Addicting Games and Their Impact

We all know that computer games are electronic games played on a personal computer. Computer games are meant for entertainment purposes only. They are built by developers in order to provide people with some means to entertain themselves. So these games come with a warning sign that imitating the stunts and actions at home or anywhere else is strictly prohibited. But there are children and other people who imitate such stunts in real life. This is one of the negative impacts of computer games. But another important negative impact is the addiction that people get to these games. This impact is ignored by many but is one of the prevailing negative impacts of digital entertainment.

Addiction is a problem no matter what people get addicted to. From drugs and drinks to games addiction is a huge problem. Talking about addicting games, there are people who spent a large portion of their daily lives in computer games. Such people play games from hours and hours to an entire day forgetting about any other activity of their daily lives. Due to addiction to games, people miss out on their normal things like school, homework/assignments, studies, real life play time and even lose their social lives. They might not even have a real life and become lifeless, living only in the world of games. All these are some of the negative impacts which are caused by addiction to games.

Addiction to games is caused when gamers spend too much of their time in games. Addiction to games is facilitated by the release of newer advanced games all the time. Even though games take a lot of skilled manpower, high cost and years to develop, a new one is released every now and then. So, when a gamer gets tired of a game, he or she can go out there and get another collection of games to get addicted to. Years pass this way for gamers and they do not even know it. They hardly realize it and when they do, they will have already missed out a lot in their lives.

MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games), multiplayer games, online gaming, gaming communities/clubs, all are holding a lot of addicted gamers. MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Runescape have millions of online players from all over the world out of which it is said that a large portion of them spend around ten hours a day playing these MMORPGs. So when ten hours a day is spent playing games, very less time is left for other important activities. Such players have their lives online and offline they are out of this world. The games having millions of players get such huge amount of customers with their high budget marketing efforts and with the help of already addicted and awaiting game fan base. So, a lot of time and money is spent on games every year. More over, there are free versions or free games available for kids who cannot pay and once they grow up and are able to play they upgrade to paid versions of the games. This makes it seem like there will be generations of addicted gamers if the trend continues.

But who is to blame for all of this? Is it the gamers or the game developers? They both share the blame but the actual gamers are more to blame. It is because they are the ones who empty their pockets for the games and they are the ones who play it all the time. They should have control of their lives and should only play games for what they are meant for and that is for entertainment purposes. They should not let the games control them and instead have a healthy time playing such games. They should know a limit. The ones who are already addicted to games should fix themselves and involve in more real life activities in order to get their minds off of games. This way, time can be well utilized and games can be played only for entertainment purposes.