Will Gaming Change Humanity As We Know It? (bloombergquint.com) 77
"The advent of gaming, especially computer gaming, marks a fundamental break in human affairs," argues American economist Tyler Cowen (in a Bloomberg opinion column).
"Gaming is profoundly transforming two central aspects of the modern world: culture and regulation. There will be no turning back... Plenty of trading already takes place in games — involving currencies, markets, prices and contracts. Game creators and players set and enforce the rules, and it is harder for government regulators to play a central role. The lesson is clear: If you wish to create a new economic institution, put it inside a game. Or how about an app that gamifies share trading? Do you wish to experiment with a new kind of stock exchange or security outside the purview of traditional government regulation? Try the world of gaming, perhaps combined with crypto, and eventually your "game" just might influence events in the real world...
[R]egulators are already falling behind. Just as gaming has outraced the world of culture, so will gaming outrace U.S. regulatory capabilities, for a variety of reasons: encryption, the use of cryptocurrency, the difficulties of policing virtual realities, varying rules in foreign jurisdictions and, not incidentally, a lack of expertise among U.S. regulators. (At least the Chinese government's attempt to restrict youth gaming to three hours a week, while foolhardy, reflects a perceptive cultural conservatism.)
Both the culture-weakening and the regulation-weakening features of games follow from their one basic characteristic: They are self-contained worlds. Until now, human institutions and structures have depended on relatively open and overlapping networks of ideas. Gaming is carving up and privatizing those spaces. This shift is the big trend that hardly anyone — outside of gaming and crypto — is noticing.
If the much-heralded "metaverse" ever arrives, gaming will swallow many more institutions, or create countervailing versions of them. Whether or not you belong to the world of gaming, it is coming for your worlds. I hope you are ready.
"Gaming is profoundly transforming two central aspects of the modern world: culture and regulation. There will be no turning back... Plenty of trading already takes place in games — involving currencies, markets, prices and contracts. Game creators and players set and enforce the rules, and it is harder for government regulators to play a central role. The lesson is clear: If you wish to create a new economic institution, put it inside a game. Or how about an app that gamifies share trading? Do you wish to experiment with a new kind of stock exchange or security outside the purview of traditional government regulation? Try the world of gaming, perhaps combined with crypto, and eventually your "game" just might influence events in the real world...
[R]egulators are already falling behind. Just as gaming has outraced the world of culture, so will gaming outrace U.S. regulatory capabilities, for a variety of reasons: encryption, the use of cryptocurrency, the difficulties of policing virtual realities, varying rules in foreign jurisdictions and, not incidentally, a lack of expertise among U.S. regulators. (At least the Chinese government's attempt to restrict youth gaming to three hours a week, while foolhardy, reflects a perceptive cultural conservatism.)
Both the culture-weakening and the regulation-weakening features of games follow from their one basic characteristic: They are self-contained worlds. Until now, human institutions and structures have depended on relatively open and overlapping networks of ideas. Gaming is carving up and privatizing those spaces. This shift is the big trend that hardly anyone — outside of gaming and crypto — is noticing.
If the much-heralded "metaverse" ever arrives, gaming will swallow many more institutions, or create countervailing versions of them. Whether or not you belong to the world of gaming, it is coming for your worlds. I hope you are ready.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was going to do it it would have done it in the 80s. Newflash Gen-Z , we had games and spent hours on them back then too not only on consoles but in grotty arcades with the same old hysterical doom mongering from parts of the establishment and pie in the sky extrapolation from techno dreamers about the effect games would have on society. The answer - notalot, there are more important things in life than one branch of visual entertainment.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. The first Tron [wikipedia.org] movie was made in 1982. So people have been predicting the gamification of reality for at least 39 years.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 80s you released a game on disk or cassette tape and got paid once when it sold. Nowadays you release a "free" game and monetize the shit out of it with pay-to-win, loot boxes, cosmetic accessories etc.
Modern games can be very addictive, more so than those in the 80s. Making games addictive and getting players to spend money on them has become a science. Now that science is being applied to other things like stock trading, where the rewards and losses are much bigger and potentially more harmful than wasting a few hundred bucks on dance moves for your Fortnight avatar.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
"Modern games can be very addictive, more so than those in the 80s."
