Video Game Addiction

This writing is about video game addiction as you can see in the title. Video games have changed the lives of many people including people who make games and game addicts. In 2007, Harris Interactive’s online poll gathered details on youth opinions about video game play:

• Sample of 1,187 US youths aged 8-18
• 81% played at least once a month
• Average for teen girls: 8 hours a week
• Average for teen boys: 14 hours
• 8-12 year old girls: 10 hours
• 8-12 year old boys: 13 hours
• 8.5% can be classified as pathological or clinically addicted
• Players of MMORPGs are most likely to be addicted and spend the most amount of time

Tech Dirt has an interesting article about video games.  Tech Dirt in this article is unbiased and very neutral unlike many other sources. You can tell it is neutral because it actually said how studies can be biased and the conclusion says how video games can be good and bad in different ways. Tech Dirt also summarises psychological studies about how games can help gamers feel a sense of achievement.

I think playing video games is good and bad. I think playing video games is good because they can teach you things and encourage you to do new things. For example, Little Big Planet can make people want to be architects, designers or builders. Playing video games can be bad as well because shooting games might make people become murderers.

My dad made a graph of his game playing throughout the years so I made one too. Here they are:

Average hours of video game playing per week over the years for Dad

Average hours of video game playing per week over the years for me

As you can see neither my Dad nor me could be considered as video game addicts at any time (despite what my sister always says – her average is only about an hour or two a week).  My Dad has played many different computers and consoles and at the peak he averaged 14 hours a week, for me this total is 10 hours.  Currently I play a lot of PES 2012 on the PS3 (I will review some more games in the near future).

References:

Williams, D., Yee, N., Capian, S. E. (2008) “Who Plays, how much, and why? Debunking the stereotypical gamer profile” http://129.105.161.80/drupal/sites/default/files/Whoplaysfinal.pdf

Wikipedia (sourced on 2^nd June, 2012) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction

Masnick, M (22^nd Jan, 2007) “Another Study Suggests Video Games Are A Healthy Activity” http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070121/204559.shtml

SWOS careers and tactics

I have been playing SWOS a lot lately.  But I have to wait till Dad is back from work which is ages of waiting because he has it on his computer only.  When I get my own laptop I will definitely get SWOS on Windows and Linux.

I started with a career in India with the team Border Security.  This was so easy and I could only stay in India and job offers never came from other places.  Next I did a career in Italy.  Starting with Fiorentina.  Making them bankrupt, then taking a job offer from Juventus.  Here I did very well and left the team with over 20 million.  I then went to Parma and did very well and now have about 45 million pounds.  I saved this so that I could keep playing it but also took a job offer from Arsenal and saved that in a new file.  At Arsenal I have done the best possible.  I won the quadruple (Premier League, FA Cup, league cup and European Cup).  And I did it twice in a row.  While still making lots of money.

The best players I have owned so far are: Peter Beardsley, Ravanelli, Bergkamp, Ian Wright, Vialli and Zola.  Strikers gain the most in value.  My Dad showed me how to edit the tactics to get everyone in the team happy.  The tactics I now use are S433 which means super 433.  All my players have a tick and the team has a flashing tick with these tactics.  You can use my careers and tactics if you like.

To show you the career and tactic files, WordPress wouldn’t let me upload the zip files.  So my Dad suggested that we rename the zip files to something that WordPress allows.  The screenshot below shows the renaming to doc files.

Here they are.

SWOS_tactics.zip

SWOS_careers.zip

You should save them and not open them in Word.  Then you can rename them to .zip files again like below screenshot

Please comment if you like my tactics or careers.  Or you can share your ones with me as well.  I cannot believe how such an old game is so good.

If you still haven’t got it then get you need to get dosbox and then get the game from here (look for this file “PC (DOS) – SWOS v1.0 (95/96) » Download ZIP (3.757 kB)”).  When my Dad was looking for the link where he originally got the game from we discovered that we were playing SWOS 1.0 and that there are later versions like SWOS 96-97 also available.  I am downloading it now and will try this version out and let you know if it is better.

🙂  😎  0-{

SWOS (Sensible World of Soccer)

Recently I started playing Football Manager Handheld and then Championship Manager on my dad’s iPhone. Then my Dad told me about SWOS and how he used to play all the time over 15 years ago. He said that you can manage teams as well as play (be a player-coach). I really wanted to try it as it was my Dad’s favourite game. So I asked him to get it for the laptop. You can download the game from here. First you need to install a program called Dosbox. Then you say mount like in the picture below. Running SWOS is simple by typing sws after this. And if you want to play full screen you press Alt and Enter.

The game is amazing. I love the simple graphics and brilliant tactics editing and team management. It’s harder to score than most other football games and that makes it better.