Excessive Gaming - Page 4

On March 05 2010 10:40 hoborg wrote:


Here's what I think - A real baby you would care for due to more abstract human-nature feelings - love, parental instinct, etc. The in-game baby, on the other hand, was specifically designed to deliver an experience to grasp the user and make them addicted through tiny rewards (assuming that it's something like WoW). If they did something to care for the virtual baby, they would get some kind of positive feedback like "YAY +50 EXP" wheras a real-life baby dosen't really seem any different before or after you give them a bottle of formula. So, it could just be that the parents are stupid and didn't realize what they had to do to take care of a child without getting positive feedback. Or, it could be that the game was so well-designed and their sense of human emotion was so stifled that the desire for advancement in-game outweighed instinctual attachment to their daughter.

This kind of makes me think of this games conference presentation I watched earlier today. While the Korea incident is an instance of game design possibly hurting people (though obviously the real blame lies with the parents), that presentation tried to list ways game design could help people become better. Maybe if there was a more quantifiable measurement of their real life child's growth they would have taken better care of her. Experience points for changing the diaper, achievements on their birthdays, etc... I realize how ridiculous and pathetic that sounds, but in this specific instance it would have probably made them better parents.



wasn't that like 8 years ago? or is this a common occurrence?

On March 05 2010 08:45 blue_arrow wrote:
^EXACTLY

also maybe most people are completely ignoring the article details/comments or you truly just don't give a damn:

- parents raise a virtual baby in their MMORPG instead of caring for their real baby
- parents returned home after a 12-hour gaming session to find their 3-month old baby dead from dehydration
- parents lie to the police about finding the baby dead after they 'woke up from sleep'
- all this occured 5 months ago, and the parents were only arrested 2 days ago as they went into hiding right after the child's funeral
- they say "due to our guilt we haven't been to a PC cafe in these last 5 months" when they are caught

WTF

On March 06 2010 07:29 SweeTLemonS[TPR] wrote:


I normally don't buy into insanity stuff, but there is something very wrong with them mentally.

On March 05 2010 11:24 tirentu wrote:
Ironic that the game is called Prius, since they just couldn't stop playing it.

On March 05 2010 08:01 sMi.MeOw wrote:
these are old...

and...you sure you went to South Korea???

On March 06 2010 12:37 ghermination wrote:

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL HAHAHAHAHAH