Oh rubbish. People used to spend literally hours and hours shoving coins into pacman, space invaders, defender and often skipping school to do it etc. There's nothing new psychology wise about modern games. But then every generation thinks their situation is unique and special.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Take this patent from Activision as an example: https://kotaku.com/activision-... [kotaku.com]
The game identifies stuff it can sell you, then matches you against people who already bought it so you can see how good that gear is, and then when you buy it gives you scenarios where it's effective. No way that could have been done in the 80s, not least because there was no way to do microtransaction payments.
It's so bad that medical science has been investigating "internet gaming disorder" and the predatory ways in which developers make game addictive, with a view to treating it: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Micro payments have nothing to do with gaming addiction, they just make it financially painful as well as psychological. People were worried about gaming addiction 40 years ago. If you'd been alive then you'd know all about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Medical science will pursue fads just like others do. You're conflating the lust for grant funding with a sincere desire to address a real problem.
Re: (Score:2)
It's so bad that medical science has been investigating "internet gaming disorder" and the predatory ways in which developers make game addictive, with a view to treating it:
There is a differential analysis that says that the presumed addiction is an issue based more on the interaction between the different sexes. Women tend to be displeased with men they are in relationships with spending too much time playing games, and that many men have abandoned relationships finding playing games more productive way to spend their time.
And this isn't just some misogynistic ramble. Video games versus sex with the wife. - https://www.trustedreviews.com... [trustedreviews.com] And the video games! https://www [sheknows.com]
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
There may not be anything new to the psychology, but it sure as heck can be applied much more effectively.
Take games like Candy Crush for example. They can collect data in real time, analyze it, come up with different scenarios to try, modify their algorithms, repeat. All the time. Using live statistics and individual behaviour.
They couldn't do that with pacman. Sure, addicted people were addicted, but nowadays you can fine-tune addiction. They can measure which is the optimum time between events to call you into the game for another fix. They can measure if you are driven by progress, challenge, frustration or other factors, when in the day you are prone to play etc, and feed you - individually - just that.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh rubbish.
No I don't believe it is rubbish. Cherry picking examples of game addiction in the past doesn't mean that games haven't got more addictive in some general sense over time.
This is equivalent to arguing that all the psychological tricks that casinos use to make people spend more money don't work because there existed gambling addicts before those tricks existed.
King actually have small armies of psychologists on staff who's job it is to analyse behaviour and get the games modified to "increase engagement", i.e. spend more time on the game, i.e. making the game more addictive. This isn't to say no one ever got addicted to a game before, but people now are better at getting a larger number of people addicted than they were before.
Re: (Score:2)
Cherry picking examples of game addiction in the past doesn't mean that games haven't got more addictive in some general sense over time.
This is equivalent to arguing that all the psychological tricks that casinos use to make people spend more money don't work because there existed gambling addicts before those tricks existed.
Side note - research has shown that gambling addict have a different reaction than those who will not become addicts.
It turns out that people who become addicted get the same endorphin buzz from almost winning as others only get from winning. Get 3 strawberries and an orange in the slots? You darn near won!
When the wife and I passed through Las Vegas, years ago, I played some slots. First pull I won some. Then nothing - I thought "Crap, this is stupid" and that was the last time I ever gambled. I don't
Re: (Score:2)
You very clearly don't work in the games industry.
Yes, those arcade games were made to be money sinks, and it did affect the gameplay in certain ways.
But they did not have realtime data collection, machine learning applied to hundreds of gigabytes of player behaviour, teams sitting over aggregate data of drop-out points brainstorming how to change the gameplay at this specific point, experimenting with the playerbase to figure out the best way to do it.
In PacMan, you had one chance to get it right, then it
Re: (Score:2)
You're already behind the times, old man! As regular game sales got replaced with F2P and in-app sales, so those "free-to-play" are now are being replaced with "play-to-earn".
Instead of releasing a free game and selling in-game items, you create a new corp and issue some new crypto tokens and NFTs and make players generate more of them by playing, while you get a cut of every transaction on the blockchain...
Re: (Score:2)
Modern games can be very addictive, more so than those in the 80s.
Well, I was pretty well addicted to Zork and a few other late 80's games.
And am no longer addicted to anything, although I play from time to time.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: No (Score:1)
Ever heard of the term quarter munchers they specifically were designed to extract money from pockets
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Entirely agree (I'm 54, I hear you loud and clear) I would only submit that today there seems to be an abundance of nothing to do.
