Video Game Addiction

Video Game Addiction
Essay

León Carlos Hernández Sánchez
English
7th Semester
Sam Johnson

“It’s good to play together” – claims the Xbox Slogan. Most of the current games were designed to be played by two or more players at the same time and even more with the on-line experience. This essay is about the relationship between the video game and the player (also called “gamer”) andhow this relationship creates a dependency or addiction. The invention of the first video game is still under discussion; however, some people think that the first video game in history was invented in 1951 by Ferranti Enterprises and the Manchester University. The console was called “Ferranti Mark 1”, and the only game available was “Nimrod”. Independent of this, the first video game ever made wasin 1962 by Willy Higginbotham. He created a game using an oscilloscope, which is a type of electronic test equipment that allows signal voltages to be viewed, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences (vertical axis) plotted as a function of time or of some other voltage (horizontal axis), to amuse the lab’s visitors. That game was “Tennis for two”.Video games not only amuse the player, but also make the player feel safe and confident. Some players escape from daily problems by spending hours playing video games, paying no attention to their family and/or the real world. Others see video games as a form of entertainment or amusement. When a gamer mistakes the virtual world for the real or spends too much time in the virtual world, the gamerhas a problem, a video game addiction. “When I was a child I used to play video games one or two hours a week, (I spent more time playing soccer). Eventually, games became more popular and the accesses to them were easier, now I spend four or five hours a day playing online games in my computer”. Armando Contreras, 24 years old, said.

Reading Armando’s testimony, we see how importantvideo games have become to some youth, eventually creating an addiction in extreme cases. There is a sad case of a twenty-eight year-old Korean man who died after playing for fifty hours, in a row, an online battle-simulation game. This shows how important supervision must be taken as a serious matter. Parents discuss the kind of video game their children play and also the time spent in this activitybecause, apparently, playing video games is harmless but it has its medical consequences, such as eyes irritation, spine problems, arms, wrists, fingers, elbows and shoulders problems. Spending too much time in front of a television or a computer screen decrease health and eventually carry more complications. How much time a gamer should play? Time is not the main cause, time becomes aconsequence. Experts think that even when a gamer plays only for thirty minutes could become obsessive for the game, this happens because ego and vanity come up once the gamer defeats, conquers, destroys, achieves the game goals, and gets lots of points. Video games have become the amusement into a gallery of gamers showing up how great, skilled and powerful they have become. But why does this happen? Manyfactors are involved in the addiction, such as emotional stress, caused in the gamer surroundings (school, cyber café, etc), the gamer could feel insecure in crowed areas, another factor is the when parents establish a prohibition to play, friends also act as a pressure factor, this happens when friends push a gamer to improve skills and the gamer feels forced to. In some cases, addiction raisesfrom a different position, this is when a gamer can not purchase a video game, the gamer feels disappointed and angry because of the money restriction to purchase what he wants. These emotions are part of a growing addiction. The lack of parents’ supervision, the lack of caring and love also push a person to fill those necessities.
Ivan, a fourteen year-old gamer, states, “In the virtual...