gaming
Tom Coates: “fun is learning without pressure, and that therefore games matter - presumably because learning is de facto a good thing. But what if you're learning a system or a landscape with no transferable value - what if a specific game presents you with a structure designed to purely generate the sensation of perpetual fun by short-circuiting the learning impulse and misdirecting it into valueless territories? There would be a memetic advantage in being a game that could be intoxicating in that way without requiring that people learn skills that were transferable elsewhere. For a start, real-world skills are harder to develop and perhaps less short-term satisfying. Secondly, a process that teaches you real-world skills would result in you evolving and changing. A game that could short-circuit your learning instinct wouldn't have to do that. There would be no reason for you to leave.”
Flo on the sorry state of articles in the media about gaming (inline link added): “Articles on gamers and gaming often seem to flipflop between distaste and mockery of the gamers themselves and the perception of a real and serious threat to healthy, normative behavior. I think this highlights the real issue behind almost every mainstream discussion of games addiction: the privileging of certain kinds of behavior. The implication of this article is that gaming addicts are recluses with no social skills or friends. Frequent mention is made of socialization within the gaming sphere itself, but this is always contrasted negatively with normal, healthy, 'face-to-face' interaction. It isn't that these hardcore gamers don't have social relationships, they simply have the wrong kind of relationships.”