I don't mean they don't have anything to do, I mean they have quite a LOT of "nothing" to do.
I know I'm going to sound like an old man shaking his fist at the younger generation but I don't really blame them, I blame us.
When I was a kid, I wandered all day, fell out of trees, rode my bike, played with Legos, read lots of books (because, aside from generally shitty TV, there wasn't much else to do). Most of those things required at least moderate fitness, an imagination, creativity, and importantly a sense that it was on me to find something to occupy myself.
Adolescents and children these days have a surfeit of low-barrier "nothings" with which to distract themselves, and we've let them do it. I'm GLAD there was no World of Warcraft in my school days, I'd absolutely have had an addiction problem with it and others of its ilk. I'm GLAD I didn't have a smartphone so I can live comfortably (alone) in my own head.
Do I think video games are going to change the world? No. Not even slightly. But what IS going to change is a world eventually run by generations of people raised with addictive endorphin-granting "nothings".
Re: (Score:3)
Same here.
There was no Saturday morning kids TV in my country. What we had was "TV school", a couple of language courses, ranging from Russian to Italian, to French, to English, some of them even with cute stop motion animation [youtube.com]. That was my Saturday morning TV.
Had a few troubles at school, too, 'cause it was kinda hard to explain to my teacher that I actually did write her dictation correctly, it's not my fault she can't read Cyrillic.
But yes, of course if there had been Ninja Turtles and He-Man, preferably
Re: (Score:2)
Do I think video games are going to change the world? No. Not even slightly. But what IS going to change is a world eventually run by generations of people raised with addictive endorphin-granting "nothings".
A main effect is that entire generations will grow up never having had to actually WORK for the rush of success. School is going down the "no child left behind" path and telling a stupid kid that they're stupid and need to work harder to make up for it is probably going to land you in all kinds of trouble (and if it's in any kind of minority, possibly real deep shit).
I remember Great Giana Sisters and such, where the game didn't go easy on you if you failed, and where no behind-the-scenes algorithm would tw
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The answer - notalot, there are more important things in life than one branch of visual entertainment.
Porn has changed the world more than games. Movies has changed the world more than games.
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But now it's no longer just a geek pastime, normal people are playing games now, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Arcades were full of normal kids. The geeks sat at home on their Nintendos.
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Marcus Brigstocke (1989)
Re: No (Score:2)
Your post shows clear lack of knowledge about the economy of video games.
In the 80s, gaming was a fairly small and niche market for kids.
In 2010, games reached the level where they generate more revenue than movies.
And since then, it has grown exponentially, with things such as the latest big chinese gacha making 1 billion in only six months after its release.
They are self-contained worlds (Score:3)
They are self-contained worlds
Surely this point, in essence, completely negates the very idea of gaming challenging "overlapping networks of ideas".
A self-contained world implies that it has absolutely no influence over any other worlds, as it is contained.
If the much-heralded "metaverse" ever arrives, gaming will swallow many more institutions, or create countervailing versions of them.
But it won't be "self-contained" worlds, but surely something much more like "overlapping networks of ideas" - that there could be many different interfaces into a "metaverse" and that "metaverse" comprises multiple "games", all operating over a decentralised network.
Cue the Betteridge comments (Score:3)
But, seriously, this is one of the sillier pronouncements I’ve seen in a while.
Re: (Score:2)
Its indiciive of a breed of academic that I had thought died out 10+ years ago.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s academics where obsessed with the "metaverse" idea. Especially Second Life. There where full on obsessed with the idea that the BIG IDEA that will dominate video games is , that you can work inside a game and earn real money and buy online houses and stuff. And heres the thing, literally everyone who wasn't a shitty tech bro, economist or extremely online boomer, hated the idea with a fiery passio
Re:It already has (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, those guys (and its almost always guys) have been around since gaming was invented. And before that they were probably stuck over a chess board or similar 18 hours a day. Some types of people live in their head and don't want to or cant engage with the real world.
Re:It already has (Score:4, Informative)
Trust me, the world inside my head is much more sensible than the one outside my door.
Re: (Score:2)
Gaming is not a guy thing.
The VISIBLE kind of gaming is, because guys tend to be more danger-seeking than girls. That makes it typically more interesting as a spectator sport, it makes for better videos, and guys put it out there more. There's a whole "girl games" section in the computer games industry. They create MASSIVE amounts of revenue, but they're not so famous.
