Watching this little segment about the online gaming world brought out the feeling of disbelief, and some humor out of me. First of all, I can not imagine playing the game for 11 hours a day, working 8 hours, and only leaving 5 hours for sleep, eating, and other daily life operations. To me I see this as a definite addiction to the game, and find it hard to believe that someone can actually believe that the game is real life. For instance the characters on the game are obviously made up creatures, and the "evil" creatures are made up as well. They do not even look real in these types of games. Another feeling of disbelief came when the one girl (Heather I think), was getting jealous when the fictional character of the man she liked would flirt with other characters in the game. That is absolutely craziness in my mind. Also, to say that she had fallen in love without even meeting this guy face to face is unreal to me. Finally, the other thing that seemed unreal to me is how well that one girl who was expecting twins put up with the amount of time her fiance was gaming. Hopefully he realizes that he needs to cut out the gaming and focus more on his family in the future.
Some humor I got out of this is that people will actually pay for gold in the game, and there is actually "goldfarmers" in China that get paid to play to earn gold to sell to American people. That just adds to the example of "plentitude" that the American society has. It actually kind of makes me sick thinking that people will pay real money to advance in a fictional world. It just does not add up for me. Overall, this segment about a second skin was kind of interesting to see how much of an addiction it actually was, and that there are halfway houses for addicted games. It is interesting to see addiction stories that are caused by something other then drugs or alcohol.
This clip called LEROY JENKINS is all I could think of while watching this segment. If you do not feel like watching the whole thing just skip to the 1:15 mark. All these world of worldcraft guys are discussing a strategy, and Leroy Jenkins just runs in screaming his name and they all get killed. For some reason I find this hysterical. Hope you all enjoyed my thoughts on second skin, and feel free to leave comments.
I completely agree with you about how unreal the whole thing seemed. I thought it was absolute craziness too when the girl got mad because a fictional character was flirting with the guy she liked in the game. I need more then 5 hours of sleep each night, I don't know how they do it.
ReplyDeleteHa! I LOVE Leroy Jenkins. Always good stuff.
ReplyDeleteI think it's crazy that the girl Heather actually got into a relationship and moved in with that guy. I don't think it's that hard to make friends in games like these but finding someone you want to spend the rest of your life with inside a game world with no idea what the other person looks like is just plain insensible.
ReplyDeleteI was totally surprised by the "goldfarming" as well. I couldn't believe that people actually spend tons of money to have someone else build up their character so that it will be stronger or better in general.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I definitely enjoyed the Leroy Jenkins clip. It was pretty much awesome.
I couldn't believe that these people started relationships over gaming and that the one girl would get jealous when he flirted with other characters in the game, absolutely ridiculous.
ReplyDelete