Reader Responce 8

Dibbell took my interest because he starts out the book talking about a video game that he plays. I’m not exactly sure what it is called, but by the way he is talking I would have to believe it may be lizards. He talks himself through the game and enables us to capture the sense of the game and what he is doing. The point of the game was that he was competing against other lizard men to find gold and cash it in for money. He described the feeling he got when he was able to beat out the other men, instead of himself getting destroyed.

“I knew the lizard men were only computer programs, but they had killed me often enough when I was just starting out that I still felt a tiny thrill of revenge watching them die.” Dibbell in this quote shows us how important and competitive these games can become to people. I am not a big video game player, but I could never see myself feeling the way Dibbell does in the quote just presented.

“A window had opened into the magnetic core of the game, and I could see more clearly than ever what kept me and all the other players coming back: It was the same thing, more or less, that kept most of us going to our jobs each day, or going to school. It was desire not to fair to the bottom of the social food chain, a desire to rise through the ranks, to achieve and acquire as a way of marking our status within the massive monkey troop that is human civilization. To own and not be owned.”

I think in that last quote Dibbell makes some great points. These video games give people the chance to press their limits and see how far they can go in a challenge. I believe this is one of the main reasons that people engage in video games. It’s hard to believe that a technology such as video games can consume someone’s life as much as they do. I know many people that easily spend more than six hours a day on video games. I believe that video games have become more than a game in many cases it has become a sport and/or even a career.

“The twenty hours a week I was devoting to the game were no big deal compared to the sixty, seventy, and even eighty hours some players put in.” It is scary to think that people can actually sit and be engaged for something so long. I know that when I was younger and was into SEGA and super Nintendo it was hard to put them down, but for me after a while I got bored of them. I know now in my life, I wouldn’t have time to even play video games for an hour. How do people have the time in their lives, especially with school or work, to be engaged for so long. I found this chapter very interesting and a great introduction to the book. It has left me wanting to read more.