(and, of course, girls play more and more mainstream games as well)
Some types of people live in their head and don't want to or cant engage with the real world.
Lots of people manage to do both. For about 20 years of my life, I would p
Regulation (Score:2)
The 1980s called (Score:2)
They want their hand wringing political debates over gaming back.
Sometimes ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes a game is just a game. Freud said that, didn't he? ;)
This economist opinion piece comes across as written by an economist who got his arse smacked in the Gamestop hijinks. Culture-weakening / regulation-weakening, sheesh, talk about hysteria. Will art exhibits still have the same influence? Yeah, they likely will. Will new books generate attention and discussion? Almost certainly.
Gaming is a new culture on the rise. And like other new cultures (rock'n'roll: the devil's music, comics: juvenile deliquency), it will attract fear-mongering from conservatives.
I am perfectly fine with games involving manipulating real-world money being regulated. Gambling being a prime example.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, he said it about a cigar, but yeah.
Despite what you say about his probable motives, that doesn't mean he's wrong...though it sure doesn't mean he's right.
OTOH, he's wrong on a time scale of centuries. It may well change the dynamics of culture, but humans have lived in a variety of cultures over the centuries. Thomas Jefferson would not recognize the current US culture. But "changing the nature of humanity" requires evolutionary change. I'm sure gaming will have an effect there, but not quickly, a
Re: (Score:2)
Those who play too many games, will not procreate.
Which would mean that in the future, people will be less susceptible to gaming.
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People can literally play video games while procreating, I saw a highly informative instructional video about it once
Re: (Score:2)
Those who play too many games, will not procreate.
Nor do they have any intention of having children.
Re: (Score:2)
And Ah'm tellin' ya, ya got trouble [youtu.be]! Right here in River City!
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Gaming is a new culture on the rise. And like other new cultures (rock'n'roll: the devil's music, comics: juvenile deliquency), it will attract fear-mongering from conservatives.
Oh - not even remotely just conservatives. A lot of the resistance to Gaming is from left leaning women who are angry that men are leaning out and choosing a gaming culture rather than relationships. And even men in relationships catch a lot of grief over gaming.
I think it's just a risk/reward analysis that many men do by nature. You won't get #metoo'd or divorced or lose your children, pay child support or alimony. Less risk, and face it, more fun.
Considering that 90 percent of divorces in college ed
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of the resistance to Gaming is from left leaning women who are angry that men are leaning out and choosing a gaming culture rather than relationships. And even men in relationships catch a lot of grief over gaming.
You must know the wrong women. Most left leaning women I know of actually participate in their partner's gaming activity, and those that don't are at least tolerant of the hobby. At the same time, a relationship is work, and needs work. Neither side can neglect it, otherwise it will perish.
As we enter a new age and paradigm - unmarried people not in relationships is rapidly becoming the new normal.
And thus we have a solution to over-population. Sure as hell more subtle than China's one-child policy, granted they've now abandoned that.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of the resistance to Gaming is from left leaning women who are angry that men are leaning out and choosing a gaming culture rather than relationships. And even men in relationships catch a lot of grief over gaming.
You must know the wrong women. Most left leaning women I know of actually participate in their partner's gaming activity, and those that don't are at least tolerant of the hobby. At the same time, a relationship is work, and needs work. Neither side can neglect it, otherwise it will perish.
What is the rationale for relationships in this day and age?
As we enter a new age and paradigm - unmarried people not in relationships is rapidly becoming the new normal.
And thus we have a solution to over-population. Sure as hell more subtle than China's one-child policy, granted they've now abandoned that.
A solution as long as everyone plays the game. If society A has social based population collapse, and society B does not, Guess which social system wins?
This isn't some dopey wish to return to the 1950's. It's just a note that as in so many things, there is a pendulum effect. We've become so used to socially
Re: (Score:2)
What is the rationale for relationships in this day and age?
Rationale for relationships? Hah, nice one! I don't know anyone that has gone into a relationship based on rationale. It is emotion that is the primary driver of the need for a relationship. Which is all good. Emotions gives life some colour. Life is more interesting with it.
Some rational justifications (in this day and age, or even historically) for a relationship could be: support to reach life goals more easily, emotional support, making use of legal advantages given to those in a relation
Re: (Score:2)
What is the rationale for relationships in this day and age?
