Brief Glance at RPG's and Their Effects

So here's a scene for y'all:

It's 2000 or a little before, and 6th grade Ray is down in a dimly lit basement by himself (crazy right?), glued to a TV screen with an SNES (Super Nintendo) controller in hand and a bag of Cheetos spilling over on the floor at his feet. He's about 80 hours in to the RPG (role playing game) Final Fantasy 7, and it's time for a bathroom break. He finishes his business, and through the vent in the bathroom can hear his game commencing without him. He has forgotten to  pull up his inventory so that enemies won't attack him.

He darts out of the bathroom as fast as his chubby little  digits will allow, throws open the basement door and stops in horror at the top of the steps as he  hears his character dying from below. He starts down the stairs  two at a time, his acne-ridden face twisted in fear and anger, and before jumping down the last two steps trips over his feet and snaps his ankle. He's left screaming in agony, army-crawling on the unfinished concrete floor towards the game controller like a soldier whose legs have been blown off. His character dies, and now he's got to wear a cast on his foot for the first six weeks of middle school. Bummer.

Gaming has come an awful long way since the 32 bit graphics and turn-based systems of many 90's-style  RPG's. In the past decade we have seen the emergence of many MMORPG's (massive multi-player online role playing games) such as Everquest and WoW that allow players to communicate and play with one another in gigantic worlds filled with strange creatures and time-consuming missions. We've also seen the emergence of next-gen systems like the PS3 and XBOX 360, which function not only as gaming systems but as devices with hard drives and internet connections suitable for Netflix viewing or even Skyping.

With these new avenues for interaction have come criticisms  and concerns from scholars and parents alike, one of which is Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together. From unhealthy pseudo-addictions to games like Second Life to the effects of violent video games on teens, the video game industry has taken its fair share of heat.

Some may see the scene described above with our friend 6th grade Ray as evidence to support some of these criticisms; I mean I broke my ankle after all. But let's face it, the video game didn't break my ankle any more than Duke Nukem came out of a computer screen to shoot up Columbine. Did it have an effect? Maybe, but the kids were loopy anyway. I think Mickey Mouse could have sent one of 'em off.

This debate seems a bit dated, but with each new video game that pushes boundaries comes with it a few shame-on-you-ers. I stumbled upon a great site that has archives of a plethora of studies and arguments from different angles, which you should check out.

Personally, video games (in particular RPG's) had more positive than negative effects on me. I had to use my brain to solve surprisingly complicated puzzles, come up with strategies  to defeat powerful enemies,  plan ahead, budget money (both in a virtual sense in-game and in real life so that I could buy the games), learn from mistakes made in-game, and persevere. Believe it or not, some of those  qualities I spent developing in a virtual world carried over into the real life one.

Then again, there weren't any next-gen systems when I was young, and as such I was never exposed at a young age to things like online game play (or online anything) where many new concerns about young people have stemmed from these days. Would I have turned into a lump of diabetes-ridden filth, obsessed with Second Life and my virtual girlfriend, both of us lying about our genders  in order to fulfill a fantasy which couldn't be accomplished in real life? Would I mimic scenes from Grand Theft Auto and beat hookers to death with sex toys? I doubt it, but there's no real way of knowing.

Anxiety and Social Media

What is intimacy without privacy? In the video below, Sherry Turkle (author of Alone Together) asks this question, and a follow-up question: what is democracy without privacy? Certainly one of the most cherished of our rights as U.S citizens, privacy is needed to maintain everything from relationships to businesses. Are we giving up this privacy as new forms of social media are becoming more prevalent in our society?   She points out that social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg has said that privacy may indeed be a thing of the past.

  I think that that issue of privacy contributes to to the overall anxiety that can come with social media sites like Facebook, and with younger generations of teenagers and children who are becoming more and more attached to their cell phones for services like texting. As we read in Alone Together, young people are becoming more and more concerned with the image that they present on Facebook, going so far as to create false accounts to talk to schoolmates about themselves to see if they are liked or disliked.

Anxiety plays a large role in maintaining this image. It has become common for teens and young adults to spend hours upon hours every week tweaking and updating their Facebook pages and checking their cell phones for updates on Facebook and recent texts.

 Anxiety also comes into play for college athletes a who are constantly worried about coaches or teammates viewing the pictures that they post, and for professionals concerned about their boss(s) checking up on their information and possibly demanding employee passwords to do so.

So since most of us assume that everything that we put on the internet is basically public and will remain so forever, like Turkle points out when describing the "Anxiety of Always", should we refrain from posting anything online ever? If a person can't judge between what you should and shouldn't put online for others to see, this may be the best route. And considering how addictive sites like Facebook can be, more and more people may be taking this route.