Blog 2

Choi Ting Yiu, Kieran

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The reading “We Play: The Allure of Social Games, Synthetic Worlds, and Second Lives.” pointed out that young people fall into online rather than watching television, as Nielsen said that “missing young men story”. Due to online games, young can open up their minds and meet more new people from other countries, they can learn different language by playing different kind of online games. May be their first boy / girlfriend was found by playing the games. Yes, most of the young nowadays are not quite normal to watch television which sit in front of the TV with their family. It is not say that they do not watching TV, but they will watch through online or while they were doing other things.

We all knew that the trend has been change, we knew, and the TV producers also knew. In the reading, Nielsen found out a lot of data to show us that young people prefer playing online games instead of watching TV, some of them will spend at least half of hours in week on playing online games, they usually will pay the real money inside the games like myself. A game interviewer, Lee, tell us in the reading that he felt playing games can let him have a mind that he is accomplishing a goal, but sitting and watching TV is wasting time.

Nowadays, why young people choose to play online games instead of watching TV? Watching TV is wasting time? Yes, but not all. Most of the young people want to change the world in the reality life, their living standard, their dress code, their educational system etc., but they can’t. Different culture, rule, and policy are against them. But online games are different, you can be the king inside the games, you can create a fantasy life through the games, you can choose different sex, setting different body shape, increase your height inside the games, just like what the interviewer in the reading said, “I feel like I’m accomplishing a goal.” What you can’t do in the society, what you can do in the games.

How about TV, what they show through the television, mostly cannot be real. You can’t really fly yourself, so you cannot be superman; you can’t really jump up from the ground to the top of building, so you cannot not be the hero; you are not Michael Tse, so you cannot just using one hand to climb a mountain and use mobile phone. What you watched in TV, what you just can imagine inside your mind.

This is what the reading want us to reflect ourselves, especially those TV producers, mainly focus on playing online games, you can watch TV at the same time, but opposite, and you can’t.

As a young man, our mind is very simple, to be a creator in the games, or to be a visionary in your mind. The answer should be the first chose.