Rationale for relationships? Hah, nice one! I don't know anyone that has gone into a relationship based on rationale. It is emotion that is the primary driver of the need for a relationship. Which is all good. Emotions gives life some colour. Life is more interesting with it.
Well there's your problem! Emotions, trying to find love, trying to have sex, reproduce are all reasons to find a relationship. But if there is no rationale, it's a hellava game of chance.
Some rational justifications (in this day and age, or even historically) for a relationship could be: support to reach life goals more easily, emotional support, making use of legal advantages given to those in a relationship, help quiet the parents when they nag about you getting married. Hey, it's still a rational reason.
Given the likely outcome of marriage, the rationale to avoid it is better. I'm pretty certain if your financial advisor called and offered you an investment that was at least 50 percent likely to not only fail, but cost you money for many years after, you probably wouldn't want to invest in that.
A solution as long as everyone plays the game. If society A has social based population collapse, and society B does not, Guess which social system wins?
Well, if you're going to make a competition out of it, we all lose.
Competition is a part of
Re: (Score:2)
I am perfectly fine with games involving manipulating real-world money being regulated. Gambling being a prime example.
I have yet to see a single example where adding real-world transactions or micro-payments etc. has added anything to a game.
If you want to gamble with real money, go hit the casino. Keep that shit out of computer games, which most people play to get a bit away from the real world.
Will Gaming Change Humanity? (Score:2)
What a twisted question.
Gaming will not change humanity. People have been playing games forever. What has changed is that there are large numbers of people that now have enough free time to play games for extended periods of time. Its not games that changed anything, its the societal landscape that has changed.
One major change is that for some, life became about paying bills vs. spending ones time creating/making/gathering food. Gaming is something that one does when they aren't starving and has time
We're doing gaming as wrong as we can! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the topic I'm working in. So let me explain:
Games could definitely be fundamental to humanity's success.
BUT: Not the utter drivel of useless false-reward-giving digital drugs produced by the industry! That cancer only wastes our time.
Every good educator knows: ... a true game ... is the superset of education, art, sports, and ... the ideal form of education.
Playing is the natural form of learning.
A game
It trains you for a skill, in a simplified environment, in the most motivating way possible.
The problem is, when what it trains you in, is completely and utterly useless!
And that, sadly, describes all games you can buy or were ever produced by that industry, and even more so all computer games.
All they give you, are false rewards for becoming good at something that doesn't relate to anything at all in real life. It only pushes your "reward" buttons, to keep you addicted, so they can steal more of your money. Because most of our brains cannot tell fantasy from reality, and confuses the successes for real advantages in our lives. Our mouths water when we think about food intensely. We cum at night because we merely dreamt of having sex. And almost all of our brain actually think we just killed a monster from hell to save humanity. (If the game is realistic enough.) The adrenaline and serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin are real.
And why dos that happen?
Because they are not trying to maximize inspiration... or knowledge transfer... or fitness... or even relaxedness... They only maximize profit. Aka the part of the money they can take from you, that is exchanged in return for absolutely nothing. (As opposed to earnings.)
(Art and profit are fundamentally contrary anyway. You can't have something that touches everyone intensely, because people differ. You can only have it be amazing for some, hated by others, and meaningless to everyone else, OR bought by everyone but also meh for everyone. The broader the distribution, the shallower the emotions, usually.)
And yes, there are "educational games". ... or it wouldn't be "true education"... "Stop playing and do your homework!" they say.
But they are all crap! They always smell of "educational game".
Why? Because for some reason, education must be bad and boring and lame, and never ever ever any fun, but visibly painful
Playing *should* be your homework, you incompetent morons!
Fun is literally the indicator for good education! (Or good learning, to be precise.) That's exactly what that feeling is for!
Which is the combination of joy and surprise. Surprise only means you experienced something you did not before. Aka an opportunity to learn. And joy only means it is useful to you. As in: It gives you something.
So what we need, is games that are actually useful, but that still are true games, and not basically digital cigarettes or some lame "educational games".
And no, you should not "gamify" your work either. Make it engaging and motivating and useful and well-balanced, yes. But games are only that because they are representations of the acts that they teach you. It's the acts themselves, namely work, that should be all those things in the first place! ;)
But: Work is what you do, when you finished merely playing! It should not be simplified. It should be the real thing. Obviously.
