- Sean Neely
- Castle Rock, CO
- United States
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Debate: Video games are the drug of the century
Video games are constantly progressing towards characteristics similar to drugs. If we look at a huge point brought up in the speech mentioning how ancient "lydia" (i think) used video games to cause the people to ignore or forget about the necessities to life such as hunger. This effect is very similar to the effects of many drugs like acid which are used to dull sense of reality and enter an external world to forget the problems in reality. This is one of the many things that video games have in common within drugs.
So the debate is are video games being used for beneficial reasons like teaching values of never giving up on a mission and knowing the possibility of accomplishing important objectives. Or are video games like World of Warcraft offering an alternate world for a person to escape to and allows the creation of an avatar that reflects the person they wish to be and the existence in a world different from reality?
Please if you are arguing one side think of arguments that oppose your own point of view and offer them as well only because i would like to hear both sides and it will allow for a much better debate and allow for you to articulate your argument in more depth.
Dan Chase
Laura P
It's not all IPOD/IPAD Users I'm talking about. I refer to people who use them use them as their LONE means of communication and who are OBLIVIOUS in this way.
So, I nominate the IPOD/IPAD
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Scott Koenraadt
hcdoitsu gotweed
sean smith
I lost my voice for three years and now I can talk but it can be hard to be understood. Most of my friends have drifted away because it was just too hard to maintain the relationship since I could not talk and be understood and i was kind of angry. A few years after I got my voice back I started playing online games, now some people give me a hard time about my voice and freak out when I start talking (jerks) but others have no problems with my voice and have become my friends. I have spent years playing with and talking with these gamers and they have helped me use my new voice and helped me learn to socialize again.
I can't wait for another generation of gaming.
Random Chance 30+
Reality being their own world.
Everyone has a lot of stress in their lives and a lot, a helluva lot, of fear.
I think the number one selling medicine in the U.S. is for anti-anxiety.
At least I know this was true about seven or eight years ago. It may have changed.
I watched very successful, apparently well-rounded mature people, who worked hard, made more than a living and ate anti-anxiety pills for sustenance.
Twiddling the thumbs was one of the first forms of denial that I recall, to wile away the monotony of daily life.
That's what life is. It is insanely monotonous, boring and prone to driving one insane.
So we humans have developed all sorts of things to get us out of it or to somehow just simply deny it to ourselves.
Next, at least for the more modern age, came smoking. A great way, and a drug, to stop thinking and focus on puffing every time one had a thought that bothered them.
The walkman, with headphones gave people another way to tune out.
As we refined and upgraded the walkman, we came up with the cell phone so that one could always and almost immediately have access to another voice that wasn't their own thinking.
It has now progressed to smart phones, with pads that allow one to flip their fingers or thumbs up and down, sideways, searching, always searching for something to take them out of themselves and their thinking.
It looks an awful lot like the twiddling of thumbs from my childhood days of poverty.
Just about everything else today is a way to (quote Roger Waters), amuse ourselves to death.
The death is mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual.
We even call them "tools" and they are, but they are very addictive tools.
Now what is dangerous is not that they are addictive, but that the general population, worldwide, now carries the predisposition to addiction, and addiction usually leads to insanity or death.
David McDonald
David McDonald
Theirs a lot to be said about drugs: compounding facilities are coming under fire, I think legislature is slowly going to come online to help the elderly and infirm get access to drugs, just yesterday I heard on France 24 that the French are sick of Asian made generic drugs. Then theirs that black market aspect of select drugs like the dust from the coca plant that fuels cartels in Mexico, or the tears of the poppy propping up Afghan warlords and clans. Also their may be other sorts of drug culture starting up for an example watch the Rave episode of Spaced but I wouldn't know about all that.
No video games are not the new drug maybe you had an addiction to video games you may have had an addiction to video poker or off track betting but none of those are going to anesthetize some one before surgery although they'll help train to people to fly planes before they do it.
Zeb Reynolds
What makes drugs powerful and scary is how addicting they are. But if that was the only meaningful characteristic of a drug, I could just as easily demonize Facebook or the Stock Market -- and the addiction-forming power of those tools. LSD can profoundly expand your realm of experience... but it's taboo because the negative side-effects make it less-desirable than other ways of doing so. The issue isn't as simple as "Is it a drug? And is that bad?"
Games are incredible at making people feel good, and therefore lend themselves to addiction. Even as a game designer/enthusiast/optimist, I will openly admit that they have that in common with drugs. But games also possess other incredibly powerful characteristics (many of which other comments and TED talks have touched on). It's entirely up to us to cultivate an industry and a world culture that use that power for good. If you're too pessimistic to trust humanity with that responsibility, then I can't imagine how terrified you are (or should be) given the prevalence of drugs, weapons, money, religion, science, education, politics, and other equally potent tools in the world today.
Profoundly powerful tools don't simply go away (example: nuclear weapons) -- which is why it's better to be assertive and find positive uses for them, rather than sit around debating on whether we should have invented them at all.
If you don't like the direction games are headed in, dream a better one and make it reality.
