Yeah, I don't have any data to back it up -- it's just intuition -- but I've got to think that spending $5000 on Farmville just can't be right. I mean, that'll buy you pretty much unlimited movies, music, and TV for a year, with maybe a vacation thrown in there. And the games they spend it on are terrible. I'd understand if it was Starcraft or something, but it's nothing like.
When I was a teenager playing video games all the time, I had a great desire to develop them. Who doesn't? I think that was at least partly responsible for my learning to program. But as an adult, I'm a lot more ambivalent about the industry. Sure, it's art, and some games are awesome, but some also scare me. I can't shake the feeling that some games have a genuine psychological addiction element, and some people might not be well-prepared to cope with that rationally, and the whole thing looks kind of . . . exploitative.
I'm not as sure as I was, when I was 13, that I want to be a part of that.
When I was a teenager playing video games all the time, I had a great desire to develop them. Who doesn't? I think that was at least partly responsible for my learning to program. But as an adult, I'm a lot more ambivalent about the industry. Sure, it's art, and some games are awesome, but some also scare me. I can't shake the feeling that some games have a genuine psychological addiction element, and some people might not be well-prepared to cope with that rationally, and the whole thing looks kind of . . . exploitative.
I'm not as sure as I was, when I was 13, that I want to be a part of that.