So: Those who can, do. Those who can't, play. (And learn to do.) And those who can't play, spectate (and get disability pension).
Then, and only then, games will definitely change humanity as we know it.
Namely, by massively improving the general level of education, while driving down costs, and not traumatizing children with two decades of torture anymore.
(Seriously, when 50% of all American students nowadays take (prescription or not) drugs to learn better, maybe you should stop and think about what's going wrong??)
Correction: Surprise means something different (Score:2)
Surprise is of course something you did not *expect*.
You may well have experienced it before. But you did not *predict* it.
And that is what you get the opportunity to learn.
I only noticed that error after pushing "Submit" because I thought I'd still have to push "Preview".
Re: (Score:2)
"...Games could definitely be fundamental to humanity's success..."
I just had to pick apart this one sentence and offer a context, I concede, humorously...
So playing a hentai based dating simulator will lead to greater reproductive success??
Ultimately that is the gold standard measure of "success" for any species...
Re: We're doing gaming as wrong as we can! (Score:2)
Playing is the natural form of learning.
I'm no educator at all, but I (vaguely) knew about that. And when I became a father, it became incredibly clear.
So where are the games that teach useful skills? Or toys? My kids are currently into cubes, 3x3x3 below 45 seconds as a rule for the elder kid, which beats me by half a minute. However, at that point I don't see any good in improving...
Re: (Score:2)
> A game ... a true game
Your whining with a "No True Scottsman Fallacy" saying that no games are beneficial doesn't make it true. You are conflating good games with bad games.
> is the superset of education, art, sports, and ... the ideal form of education.
Some people play games and they DON'T want a second job. Most want mindless entertainment. My parents play Solitaire on the computer because they find it relaxing after a long hard day of work. This bullshit of "a true game" is a false dichotomy.
Re: (Score:2)
I couldn't agree more.
I've been making games for all my life, as a hobby. Literally all my life - the first game I invented (a fairly simple board game) is from when I was 7 or something.
For the past decade or so I've seen my love of games dwindle, mostly because the actual game has been taken out of them, and replaced by monetization, addiction-inducing crap and repetitive blandness.
There are a number of indie titles that do it right, and many that have a message and teach you something. Heck, I've learnt
Subject: /. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I just realized /. is the most addictive game I am playing right now. Luckily there are not in-game costs.
Yes, Slashdot is the most poorly monetized MMO in all of existence. It could have the highest profit:effort ratio in gaming but luckily the commerce system broke a long time ago and nobody could figure out how to fix it.
It already has? (Score:2)
But that's kind of vacuously true. It is a thing we do en masse and thus it is something that has changed us. Movies changed humanity. Amazon changed humanity. Candy Crush changed humanity. So what? The only thing interesting here is only realizing *now* that an activity that hundreds of millions or billions of people participate in has changed humanity.
sure, bigger thumbs (Score:3)
Otherwise not really. Invention after invention has failed to dramatically change humanity. Modern video gaming is just combining more elements of gambling with elements of video gaming. That might make it slightly more addictive, but video gaming was already psychologically addictive with its rapid and frequent reward stimulus. It doesn't offer anything in this regard that you couldn't get from a fully mechanical one-armed bandit, though.
People keep predicting fundamental changes in humanity, and they continually fail to materialize. We are still very much the same creatures we have been throughout history, and presumably we are fundamentally unchanged from what we were for a long period before it.
Economists are charlatans (Score:2)
Few do any actual research, while most write opinion pieces like this that get passed along as fact because "an economist wrote it". The profession exists solely to perpetuate the wealth of the moneyed class.
future humans (Score:1)
kids these days are terrible! (Score:2)
> (... in a Bloomberg opinion column)
Slashdot is NEWS For Nerds, and this is just a rant. Come on.
Yes .. It's profoundly changing childhoods (Score:1)
meh, old news (Score:1)
Life is a LARP; pixel size is the Planck length.
well, since everyone is sharing... (Score:1)
I have been playing videogames in one form or another for just about all my life. I had cheap little handheld units (Tiger, and one actual Nintendo released one) and going to friends places, until I was 8 and got my own Nintendo for Christmas.
I also have ADD, which means bright lights and fast movements attract my attention.
I would definitely have counted as a 'junkie' for videogames for years. I should be a prime target for all these companies that are supposedly hiring psychologists to make their games