Dr. Tanya Byron, who won herself many admirers with her fair and even-handed Byron Report, will no doubt cause some of that admiration to be broken if her new TV show, Am I Normal? is anything to go by. The show, which visually compares videogame addiction to heroine addiction, provides Byron's view on what a hardcore videogame fan should be:
"Most of us think of games as the preserve of the teenager; young people escaping into a virtual world of fantasy. It’s an attractive but artificial world where they can give themselves a new identity and a status and power unobtainable in reality ...
... Michelle Hart is not what you would imagine as a dedicated gamer. She’s an intelligent, 39-year old woman with a decent job and no history of psychological problems."
I'll admit I know a few dedicated gamers who are young, stupid, unemployable psychopaths, but Jesus. I thought we were trying to step away from such stereotypes, especially as Byron herself knows that the average gamer age is far older than the common belief, and that gamers come from all walks of life.
I haven't seen the show yet, as I don't watch TV, so I won't comment too much on the content, but the quotes seem somewhat at odds with Tanya's game-friendly appearances of late. She's sure to make a few people unhappy with calling World of Warcraft a "childish fantasy game," in any case.
As for the subject of videogame addiction itself, I must raise the point made by Naomi Alderman's brilliant opinion piece -- if Michelle Hart spent all her non-working hours reading a book, would she be labeled an addict or an enthusiast? If she watched television, or listened to music, or played tennis every hour of the day, would she have an addiction? Why is it that games have to be comparable to heroin, and not these things?
Contest:
1:06 PM on 04.16.2008
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Perhaps Byron is simply seeking to step from relative obscurity and make herself more palatable to "normal" people with this change in opinion, videogames being a widely accepted scapegoat and all.
Seriously, though, this saddens me. I thought we’d found a pair of defenders of gaming in her and Naomi Alderman, but it appears that that’s not the case. Figures.
Who are these people playing tenis all day?
Who are these people watching TV all day?
Do doing these have the same biological/dopamine effect on the human system as gaming and cocaine do?
Gaming can be an addiction, wether or not people pick on other forms of entertainment as possibly being addictive too is irrelevant.
*shrug* My hobby has been scoffed at by most everyone other than my friends my entire life. I'm used to it by now. Another "expert" on TV telling me how my life is wasted doesn't bother me one bit. Bring it.
Funny you should mention it, it just so happens that all gamers I know fall into this category.
As for addiction, just about anything can be addicting. While murder for your social and professional life, video game addiction at least doesn't jeopardize your health (at least not directly) the way lots of other addictions do.
but I've done just fine so far, its been 8 years since I wasted those fucking kids at columbine and made those two asshats take the blame
Wow you really went there!
I'm too scared to even try it in case i get hooked
As for gaming in general,,,psh
Can you honestly say that any part of that quote isn't true? Seriously, guys, and Jim in particular: Most people DO think of games as being the realm of kids and teenagers, and most people often DO think of gamers as being weird unemployed individuals. (I certainly don't disprove that.) Nothing in that quote slammed gamers at all, but simply addressed what the general public thinks of us. Let's not sensationalize this. We don't like that, remember?
But of course, everything I write has to be rawr rawr rawr and make everyone else go rawr rawr rawr.
then films were bad
now games are bad
mrs byron is simply an old woman that cannot accept changes in the society she lives in... many people are - like mrs byron - oldscool and live the old way of life (computers as entertainment systems or even to perform art on wtf?). i am curious to see the new medium which i cannot understan when i am old :). but for now we have to establish the crazy new way of a gamer life....
The title of the show, "Am I normal?", makes me physically ill.
I'm afraid I fail to see what's so inflamatory about that remark. She's defusing stereotypes with that introduction by dissasociating them with her subject. It's a story telling device used to pull in the viewer. In this case, that viewer would not be your average gamer, and quite possibly does adhere to a stereotypical point of view. By gearing a programme to that audience, isn't Dr. Byron attempting to educate parents and the public in general about video games and the culture that surrounds it? I'm pretty sure that's exactly what she was getting at with her report.
Cut her some slack, guys. We need all the allies we can get, and jumping to conclusions about just such a person is exactly what people and the media do when they're out to undo us.
Hi, by the way. I came here because Joystiq is filled to the brim with 12 year olds who can't spell anything but "douche".
Jim: you're talking bollocks again. Go to the bottom of the class for your crass reconstruction of the truth.
Jim: you're talking bollocks again. Go to the bottom of the class for your crass reconstruction of the truth.
"It might seem ludicrous to compare a childish computer fantasy game with hard drug addiction."
You may kindly STFU now.
Your wanton disregard for fact/balanced argument means that you are nothing more than Destructoid's mirror of Fox News and you are the most hateful, embittered Internet Tough Guy I've ever come across.
TWAT.
"I flamed"
So, you have nothing of worth to say and I am finished talking to you. Bye bye.
Again, this statement is used to grab the viewer who may actually hold that view as true. It preps viewers for the possibility that maybe, juuuuust maybe not everything they deem completely without harm is so. There's nothing wrong with that. It's part of the discussion that we'd like to see come to light. After all, dismissal of any possible ill effect is what leads to parents purchasing M rated games for their 9 year olds after all. Isn't that kind of parenting the kind of thing we're always talking about combating? Good on her if you ask me.
my opinion anyways