SolarCross wrote:You can read a book for hours and books are escapism too. Games allow blokes to play out their hunter-killer instincts in a way that doesn't involve actual bloodshed. People like games better than films or books because games are interactive, your input matters to what happens. With books and films you are just a passive inconsequential voyeur.
Books do not immerse you in the same way. You can sit in an open room with light coming in and read for two hours or so and then you will move on. There is still a feeling of being present in the actual world while you are reading a book. Games consume the player, they almost take you into the world which they depict because you are, as you say, interacting rather than simply observing or comprehending. It's an intesive and detaching experience which can produce depressions if continued for too long.
SolarCross wrote:Also closing the curtains is just for removing screen glare. The reason for closing the curtains is exactly the same reason cinemas don't have windows in the viewing area.
The difference is that cinema and theatre do not go on for hour after hour. You are not sat there in the dark for four hour periods. And they are both communal experiences because you are sat with a lot of other people. There is a solitary aspect to gaming that can be depressing. But yes watching films in one's house for hour after hour would also be depressing. I think any solitary activity other than reading books will make people depressed.
In the 1990s I remember gaming used to be considered something for children and it was an indulgence that parents allowed. A lot of people at that time did not have a very positive view of games and did not let their children buy consoles or computer games. I think the idea was always that the games were a distraction to be played here and there like board games. Children would grow out of them when they entered adulthood. In the late 2000s I noticed that it became socially acceptable for normal adult men, not merely fanatics or hobbyists, to also play games regularly. There was always something rage inducing about games, I think. Why is it that on multiplayer online games you always encounter strange and horrible people at the other end? As far back as I can remember when I used to play these types of online games in the mid 2000s you would get weird people.
Now days young men get so worked up and excited about their online games. It's as if they take them seriously.
Is it really any surprise that gaming seems to produce mental instability or at least attract people with such tendencies?