Computer Games Facts

A computer game is played on a computer. People who play computer games are computer gamers. Studies have demonstrated on spiked and elsewhere , the supposed connection between computer games and violence is highly tendentious. And yet it is used to justify blanket censorships such as the banning of Manhunt 2.

In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps--as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability.

Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces. Taylor's detailed look at Everquestoffers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. And she explores the questions of who owns game space--what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.

Furthermore, doctors have confirmed that children who play computer games are also susceptible to long time problems such as RSI and back problems. This applies to adults as well. Social problems are also a result of playing computer games. Playing computer games for long periods of time alone can make people become reclusive and introverted. It can also give children a false sense of reality.

It is understandable that patients rarely talk about their virtual worlds and computer gaming. Some games deal with fantastic phenomena, like magic or monsters, and talking about such things in the real world may make patients feel foolish. Other times, games simulate that which would otherwise be illegal or unethical; the virtual is used to experiment with the forbidden.

As an activity where players are co-located in physical as well as in games space, lanning is both an interesting and important case to consider for theorizing gaming encounters. Its social nature enables theorists to move beyond merely combating negative stereotypes, to think more positively about what games produce. Also, lans allow the multiple "materiality and reality statuses" which computer gaming involves, to be clearly seen. This makes explicit things which, though they might be obvious to gamers themselves, are not generally evident to outside commentators. In this, lanning lends itself to developing complex, rich understandings of the multiple interactions in which gamers are involved.