There are lots of gamers out there in the world. Almost billions out there. A game can expand your brain's learning abilities and increase your observations. It can make you into a better learner and almost billions of those gamers have become better learners. But what about those gamers that play 24/7? What do they see? What can they become after playing for an extended amount of time? Hello Wandering Traveler and welcome to this little look on reality!
In my world history class, my teacher showed us a video about Plato's vision on society. It quoted what he told his students in his school and gave them a better look on a government controlled society. Although, he couldn't really explain it, he told a story to simplify what it was.
He told his students to think by telling them to image a few men kept from birth in a cave with a stairway behind them and an everlasting fire emitting light, showing nothing, but shadows. A walkway was placed in front of the fire to show certain images. There entire would be these images and they would name what they saw in those shadows. They knew nothing, but those shadows and the light they stared at. If you took one of those people in the cave and showed him the fire and the puppets emitting the shadows, what would he say and what would his reaction be? You just showed him that what he knew was all a lie.
"Why?" you might be asking. "Why do I have to know this? What does this have to do with everything?" Well, my teacher started to compare those men to gamers. At first I was going to strongly debate with him about the subject, but showed us a 2 minute video of an experiment being done to 3 people: they had a preselected game to play for a week. They slept for 3 hours and continued playing. One person was given Call of Duty 2, the other was given Devil May Cry and the last guy was given Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. After the week, they showed the same results in different ways: The guy who played Call of Duty thought it was 1942 and the war was still going. The guy who played Devil May Cry thought the world was infested with demons. And the guy who played Ocarina of time thought he had to save the princess with his Ocarina.
These 3 people were sucked into these worlds for a week and only slept for 3 hours. Although, they did it in an odd way, I still thought it was interesting. The 3 hour sleep was a bad thing to have these guys do, but once I looked up Hardcore Gamer on Google, I found articles that showed truly hardcore gamers that do this. They sleep for about 3 hours and wake up to just play for hours. Sometime they don't even sleep. Most of these articles didn't talk much about American gamers or western gamers in general. Most of them talked about gamers from China, Japan and Australia. Since most countries out there have an expensive WiFi service, many European Gamers stay in Internet Cafes where it's free as long as you buy a meal or two.
This is what I hope gamers don't become when VR is out of it's experimental state. As seen in most Science Fiction stories, it is believed that when Virtual Reality is popular, everyone would be in their own world, making up their own rules and logic. Many have said that science with have expand into our universe, but why do that when you can build that moment in your world? Your world in your VR game.
Although, the idea of creating your own world in your own image would be great, I mean, they found out a way to simulate feelings in your mind, but the exclusion of the real world can be like how we see the PC Master Race: a greasy, fat man with acne all over his face (Sorry my Master Race bros).
I can tell that the Government and the Country as a whole know this. After seeing what changes in technology for us to produce this, I can tell they are trying to keep this thing as little as possible at the moment. And the prices I can understand. You guys out there wanting that VR, but don't have the money, you know that reason why it's over a thousand dollars.
So be careful with your gaming. I love it, but you can't have it be your life. Those of you that play constantly, start considering how it may affect you for it may hurt you. I hoped you liked this read and what do you think about what my teacher said? I mean, I just wanted to rain down on why gaming wasn't bad, but he proved me before I could say anything. Anyways, 'til next time...
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