the name of the game is halo 2

How many hours each day to we spend watching television? On average, I’d say I spend about two to three hours a day watching television. That varies depending on the shows that are on and what else I am doing at the time. On May 3, 1990 naturalist Bill McKibben spent several months video taping and watching television from ninety three different channels carried in Fairfax, Virginia. In McKibben’s essay “Television and the Twilight of the Senses”, McKibben argues that television dulls the senses and acts as a tranquilizer to the stresses we face in life. (Although there may be some truth in his argument, television is not as big of a problem as he makes it out to be.) Although television has become a big part of the way we live our lives everyday, it does not consume our lives. A far more dangerous form of entertainment is modern day video games. Most people argue video games impact people negatively because of their violent content, when in reality the danger lies not in the violence but in the addictiveness of these games.
The name of the game is Halo 2. Well, actually at this point in the game it seems more like hide-and-seek. I’m hiding in a corner waiting for my sister Emily to come so I can jump out at her. A quick look at Em’s screen shows that she’s hiding in a corner at the other side of the map. Cheater. She must have looked at my screen and decided to copy me. Throwing patience and caution to the wind, I turn and head towards her. I’m still unsure of where she is, and all the buildings around me look the same. Suddenly I see her. I’m within shooting range so I pull out my shotgun and start firing. The first shot hits Em and her health shield goes down as she absorbs the first blow. Now my gun has to recharge as she starts coming at me. I can’t turn to run, because then she could shoot
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me in the back. My fate suddenly rests in my weapons ability to recharge. Why didn’t I reload it earlier? Too late now, Em starts firing at me and my health shield is severely damaged. Finally my gun reloads and I make my final round of shots. This is it, these last firings will determine who lives and who dies . . .Bang! And with that I take the lead. The score is now 1 to 0. The first to 15 wins. I turn my head and look at Emily sitting right next to me on the couch and I give her my victory smile. Then I turn back to the television, because she’s back and ready for revenge. When we first started playing Halo a couple years ago we would play for hours. As soon as we came home from school we would rush through our homework or put it aside and head strait for the game. While we kill each other, Em and I make jokes, laugh, and talk about everyday things. It seemed somewhat natural and even relaxing, though when you think of all the violence in the game the opposite idea may come to mind. By the time our mother would come home from work, we would have been playing the game for about three hours. What upset my mother most about the game was not its violent content, but the fact that we were consumed by it. The violence in the game was just a way to release the stress and built up anger within. The real danger was in the loss of control we had once we started to play.
The first time I realized the dangerous affects of video games was a couple of years ago. It started at Christmas when “Santa” gave my sister Emily, my step-sister Sarah, and I new Gameboys. After the first couple months, my sister Sarah who was a month older than me, tired of the game and stopped playing it. But Emily and I still continued to play whenever we could. Wherever we went, whatever we did, our games came with us. We would play it at the dinner table, we would play it after school, we
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would play it in the car, and so it went. Then one day while I was at my Grandma Margo’s house, Margo came up to me and asked me to watch baby Katie for a couple of minutes while she went out into the garage. I said sure. I was sat on the couch playing my Gameboy, and I assumed Katie would stay in the room and play with her toys on the floor. A couple of minutes later, Grandma Margo came back yelling at me because she found Katie at the door to the garage. She said she was disappointed that I couldn’t put the game down for two seconds to watch baby Katie. After that I avoided the Gameboy all together. I realized how strongly addicted to it I was and I knew it would only get worse if I kept playing it. My sister on the other hand kept it up. She still plays her Gameboy to this day, which is about five years later. She takes it everywhere she goes and has problems putting it down when we have somewhere to go or something to do. I had hoped she would “grow out of it”, but at this point I think she could continue playing it for several more years.
Despite what I learned from my experience with Gameboy, I am still currently addicted to another video game. This game isn’t hand held like the Gameboy, and it isn’t played on the T.V.; it’s a computer game called SIMS 2. It is perhaps the most addicting video game I have ever played. SIMS is a game in which you create a person or several people, move them into a house, and play their lives. When I start a normal game of SIMS 2, I tell myself I will only spend two hours on the game. Then I start making a Sim. In SIMS 2, the level of detail is astounding. You choose the person’s age, ethnicity, hair color, facial features, eyes, clothes, name, personality, and goals. The process of making a Sim usually takes anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour, depending on how many
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people you make and how much attention you give to their characteristics. After you create a family, you then move them into a house. I usually use a cheat to give them around 700,000 simoleons (Sim dollars). Then I start working on their house. You can build the house yourself by creating walls, placing doors and windows, painting the inside and outside, laying floor and carpet, adding trees and bushes outside, stairs if you want two or three stories, . . .etc. The process of creating the house itself takes about a half hour. Then you have to add furniture. You choose from a selection of beds, lights, bathtubs, refrigerators, bookshelves, . . . etc., and from all of these selections you can choose different colors. After you’ve finished the house and the Sims are ready, then you start playing. You can choose to reach the goals of the Sims, have them meet other Sims and form relationships, make them start a family, make them get a job, . . . etc. During all of this, your Sim has basic needs that need to be met such as hunger, hygiene, entertainment, social interactions, bathroom, and environment. With all these things to consider during the game, it is hard to think of things outside of the game. You’re drawn into the Sims and you get caught up in trying to create the perfect world for them. Eventually you start to realize that you’re playing someone else’s life and neglecting your own. There have been days when I woke up, went to the computer, played all day stopping only to eat, which was only after other people came in and suggested I take a break. What’s strange is that while I play I get more stressed and aggravated than I was before I started. I get frustrated over making the house and taking care of the Sim family with all of their needs. The games demand for constant attention wears you down and drains all the energy out of you.
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Television gives better benefits than video games do. When you watch T.V. you learn about the world through news, educational channels, and documentaries. At the end of a television program you at least have some satisfaction that your time spent watching was worthwhile because you got something out of the show that you can carry with you in your mind. With video games you get nothing for your time spent playing. You don’t learn a new lesson, you don’t hear a new revelation - you just distract yourself for a couple of hours from reality. So why after all this are the video games so much more addicting than television? It is because of the hands on experience. You play the game. You decide what to do, where to go, who to kill, and when to move. The game demands you pay attention by forcing you to play some role in the game itself. You become a part of the game in a sense. With television you can walk away, multitask, and tune it out. With games, you’re in control. Or at least, you think you are in control. You think you can say when the game ends. But in truth, the world around you passes you by and before you know it you’ve played for three hours longer than you intended. In the future, new forms of video games will arise. These will be targeted to larger age groups and both genders. Children will start playing these games quickly in life, and they will no doubt continue to play them into adolescence and adulthood. One day in the future, video games will become as popular, if not more popular, than television. My only hope is that we have the strength in the end to release the controller when it’s time to face reality.