When they come for us we will have PS controllers in our hands
So I’m watching this show the other night called “Gamers Revolution” while I’m trying to wind down before bed. It was all about the new “world” of video games. Now, I’ve played my share of video games in the past and spent hours and even days living in virtual worlds (and I wish I could have every minute I wasted back) but the stuff on this show just blew my mind. I was like a deer caught in headlights. I just couldn’t look away for fear of missing something even more insane or unbelievable.
It started innocently and normal enough with profiling a HUGE computer gamers convention. Some 6000 people sitting in a huge Olympic arena in the Norway playing online games. Kind of creepy that these guys who play together online everyday for hours and hours traveled thousands of miles, from all over the world and spent god knows how much change to get there. To actually see each together and to be in the same room together… and then they just sit and play the same game they always play at home and don’t even talk to each other. I would have thought a drink, a pub-crawl, a party would be more appropriate, but whatever. Obviously people skills or real world living had NO priority over the game.
Then the documentary switched to a suburban stay at home mom who plays online games with her husband. That’s kinda normal I guess. She had decided to “send” her game character off to a very specialized company, one that levels up your characters for you for a price. Basically you pay someone hundreds of dollars to sit around, play your game character and kill monsters for you, gain you a shit load of experience points and level your character up. In 10 days she was back playing her game at level 40, whatever that means. Both her and her husband were very excited. (and very excited to send their kids off to bed to play her “new improved” video character) Well, that sounded pretty weird to me. 2 small kids and the best thing you can spend your money on is “leveling up” a computer game character? But it gets better.
The company that does all this leveling or playing for you started as one guy with one computer simply doing it in his spare time which is pretty easy to imagine. Must have started out much like paying someone a few bucks to do your homework overnight. Today though it’s a huge company and it outsources all its “work” to third world and developing countries. They showed one setup where men in poor parts of Romania sit around and play these games 24 hours a day. One guy had 40 “stations” set up in his home and groups of 35 or so men would work shifts all around the clock. Middle aged, poor, Romanians leveling up online computer characters for folks with just too much spare time and money to know what to do with it.
Does this seem really twisted to you at all? Middle class suburban soccer moms, with their 2.3 kids, 2 cars, nice home is the burbs, PTA meetings and church on Sunday, paying poor men in developing countries to make their online computer characters cooler? And people wonder why developing countries hate Americans. They are struggling everyday just to feed their families and they see American women spending hundreds of dollars to improve their computer game character.
But wait…
The documentary then moved on to a guy who had re-mortgaged his house, had basically gambled it all. He had paid a software developer $100,000.00 to “build” him a space resort in his favorite online game. His plan was to sell, for real money, the apartments and retail space in his resort. The Apartments started at $100 and went up to $1,000. Sounds insane… but people are so into these games they were buying these “space resort condos” for their computer characters to make them (i.e. the computer character) cooler and more liked socially. He figured, and figured correctly, that if folks were buying $15 and $20 T-shirts in this game just to make their character look better, why wouldn’t they buy a home for them?
There’s a point where you start asking yourself where people’s real priorities lie today. A huge percentage of the population in North America is overweight, unhealthy, have horrible social skills, don’t know how to set an example, let alone raise their own children and we wonder why. The average Westerner spends more time watching TV or playing video games than talking to their own family.
In 1000 years the fall of our society won’t be blamed on barbarian hordes, mis-management, natural disaster, or conquest… but on the fact that our society slowly enslaved it’s self to the unreality and fantasy worlds of TV and video games in order to escape the reality of our day to day lives we found depressing but refused to take any action to change.
Long rant I know… Point is…
Turn off the fuckin TV or computer and spend some time with your family before the time is gone.
(I do realize the irony that you are reading this on a computer, that I wrote this on a computer and about a TV show… BUT… I know where I come from. I know the hours and days I once spent on both and I also know how well controlled, scheduled and timed my own TV and computer time is... but thanks for caring)
It started innocently and normal enough with profiling a HUGE computer gamers convention. Some 6000 people sitting in a huge Olympic arena in the Norway playing online games. Kind of creepy that these guys who play together online everyday for hours and hours traveled thousands of miles, from all over the world and spent god knows how much change to get there. To actually see each together and to be in the same room together… and then they just sit and play the same game they always play at home and don’t even talk to each other. I would have thought a drink, a pub-crawl, a party would be more appropriate, but whatever. Obviously people skills or real world living had NO priority over the game.
Then the documentary switched to a suburban stay at home mom who plays online games with her husband. That’s kinda normal I guess. She had decided to “send” her game character off to a very specialized company, one that levels up your characters for you for a price. Basically you pay someone hundreds of dollars to sit around, play your game character and kill monsters for you, gain you a shit load of experience points and level your character up. In 10 days she was back playing her game at level 40, whatever that means. Both her and her husband were very excited. (and very excited to send their kids off to bed to play her “new improved” video character) Well, that sounded pretty weird to me. 2 small kids and the best thing you can spend your money on is “leveling up” a computer game character? But it gets better.
The company that does all this leveling or playing for you started as one guy with one computer simply doing it in his spare time which is pretty easy to imagine. Must have started out much like paying someone a few bucks to do your homework overnight. Today though it’s a huge company and it outsources all its “work” to third world and developing countries. They showed one setup where men in poor parts of Romania sit around and play these games 24 hours a day. One guy had 40 “stations” set up in his home and groups of 35 or so men would work shifts all around the clock. Middle aged, poor, Romanians leveling up online computer characters for folks with just too much spare time and money to know what to do with it.
Does this seem really twisted to you at all? Middle class suburban soccer moms, with their 2.3 kids, 2 cars, nice home is the burbs, PTA meetings and church on Sunday, paying poor men in developing countries to make their online computer characters cooler? And people wonder why developing countries hate Americans. They are struggling everyday just to feed their families and they see American women spending hundreds of dollars to improve their computer game character.
But wait…
The documentary then moved on to a guy who had re-mortgaged his house, had basically gambled it all. He had paid a software developer $100,000.00 to “build” him a space resort in his favorite online game. His plan was to sell, for real money, the apartments and retail space in his resort. The Apartments started at $100 and went up to $1,000. Sounds insane… but people are so into these games they were buying these “space resort condos” for their computer characters to make them (i.e. the computer character) cooler and more liked socially. He figured, and figured correctly, that if folks were buying $15 and $20 T-shirts in this game just to make their character look better, why wouldn’t they buy a home for them?
There’s a point where you start asking yourself where people’s real priorities lie today. A huge percentage of the population in North America is overweight, unhealthy, have horrible social skills, don’t know how to set an example, let alone raise their own children and we wonder why. The average Westerner spends more time watching TV or playing video games than talking to their own family.
In 1000 years the fall of our society won’t be blamed on barbarian hordes, mis-management, natural disaster, or conquest… but on the fact that our society slowly enslaved it’s self to the unreality and fantasy worlds of TV and video games in order to escape the reality of our day to day lives we found depressing but refused to take any action to change.
Long rant I know… Point is…
Turn off the fuckin TV or computer and spend some time with your family before the time is gone.
(I do realize the irony that you are reading this on a computer, that I wrote this on a computer and about a TV show… BUT… I know where I come from. I know the hours and days I once spent on both and I also know how well controlled, scheduled and timed my own TV and computer time is... but thanks for caring)
posted by Geeper at 10:44 p.m.
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