Summary “Real Word Doesn’t Use a Joystick”
The article I read for today was about video games and their lingering affects on people. The article began with the story of Kozy Kitchens who plays a Japanese video game called Katamari Damacy. The point of the game is to start with a tape ball and collect anything to make it bigger. Unfortunately Kozy found it difficult to leave the mindset of the game in real life and looks at objects as if they could be used for the ball. Once she grabbed the wheel of the car from her husband to steer towards a mail box for an addition.
Kozy isn’t the only one to suffer from the blur of virtual and actual reality. The article goes on to tell the stories of other games who found themselves in similar situations as Kozy because of the mindset they have during the game. According to Robin Hunicke, a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University it isn’t surprising that these affects occur because games stimulate our attention to its extreme and we like it. Since people like this feeling we tend to focus like this outside of video games as well. We learn and apply it to our real lives. It isn’t limited to games either. Laura Martin uses Photoshop a lot to clean up imperfections in pictures and after intensive sessions will try to do the same in real life. She claims that she will see dust and want to clean it up just like Photoshop.
Overall I found the article interesting, but not persuasive enough to make the argument these events will happen to everyone. I’ve played many video games in my childhood and as a film major done quite a few long night sessions on Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. I’ve yet to find myself trying to apply these programs to real life, but maybe I’m out of the ordinary in this case. I would like to see a case study with hardcore gamers who suffer from this and others that don’t to see how frequently this happens to people.
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