Sourabh’s blog

Theres no doubt in anyone’s mind that games are addictive. Easy availability of games, access to online resources, gadgets, cheaper games- be it legitimate or pirated copies only make the gamoshpere bigger. The problem arises when gaming becomes an obsession. Gaming sessions turn out to be so addictive that people forget their daily life and get immersed in gaming as if its THE thing in life. Such things have been rampant offlate in major parts of Asia and more importantly China, Taiwan and South Korea in particular. That only makes me think about the possble situation in India after we get through this phase of transition in both Internet Connection Speeds and more bigger gaming crowd in the future. As a result, incidents such as these should be well taken note of, to avoid such issues in India.

Cases:

A couple of weeks back, the incident which caused this whole issue of online gaming in limelight was when a 28-year-old South Korean, who apparently quit his job just to play more games ( ? ), began a life threatening and rather shocking gaming sessions which almost lasted 50 hrs which later on became a cause for losing his life. So immersed was he that heonly left his online simulation gaming to go to the bathroom and to take short naps on a makeshift bed. And now if u think that was a one of a kind incident or the man was a freak, theres another incident which happened some time ago in Korea where in it was not one, but both the parents having gross negligence on their daughter. The mother and father of the victim had gone to a nearby Internet cafe, deeply immersed in playing Blizzard’s massively multiplayer World of Warcraft online, returned home only to find their infant 4 month old daughter dead from suffocation.

Measures Taken:

Owing to such cases, just like our Indian Government would be forced to in the Parliamentary sessions, The Chinese Govt. have already decided to implement a system where in the no. of hours of gaming of a particular gamer are recorded. “The system reduces the ability level of a player’s online game character if the game is played beyond the three-hour limit. Basically, play more than three hours and the system cuts a game character’s ability by half. Play more than five hours and the system reduces a game character’s ability to the lowest level possible.” A three hour online game play is what has been implemented to curb the no. of incidents arising out of the same.

Lookover:

As always, legal legistation against a particular thing doesnt necessarily help in curbing the wrong. Moreover, it serves as a notice to people who havent already indulged in the same and gives them a free license to try these things. Same thing is what I feel would happen with such legislations. Are such restrictions going to have any regulation over the no. of hours gamers play online? Certainly not. Such is the nature of the Internet, there are loopholes in everything in this virtual world. Mutliple game accounts and connection to servers via proxy to cheat their original identity to name a few.

Personally, I dont think any amount of legistation on these thing would affect anyone. Its not what the world does about the issues prevalent in the society but its the rational behaviour of each individual which would help address this issue. Hope there are no such issues to be seen in India any time soon, I can only imagine the whole ga-ga in the media, the newspapers and the parliament which would go on..hehe..Fingers crossed so that these are not a sign of the things to come in the future.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2005 at 7:49 am and is filed under Gamerz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.