A couple of days ago I was browsing the BBC news website, a new habit of mine, and I came across an interesting article on "the psychology of Tetris", and just what it is about the game that has made it so appealing for so many years. I found this article fascinating. I myself have always wondered why sometimes I just can't seem to put down the smartphone or close out of that one game I just love to play (currently Bubbleshooter). Basically the gist of the article was that the game takes advantage of our psychological need to tidy things up, and uses it against us by constantly creating new "messes" we need to solve- fitting the pieces together. The game is indeed highly addictive and, as the article mentions, can cause the "Tetris Effect", which is basically when you dream in Tetris. I have, admittedly and to my own embarrassment, experienced the Tetris Effect with the game Bubbleshooter. It is very frustrating to me because dreaming about the game is an overload and leaves me feeling slightly nauseous. I don't know why...
Here is a link to the article:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121022-the-psychology-of-tetris
Here is a link to the Tetris Effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
At the same time, I tend to draw a line between playing games on phone apps and "gaming". It probably is very hypocritical of me to be judgemental of so-called "gamers", but even I can't justify spending 6+ hours playing one game. I just don't understand the draw. I consistently get bored at around the 1 hour mark. Regardless, I was reading more about actual video game "addiction" and I found this blog post which explained much of what I was skeptical about, though I must admit that when I first read this article, I misread a portion of it and thought it said that a child died because they weren't allowed to play video games, and that just totally ruined the credibility of this whole article. In fact, the author said that a child died due to neglectful parents who spent most of their time playing video games...I'm definitely still suspiscious/unsure of this, but I let it slide because the article actually does do a good job explaining the science behind video game addiction. Read it! I'm not sure I buy into the actual "addiction" description of this whole thing, but there definitely is some reason so many kids just get sucked into that world....
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/02/19/the-psychology-of-video-game-a/
It blows my mind when I hear that there are people that sit in front of the tv playing video games for hours on hours. I can see how people like playing video games to release stress and stuff like that.I also understand that they do have control over what happens in the game, but that means that they want control over something and I think that you would want to work on having "control" of what happens in your life rather than what happens in a virtual world. I mean you can't just waste your life away playing video games... You are going to have to do something in the real world to survive. This just drives me insane that these people waste hours upon hours on something that isn't real or really benefiting you all that much.
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