Jonathan Gronli
Properly owned and properly used game experiences are actually teaching really strong ideas. For example, it's teaching you that asking others for help (finding experienced players to act as game guides for example) or collaborating with others (guilds) is not only a good thing, sometimes it's necessary. Now, you could always do things like asking for help or collaborating with others in reality, but within a game it's easier to do because you know that in the overarching narrative you're all working toward essentially the same end.
And since you're asking whether or not the games themselves could be considered an escape from reality, sometimes yes they are. But is that the important question? No. The important question is actually why is it that some people feel the need to escape. Is it a sense of powerlessness? Is it a sense that the only place that their decisions and actions actually matter are in fantasy settings? Is it loneliness because they might be outcast? Depression? A feeling of loss of control even regarding one's own life? The answer is yes. Maybe not all of these, maybe even some that I couldn't even get to listing. The fact is, and this is coming from a gamer, it gives our minds something that reality might not be giving. And again, how that in-game experience is used and owned is what is actually important. It's not the why that is important. If you stick to the why, the question of whether or not something is a drug can actually be applied to anything from literature to religion to work - provided the right argumentative build up can be applied.
Lejan . 30+
Isn't any scientist, writer, artist or whoever in 'flow' nothing but 'on a trip'? Doesn't all of them forget to 'eat' in this creative phase? And wouldn't our economy give literally 'anything' to find a way to get employees on a daily basis in this state of 'trance'? So what makes the one drug 'bad' and the other 'good'? Just the bucks earned rather than spend on them?
To me any destructive addiction should be avoided and help offered to those who are in it. But there are smooth transitions and double standards involved in this matter.
Diablo III put me on a diet for 7 days and I guarantee you, that the same time would have been more accepted in any religious fasting week. Why? Because the one cause was 'just' entertaining? Isn't 'entertainment' actuall nothing but the key to 'flow'? To me it is, and the use of the term 'drug' only comes into discussion, if 'entertainment' is used for 'entertainment' reasons only and in which no gain in GDP or high school grade was made.
To me the 'drug of the century' is the stock market in which 'gambler' can knock down whole and even real countries. Here I would start first with 'anti drug campaigns' to free people off their addiction to breed more profit... Yet this seems to be accepted somehow... why? ;o)
Sean Neely
Lejan . 30+
'... any destructive addiction should be avoided and help offered to those who are in it.'
In addition to this I was trying to make the point that if it comes to this pathologic imbalance, we are more likely to damn a 'video gamer' than a well accepted and respected manager in 'workaholic' mode. Both are suffering the same imbalance, yet a video game becomes a 'drug' and a career trip becomes a role-model. To me this is a double-standard and should be seen as such.
As you rightly state, that there is '... nothing stopping people from throwing their lives away because of an addiction to a game', so there is also 'nothing stopping speculators and hedge-fond manager from throwing whole economies into 'melt down' of an addiction to profit maximisation'
Both is pathological but only the video gamer is seen to be 'on drugs', whereas the gamer is the only one who is damaging just himself and nobody else.
This contradiction in perception of addictive behaviour is what I wanted to underline here, and it was not my intention to advocate any 'pro addictive gaming'.
george lockwood 30+
John Smith 30+
Video games are the literature of younger generations. Many years ago people used to think movies were dangerous too, it's amazing how every generation replicates the something-new-that-I-don't-understand-is-ruining-today's-youth trope.
I hope I never become become like that when I'm old, but perhaps it's inevitable.
Lejan . 30+
Obesity is not caused by fast food and soft-drinks alone. It is caused by its excessive consumption. That's a difference!
Even the classic 'bookworm', those who used to read paper printed literature back in the old days, exercised excessive and unhealthy behaviour. The reason why only classmates and no parents blamed them, was the fact, that they did not became noticeable stupid by it.
My personal experience with the 'digital generation' is, that many of them are lacking long term focus and concentration abilities on 'slow moving subjects' and self-thinking processes.
In a time in which the term 'cult' is earned for something within a timeframe of a single year, in which technologies change like seasons, nobody has to fear to become 'like that' as we all were at that point already the day before yesterday and evolved from there anew again.
Restrictions are no revenge of the old on the new generations. And those who managed to operate an Atari VCS console will have no problems to 'understand' the principles of todays Wii or PS3.
My parents let me play for hours in a row, because I also played foodball and had other outdoor and indoor activities as well. Restrictions were only made if my tendency became to excessive in either field and rightly so. It didn't harm me and spread the range of my skills.
sterling brewer
acid does not dull your sense of reality nor cause you enter an external world. at least what i think you are meaning by external world. acid can make you fixate on your problems... but really, it can help you work through them, which is why they used to use it in psych offices before it was deemed illegal...
take some acid and report back.
i can see the occasional extreme case of a person taking video games as escapism too far, though. it is uncommon for it to be taken that far but it does happen. i think there's nothing wrong with occasional escapism as long as it doesn't get out of hand and you don't start ignoring real life. if you don't escape once in a while, you lose perspective on the situation. it's all in moderation. i just do not think comparing this kind of thing to a drug like LSD is very accurate.
Sean Neely
sterling brewer
Orlando Jimenez
Christopher Fisher
Zeb Reynolds