Computer Gaming

Abstract

This chapter explores contemporary fears, concerns and hopes about internet gaming. With this topic, perhaps more than any other discussed in this book, we enter the realms of perception and contested realities. Some people have real fears about this subject. Discussions in the popular press reveal (and perhaps encourage) fears that internet usage is damaging our children, family dynamics, marriages, causing mass-scale addictive behaviour, deskilling the younger generation (collective loss of interpersonal skills) and forming individuals more isolated, alienated and solipsistic than ever before in human history. And some people have real hopes invested in this subject. In particular, the creators of games claim that they can deliver skills and develop aptitudes that make us better, smarter people. The following discussion begins with popular fears about internet gaming, by referring briefly to its coverage in the (US and British) popular media. It then draws on exemplars from dystopian fiction and actual internet games. These are Lesley Howarth’s dystopian novel Ultraviolet (2001) and the game Second Life, which, with some 20 million subscribers, is one of the most popular and successful games of the early twenty-first century. I consult academic research (from a range of disciplines) to see how the hopes and fears articulated in the media, fiction and game actually map on to ‘reality’ (in the form of recent research findings). I thus probe the validity of fears about online gaming and consider some of claims made about its positive potential. I also pause, along the way, to reflect on some of the issues raised.

A fool’s paradise.

(Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Act II Scene IV)