rights and freedom to be what they are. This is happening because we look negative to what they are doing. You look down to someone when they are doing things that not suppose to be right in the community however it is alright in the virtual community that they have lived in. There is an example of the game software called “VRchat”. Where users enter themselves into the virtual world through the virtual reality engine and recreate their own characters that they wanted to be. This might be where some gamers are happy to be with and get away from their real-world because people did not accept them or might not be happy with what they are in reality. It is important to accept everyone equally and not from what they are. This virtual community makes them happy because everyone forgets about their races, identities, and characters and be what they are. This might be something that they can not do in the real world.

Redesign

The idea of my redesign is to create the extension that would limit the users from a long time usage of techs and I wish it would work on each and every platform. Why is it important to limit ourselves? It is because even though we know that we can control ourselves but in the end, this might change into an addiction. For example, we said to ourselves that we will just drink a cup of coffee however, later on, we might drink more and more in the future. It just like one concept that I have learned from my teacher in the class about the boiling frog. We are just like the frog that is boiling slowly until we die. We consume everything from the profit companies and have been targeted. We should be aware of. The redesign will help limit the users from the products. My extension will help users to limit themselves and get away from the techs and also linked to the community value that I mentioned. Getting away from the virtual world and started to live in the real world a little by little. This will impact users in the future. It is alright to live in the virtual world but it is also like a loser that tries to get away from reality. This redesign would help users to start seeing the world. It might be a short time but one step away might be a big step in the future.

Conclusion

Sources

1. How video games affect our brains?