Influence of Computer Games

Probably there is no man in the world, who knows about a computer but doesn’t know about computer games. Often it happens inside out ' a computer is bought only for computer games and generally people who buy a computer for such purpose, don’t suppose that there are a lot of other entertaining and useful things to do with computer.
People who use their computer mostly for games are called “gamers”, lots of them are crazy about games and see the meaning of life in it.
The original sense of computer games consisted in the rest from our everyday life, in singular satisfaction, in the change of activity. But sometimes such a rest can degenerate into the psychological dependence on computer.
Many people play computer games, but only few of them think about what can computer games give to them, except the waste of time and some kind of moral joy? Do games bring negative or positive effect on human’s mental health?
Computer games in some way supplement usual children’s games, create the illusion of presence of other people, who are taking part in the current game with the real player. Multiplayer on-line role-playing games enable to play with the other real people, but each of them is hidden beyond the mask of his own personage.
Computer games give an opportunity to play the role of the hero, who saves the world, to put oneself on his place, or an opportunity to be the main villain. The game permits the player to make a different choice, how he will act in such-and-such difficult situation, gives a chance for a change of the scenario depending on the choice of the player’s way to achieve some aim in the current game. Besides games develop logic, memory, imagination, ability to make a decision in difficult situations. Among the educational facilities of the computer games there are simplification of the methods of training, cognition of the new world, the filling of the free time and even helping in the diseases treatment.
But for all that it is not possible to be blind to the faults of the computer games, which can conditionally be divided into the two groups:
1) Physical injurious
2) Moral injurious
The researches show that the long pasttime in the game causes harm to the eyesight, spine, hands and neck. Besides during the game circulatory and digestive systems suffer. But the moral and mental harm from the computer game is much wider and stronger.
Among the moral injurious of computer games are: provocation of the aggression, unsociability, idleness, worsening of character and of learning capability, and also negative influence on family relationship, disturbance of the mental state, lowered mood, the way the gamer feels and activity, depressions, raised anxiety. The real world is boring, uninteresting, unfair, full of dangers for the people with such consequences of computer games, and so they try to live in another world, where only their own rules work. In such situations people, who are around the gamer ' relatives, friends ' realize his addiction, but not him.
The principal criteria defining this disease:
• Unwillingness to deflect attention away from the game
• Irritation coming with the forced distraction
• Inability to plan the finishing of the gaming session
• Spending lots of money on the game and computer upgrading
• Neglecting one’s own health, hygiene and sleep in favour of the spending more time playing
• Forgetting about domestic chores, duties, studies, meetings and arrangements
• Abuse of coffee and other psychostimulants
• Readiness to content oneself with the occasional, casual and monotonous food without stopping the game
• The sense of emotional upheaval during the game
Psychologists assert that the game addiction becomes apparent much more faster than any other (drugs, alcohol, smoking). On the average it takes no more than half a year. All the games are not similar in brought into the process psychical functions, in the strength and depths of the influence on the personality, and in mechanisms of forming the addiction. In this respect the role-playing games (RPG) are the most dangerous.
Role-playing games are the games, in which the player assumes the role of the computer character, this means that the game itself obliges the player to play the role of the personage. Only such games give an opportunity to watch the process of the full “entry” of the player into the game, and in clinical occasions ' the process of the loss of the individuality and full identification a gamer with his personage. Games with the first-person sight(“from the eyes of the hero”) of the hero are defined with the greatest strength of absorbation. Such sight provokes the player to the complete confluence with his character, to the complete entry into the role. The person loses touch with the real life by carring himself into the virtual world, by seeind it with his “own” eyes. The person becomes embedded into the story of the game. Games with the third-person sight(“from behind of the back of the hero”) of the personage possesses the less strength of the entry into the role. The player sees “himself” from the side, governs the actions of the character. Identification with the personage carries the less expressed type.
How can you define if the person has a computer game addiction or if the game is only a way to relaxation? It’s as easy as ABC. The process of the healthy influence looks like: the person goes into the virtual world for a short time to take off stress, divert from problems. And in pathological cases everything happens inside out: the person goes out from virtuality into the real world for some time to satisfy physiological needs, and the other needs are in the virtual reality and they are satisfied there.
Try not to give in to the computer addiction!