Sunday 23 August 2015

my run in with video game addition

For this blog post id like to tell you about my run in with set video game addiction and the battle i had with it as it seems to pertain to everything about this topic.

So the year was 2009 and it was kind of a hard time for me, I had gotten rather intimate with a girl I liked since primary school which at the time was a good thing for both me and here, you know valentines day for two 13 year old's, things were looking good, but then she decides that its to much to fast and called it off, cant say i blame her but i was still just 13 a the time, i didn't have the mentality to just shrug that off and except it back then, that was the second strew.

the first strew was the fact that i was bullied, a lot, there were a few guys in my high school that like to target me again and again on a regular basis, so much so that i snapped but that's for the end of this story.

the stage was set, bullied and dumped id just gotten my hands on a new copy of call of duty 4, and with the world looking down on me i decided that since no one would listen to me id stop telling them about it, so i turned to games, my grade were never great and wouldn't you know it hey got worse, pretty soon i was playing about 2 hours on both halo 3 and call of duty 4 each a night, we got a new internet plan so that was fine with me and all the homework that was coming in didn't matter because no one at school mattered, soon i had a clan that had recruited me for call of duty and i had halo teams emailing and messaging me asking me to join them for tournaments.

this went on for about 3 months, my father getting angrier at me and my mother trying to cover and help in her own not very subtle way, ( mostly yelling and then getting yelled at by my dad for letting me play ) at this point was experiencing the following symptoms,
  • Fatigue, tendency to fall asleep during school
  • Not completing homework or assignments on time
  • Declining grades, or failing classes
  • Dropping out of school activities, clubs, sports, etc.
  • Isolating from family and friends to play video games
  • Preoccupation with the Game.  (Thoughts about previous on-line activity or anticipation of the next on-line session.)
  • Use of the Game in increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction.
  • Repeated, unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back or stop Game use.
  • Gaming longer than originally intended.
  • Lies to family members, friends, therapists, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with the Game.
  • Use of the Game is a way to escape from problems or to relieve a dysphoric mood.  (e.g. feelings of hopelessness, guilt, anxiety, depression.)
  • Jeopardized or risked loss of significant relationships, job, educational or career opportunities because of Game use.
the whole damn list, soon the power cord started disappearing from the xbox and school started saying i was to be kept down a year, the girl that dumped me left the school, my friends had stopped talking to me as much if at all, and the bullying had tripled ( seriously it started being whole lunch times, recess and after school hours  of bullying, who really didn't have a life ...), i figured out how to get other power supply's for the xbox as well as internet but one day it all stopped.

my sister had moved back in home at this point now, she'd been helping take the power cable from me, but when the school had a meeting with me and said about the idea that i was addicted then had called in my family as well, they took everything, see i was foster cared and came from heroin addicts, i hated the thought of being addicted to anything so it all had to change.

I got tested to see what my education standard was ( very poor btw ) i was shown how to improve it and started to do so, i wish i could say i made a new group of friends but the truth is i learnt something else, i learnt how to lie and floated between friend groups and one day when that one scrawny bully came around and grabbed my shirt like normal i grabbed him by the neck and push my thumb into his throat so deep that he turned blue then i gave him two chooses, ether hold on and pass out or let go and never both me again, the crowd that sore this was waiting for punches instead he let go so i did as well, he dropped out shortly after and i started talking to this nice ( all be it very frigate and extremely chatty ) girl called Lisa and got back to reality, tho i couldn't help but wonder just how bad things might have been if not for those people skills i picked up to call those groups friends and for the girl that went on to be my first love.

list sighted from http://www.addictionrecov.org/Addictions/?AID=45

sexism in video games

ok mate.... so after listening to the article " Damsels In Distress: Female Representation in Video Games
By Eugenia Zobel de Ayala on March 6, 2014 " ( link below ) and I have to say, who ever wrote this sounds like a total idiot and seems to have lost touch with the very topic she's writing about and here's why.

point 1, while here experience may have started out in the year 1994 ( Mario kart 64 )its no longer relevant, just one look at the comment you see ones completely contradicting Eugenia's written by other women non the less explaining that there are a heap of games that don't follow these "Damsels In Distress" rules

point 2, Eugenia's living in the wrong year, she's written a blog about games from the 90's when it was 2014, at the least this post should have been about how the times have changed with the likes of tome raider, gears of war, the new dishonoured and every dragon age as well as many other AAA game titles and the indie community wanting games that tell rich story and compelling game play that sell them, not this  "Damsels In Distress" rubbish that sells it despite what she may have dug up

point 3, last but not least, she's looking at "DOA" (dead or alive) a game made of boob and ass physics generators just for the female characters, a game that had about 50% of its playing community drawing fan fiction and doujin's about them, of cause she'll find sexism there she points out that one of the characters there to get revenge for being raped for christs sakes, (as much as this a topic that may step on tows ) being raped as a back story does not scream strong female leading character.....

https://www.hastac.org/blogs/ezobel/2014/03/06/damsels-distress-female-representation-video-games



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