Synthetic Worlds

According to Edwards Castronova the gaming world has evolved from computer geeks into a multi-million dollar industry. People everywhere spend hours playing video games and it does not appear to be ending anytime soon.

The book synthetic worlds written, by Edward Castronova talks a lot about online gaming, and the effects on the future. Castronova also talks about how the economies could soon begin affecting the real world economy.

Castronova made a lot of statements I agree with but I completely failed to understand how video game worlds are just as real as Earths. Castronova talks about how industries in the game are just as real in the virtual world as they are in the real world. Players began to go to places like ebay and sell earned game rewards for real dollars to other players is an amazing. The fact that most users of MMRPG’s are males in Asia and America is amazing.

Castronova made a quote that really made a lot of sense in connecting why people play online games. “Why should a man be scorned if finding himself in prison, if he tries to get out and go home? Castronova is using the prison as culture, which makes people unhappy, and have to do other things to get away, the other ways end up being video games. Castronovas vision of a new future where students will use simulations to test out new ideas about societies and such so that they can try and see the future.

Castronova thinks “ it is more possible now, for every person to have at least a few moments of truly feeling accomplished, befriended and loved.” To support this example he brings up his grandmother. The online gaming industry has become scary real, and before we know it it we will be living though it.. I wonder what that will be like.

Violent Video Games

The video game is said to have a violent effect on children. Everyone plays the occasional video game from time to time. Many children play games for hours upon hours. According to chapter 22, “ the violence in video games can e categorized along different dimensions, whether it invloves fantasy character or representation of humans. Whether the perspective of the players character is first person or over the shoulder, and whether the motivation for violence is clear or justified”. The violence of a video game has nothing to with the real life violence. Though exposure to violent video games increases physiological arousal, it is hard to blame violence on video games. But regardless of the degree of violence, players focus more on the games mechanics and its object over the violence. The violence in a video game is no different from watching television or something like that that exposes you to media.

The media make it seem as though video games today are to violent for children. According to the chapter “In 1999, 6% of PC and Video games sold in the United States contained violent content.” But the media does not say much when it comes to the facts. Video games to children are jus video games. Most children know the difference between video game violence and real violence. There have been several studies which study how children react to video games, but children reacted the same way to non violent video games than they did to violent games. Although there were some cases where the children did react differently. There is a higher correlation between media violence and real violence, than there is between video games and violence.