Game or Reality?
(Posted 17:32:10 on 19th March 2016 by Rag)
It's been debated for a long time that playing video games to excess can cause someone to lose the ability to tell between the game and reality. Those that propose this as being a big problem generally point to the violence in games and that it can cause people to want to do nasty things to other people including killing them. An alternative analogy is that playing driving games can cause someone to be reckless when driving in the real world. Even is not leading to accidents or worse, there are cases of those where playing games has cost them in the real world ... of note is the former Liverpool David James who had an addiction to PlayStation games.
So where is all this leading? Well, as most people know I've been playing Clash of Clans for quite a long time and, more recently, Clash Royale. Both of these games are heavily monetized by the maker SuperCell. In both games you spend real money to buy gems that you can then spend in game to progress faster. Without going into the mechanics of each game, Clash Royale allows you to use your gems to open chests and get cards faster as shown in the picture below.
So how can a simple tablet game affect you in reality?
Well first, I need to explain that this is purely an accident. I was at the NASCAR race in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago with Owen and obviously it was so fascinating that neither of us could take our eyes off the track for a single moment. I really don't know how this happened, but I must have slipped, accidentally zoomed with my camera and hit the continuous shot button as I seem to have a whole series of photos not related to the race. Now clearly I would have deleted these photos immediately, but I couldn't help looking at this one ....
.... and thinking .... how many gems would it take to open that super magical chest?
