Online Games: Addiction

The online gaming is getting a little out of hand, especially in my family. My mom has been obsessing over Farmville for the past year now and my father thinks he’s “uber” cool playing Mafia Wars (both games pertain to Facebook). My brother plays a game called Runescape—one of those Mass Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG…quite a mouthful).

Our September 8 lecture concerning games and the false realities that come with it (Internet: Social & Legal Issues Pt. II) reminded me very much of my family and their inability to stay away from them.

When I go home for the holidays I always remember how obsessed my family gets with these little games. I’ll wake up in the morning to find all three sitting on their respective computers (mom has a laptop, dad has a laptop, brother has a desktop), absorbed in their games.

It’s already enough, imagining this situation. It makes me cringe a little bit because there’s more to life than staring at a computer screen.

It’s mainly the fact that all three are so entranced in these games and forget about reality sometimes.

“Hey mom,” I said one night at the kitchen table. “Are we going to have that lasagna for dinner?”

“Oh sure, honey,” she said carrying her laptop with her to the kitchen counter. “I just have to harvest my grapes on my farm and then I’ll work on dinner.”

Really?

This is just one example. I spoke with my brother once about what it is you do on this…Runescape. He went on about raising fishing levels, collecting gold and fighting mystical creatures…or something like that. I can’t comprehend what is so fun about raising a “fishing level.” If I wanted to do this I would buy a rod and try and catch a real fish.

My dad, oblivious to privacy issues on Facebook, gets a kick out of adding random people all over the site in order to build up his Mafia and get better awards.

Sometimes dinner conversations include what happened on these little internet games.

“I made a second Runescape account so I could get better deals and get more gold,” my brother said once at the table.

To me, it seems that my parents and brother are creating a second, online life. We play games because it gives us a chance to escape from the real world, but by the end of the day, this is reality and we must deal with it.

I asked my brother once if he enjoyed being a hermit, spending his teenage years in front of the computer rather than going out and socializing with friends from school.

He told me that it was a lot easier to just open up Facebook chat and socialize. The reason for his obsessive Runescape playing is that “real people suck.”

I try to avoid online games that try to consume my life. Games like these should be played in small doses and should be played in a safe way that will not affect your computer’s security, or your life’s security for that matter.