h a l f b a k e r yNot just a think tank. An entire army of think.
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
Advertisement:
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
Are you addicted to video games? want to earn some money from your hours spent on those video games?
Well, have we got an offer for you! Start playing the game you love for cash!
We will pay you (slightly less than minimum
wage) for you to play the game to your heart's content. Of course you'll have to do a few things to stay employed. You will need to write a weekly progress report, attend regular meetings and accurately log your activity. There will be promotion opportunities, but it this will require commitment to the game and a willingness to demonstrate your leadership abilities. Promotion will be extremely competitive which may cause tension with your colleagues.
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
If addicts were encouraged to play games as a job, would they grow to hate it? if it worked, it could be applied to other psychological addictions (internet, sex, alcohol etc.).
Yeah, yeah, it's treating the symptom not the cause etc.
[link]
|
| |
Some people do play games as a job, whether they are testing games in development or harvesting in-game resources to be sold in an MMO (although the latter is more of a 3rd world, sweat-shop thing). |
|
| |
And yes it can be very boring indeed, according to reports. |
|
| |
I expect this would work fairly well. I'm going to make my son play Halo for at least twenty hours this weekend. That should do the trick! |
|
| |
I had a love/hate relationship with the Amiga. Hate won in the end - mainly due to it's ridiculously complex graphics architecture. |
|
| |
i don't think this would work. How is your company making money to pay people to play for starters? Also, many gamers who are "addicted" to their game of choice (World Of Warcraft, EVE, Warhammer Online etc..) gladly spend a ridiculous amount of their free time playing (in the case of Warcraft, and other games out there, paying for the privelige). I would imagine that the offer to play for the lengths of time involved for it to be a job would not be particularly discouraging.
Meetings and reports are also unlikely to put off the serious gamer. I know a few people who need rather forcible reminders to pick topics of conversation other than what their virtual (s)elves got up to last night.
Also, as noted by [Aristotle] many games allow you to make a living from your in-game skills. Second Life springs to mind as a game where people have either supplemented their income from their normal job, or replaced that job altogether. |
|
| |
Can you name another addiction where saturation is used as a successful mode of therapy? What makes you think that it would work? |
|
| |
A clear indication of addiction is the user choosing to use to the point of saturation (line after line of cocaine, multiple day drinking binges, total abandonment of all other non-essential activities and neglect of essential activities). |
|
| |
Your study might attract addicts but without a control group you have no ability to access the effectiveness of your treatment. |
|
| |
This was supposed to be a humorous idea with a nugget of truth at its heart. To summarize: people love games and hate work (if properly mismanaged, underpaid etc); put them together and who knows what might happen. |
|
| |
Alternative explanation: its about changing one's perspective on a situation, without changing the situation itself. Once an addict realizes that the game is actually the equivalent of a low paying, crappy job, they might quit. |
|
| |
How to pay for it? maybe the addict's family/friends; maybe the game producers (so they can say they are working on discouraging addicts); maybe government health services ;) |
|
| |
well, like I said: Can you give another example of successful saturation therapy for addiction. |
|
| |
I suspect that this would simply be a huge waste of time for everyone. The addict simply acquires an inexplicable (medical? jail?) gap in their work history. |
|
| |