Blogpost 1: Is MMORPG good enough?

I always find playing online games, especially MMORPG’s, a great experience. In my 17 years of existence in Earth, nothing is as extreme and as exiting than playing massively multi-player online games. You can slay dragons, save beautiful damsel in distresses, make hundreds and thousands of friends, be rich and wander the world at ease. In the cyberworld of role playing games, you can almost do everything. But what this artificial world can cause our daily life in reality? How the brutality and freedom of that world make us who we are?

           In most cases, playing games results too many negative effects like addiction and dependency. In an article entitled “Are MMORPGs “addictive”?” from the site scienceblogs.com, Dave Munger says that, “… but the fact that the MMORPG appears to be negatively impacting several areas of these students’ lives — and that they continue to play on despite this — suggest it might be.” Prone to this addiction are pre-adolescence and teens from ages 8-18. It is also said that the more the person spends time playing, the larger the attachment they’ll have to their characters. When I was on my addiction days, I tend to mimic my character voice and actions in the MMORPG Grand Chase. This is because I get to play this game for years and I kind of memorized my character’s manner in the game. At first it was nothing but when my friends look at me skeptically, I realized it was a weird manner and quit doing it. Gamer’s community (a group of people dedicated in playing any tech-games) will find this manner cool and splendid but not all people can. Most people see this “Geekish” and “Weird” so it highly affects your social life. I experienced being isolated and indifferent from other people due to this manner and it makes you think you are alone. I think understanding gamers is hard for normal people because we appreciate inanimate beings for addiction reasons and get to spend tons of time, effort and money (and by I mean money, real money) on it.

Aside from affecting your social life, MMORPG can also become your focal point of reality. According to the article "3 Philosophical concepts about MMO RP gaming" by Zoran Kojcic of the site philopractice.blogspot.com, “Most of the gamers play MMO games for fun or leisure. Some philosophers would say that any form of art has the same purpose, either to entertain us or to distract us from everyday problems. Also, other people say that gaming is a form of escaping from reality (everyday problems)  into a better world where gamers are in control of everything, a world where they have second life, right to make mistakes and where making mistakes isnt really hurtfull or fatal to them or to other people.” Some people’s lives revolve on playing games. This may sound impractical but it happens most of the time. According to studies, people that have a tragic or plain life tend to recreate and/or spice up themselves by being involved in playing MMORPG’s. The idea of a perfect world, gamers try to see this as their own world where they can do whatever they want and be whatever their character is. They play the part of this specific avatar in a game like it is really them. It is, mainly, a bad effect. This can lead to negligence of one’s life as well as psychological imbalance. 

Apparently these are only two of the many effects of MMORPG in life. To be fair, MMORPG is not that really bad. There are also good effects like it improves hand and eye coordination, better response reflexes and better reaction time. I love playing MMORPG and I think without it my life would not be great. Manage your time properly and you can enjoy it both.  But I want to emphasize to all that though the cyberworld is tons and tons better than reality, it is not an excuse to neglect your life and be a slave to this world.