[...] Study. College Student Journal, 38(1), …www.nacada.ksu.edu/journal/AnnoBib%2024-1&2.pdfRaph’s Website » Study: Vanity on the rise among college students …Raph’s Website » Study: Vanity on the rise among college students … Another example of mine, [...]

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[...] online addict dies after ‘marathon’ session  - El. Engr. Times 3/6/2007: Can we even make a successful MMO that doesn’t lie to people and tell them they are all special?  – BBC Hardware and Software 3/6/2007: Asus R2H: A Geek’s Dream Come True - Business [...]

Seems to an error causation and correlation going on here. I think it requires a bit of a self-inflated sense of importance for games to take responsibility for this trend. I think, in fact, that we are finding that it is consumers who are demanding “make me special” experiences. In the MySpace generation the #1 commodity is attention and ego-boosting. Games are just finding better ways to cater to that.

Arguably, games should be more conscious of the results of the mindsets they cater to (although actually I’m not sure that this is completely horrible — another way to read high vanity is that at least these kids are getting over their self-esteem issues). However, it’s unclear how games are going to do this without being, first and foremost, appealing to the culture they are targeting.

For a while now you’ve been going on about finding new ways to reward players and new things to teach them. What if no one is interested in those rewards and things you want to teach? MMO’s started out with far more competitive roots and have shied away from that, not because people didn’t want go that way, but because consumers didn’t bite.

That’s ok — they do look similar — but they are totally different.

The issue with “kids these days” that so many people above are providing anecdotal evidence for is neither one of instant gratification, nor being unwilling to work hard for things of value.

The issue is being overly protected from disappointment. Previous generations of parents recognized — perhaps just by being ignorant — that disappointment was a pretty normal part of life, and got their children used to it. Arbitrary rules and corporal punishment were two ways that happened.

These days, parents go out of their way to protect their kids from being even normally disappointed (everyone gets a trophy, no grades, all those things and we’re just now starting to have a backlash against this kind of parenting. Mostly, for about 20 years, we’ve been cheering it along.

So, while parenting is certainly different, and having different outcomes (I’ll leave judgments of better or worse to others) is computer gaming actually any different from the pretending to be cowboys or indians or spacemen that went on in previous generation’s play?

I would argue that it isn’t substantively different. Kids were then, are now, and will always be the “special” heroes of their own play.

People talk about the death penalty of MMORPGs and argue if it should be high or low: when I was a kid, if you were “shot” playing soldiers with the kids from Faukland St, you stayed dead for a count of 100, but if you were shot on Roselands Av you stayed dead for only a count of 10. And oh how we argued about which was better!

Play is, largely, an escape from life, where different rules apply. How many people who enjoy, say, social basketball, enjoy it _precisely_ because in that game (as compared to being an office drone) they get to actually score some baskets?

[...] s Website: Study: Vanity on the rise among college students – … [...]

I would argue that a society, such as the US, which focuses on providing as wide a variety of entertainments and leisures as possible is already making its members feel as “special” as it’s gonna get, regardless of the content explicit in the media themselves.

IE, if you’ve got enough time, money, and social capital left over (after spending it on necessities) to play games, read books, watch TV/movies, surf the web, do sports, go to plays, hang out, IM your buddies, etc. etc. etc. for some relatively decent chunk of time every day… that’s a significant indicator of “specialness.” It’s a reward. You’ve “made it.”

Nature rewards effort with rest and relaxation. You work, then you play. You eat your veggies, then you get dessert. So… if I’ve got all these choices for sweets (entertainment, including games), I must have been a very, very good boy.

That is what I think drives the narcissism (if that’s what it is; I don’t buy the argument, btw, that strong ego or even good self image = narcicism), more than the specific narrative content of the entertainments themselves.

My dad, when in high school, probably only had a couple hours a week for leisure. He worked a couple after-school jobs, did a bunch of extracurricular things in order to help get into a good college, etc. etc. Some of those were “fun,” but none were what we’d call “entertainment.” None were pure “leisure.” Marching band in New York state in October is not leisure. When I was in high school, I probably had 20 hours a week of leisure to read fun books, watch TV, go to movies w/ friends, etc. By having more of a choice, and by being able to choose fun things, I’m sure this contributed to a sense of entitlement on the part of me and my generation; we deserve this, and should get to do it and maybe get more of it.

Now? The choices are even more amazing, eh? The Internet. Games. Video tapes and DVDs. Millions of songs on MP3s. Cell phones. Laptops. I’m not saying it’s *easy* to be a kid. But I’m saying that the choices are closer to their egos, and that there are more of them, and that many of the choices that they get to make are the equivalent of dessert; they get to pick the fun stuff out for themselves.

That will build a sense of entitlement and ego pretty quick, when you are in charge of creating your own library of content from a world of 100 million songs, 10 million movies, 3 billion web pages, etc. And then creating your own blog, your own SL avies, your own MySpace pages, etc. etc.

It doesn’t matter WHAT they see, watch, play, do, read. It matters that they CAN. The media are the message. And the multiplicity of the media is the meat. Or, in this case, the cheesecake.

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