Your opinion on two interesting topics

Hi

I am a Med. Student and I am into starting a research on Videogame players, as a Videogame player myself. The research’s goal is to understand health issues that playing video games may cause and find a solution to those problems.

I would like to get your thoughts and input about 2 issues:

1) How would you define a “Gamer”?

2) Have you ever experienced any phenomenon or any illness or health issue that you could relate to playing video games? It could be anything, from a headache or fatigue to maybe a Hangover like feeling. Nightmares, disturbed sleep or anything that pops to your mind.

Looking forward to reading your answers!

10x :)

a gamer would be person who is obsessed with video games, playing every day more than 3-4 hours and more in the weekend.

but also, there is gamers plays only in weekends.

the effect, this is a hard one, I can go on and on, but from my personal experience I can tell you;

Video games are not bad and not good it depends in the person;

if you can manage your life and playing, it could make you have more awareness, more creativity, memory, maybe even smarter for kids . '' fun of course ''

but mostly with the new age it makes them lazy, irresponsible, careless, and the worst thing some people find it a way to run from real life.

it’s a big topic but I guess my main points are cleared.

thanks

@Jawad2007: Thank you for the response. I read a lot on the positive sides if video game. In the past video games were my passion, and I believe they have enhanced a lot of my skills and there is a lot of positive things in it. Also during that period in my life, I did feel some physical symptoms that maybe are connected to gaming and maybe not.

Have you ever experienced anything of that sorts? If so It would be great if you could elaborate.

thanks again :)

haha sadly not , gaming is something I love cause of the experiance that I want to Live , did it effect me ? ja , I almost fail a semsiter in my college cause WoW .. haha XD .

my little brother have copied me in the wrong way , he didnt understand that gaming is just a hoppy , so now basicly he is 18 , doing nothing but gaming .. sometimes I blame myself .

A gamer is someone who play games, which is the easy explanation.

To explain it a bit better, a gamer is someone who plays a game that requires some skills or effort, which is why i refuse to see the majority of mobile games and walking simulators as games, thus people playing these games are not gamers.

In regards to the medical question, i would say fatigue from playing games, there's alot of articles and stories about people playing games until they litterally died from exhaustion.

There is also the addiction part, people playing games in an unhealthy amount. ( everything can become addicting if too much is "consumed" in a small timespace.

And the last is one condition i experienced in a smaller scale: Carpal tunnel syndrome, which is basically where the nerves or something similar in your hand(s), is under too much pressure and simply stops working properly.

Well, poor posture from sitting at a computer chair with inadequate back support is probably the big one, besides carpal tunnel, repetitive stress injury etc.

Of course, sitting around watching TV is probably just as bad, and doesn't improve hand/eye coordination, so meh.

I actually did a lecture on my last year in apprenticeship (no idea how you would call it in the us etc. its a german / swiss thing) and so did a friend of mine. We both got the highest grade for it and basically to sum it up:

Games are good for your Brain, my Friend described how his leading capabilities got trained because of being a raid leader in WoW and now hes leading an IT team (everything felt so familiar and easy to him). Games are not like watching TV because they are not passive. Theres lots of games that make the players to start thinking for themselves to get most out of it and people actually start making excel sheets and doing math.

But Games can be bad for physical health if you don't look after yourself. For my part i have a physical job and gaming in my free time is a good balance. Others who work mostly on the chair should look to get some physical activities during their free time aswell. I've had some wrist problem when i played to much clicking games, but kinda solved it by buying this mousepads with the silicone wristholder in them. Also I try to use the gamepad more often in games depending on what i play. Its also possible that playing infront of monitor or tv made me wear glasses but that could be because i overgamed a bit when i was younger, not everybody has that. Im not sure about the fatigue part, i do feel tired often but i don't always sleep as much as i should, its nothing bad tho, a coffee usually works. Mostly after doing a bit sports it helps a lot with that, so i think this has more to do with not moving around in general.

A gamer to me is somebody who regularely playes video games, just like other hobbies.

All in all you need to find a good balance.

Also I'd like to point out, theres lots of people "escaping" into the gamers world because of things happening in real life, so a lot of blames for their negative behauvior is given to gaming in general, while the source of this evil comes from society, same as drugs.

I am a gamer there for I am.

For me, a gamer is simply someone that plays them on a somewhat regular basis, in similar amounts to how much a TV or movie lover would watch things.

As for health issues, I've suffered headaches a number of times from playing for too long. I've also had numerous dreams based on games I'd played the night before, but nothing negative. Other than that, just a little motion sickness from virtual reality, which pretty much affects everyone at some point.

One thing I would say, and this is a personal opinion, is that my hand-eye coordination seems to be quite a lot better than a lot of the non-gamers I know. I play quite a few sports, at a completely amateur level, and the people that really challenge me tend to be fellow computer game enthusiasts. I genuinely believe that gaming can help your neuronic functions when combined with an active lifestyle.

To me a gamer is someone who plays games as, a hobby, on a regular basis and also has some interest in the equipment they are using to play those games on.

As someone who has been gaming for over 40 years and is starting to push into the latter part of middle age I don't think I've had any health issues that are a direct result of gaming, of course I've been physically active my whole life as well as being a gamer. Having said that I think long periods of gaming can extenuate other physical health issues I have picked up over the years, i.e. stiff knees and back pain (I need a new gaming chair). My eyes aren't as good as they used to be and I now have to wear reading glasses.

About the only thing I ever had issues with, from frequently using a PC was headaches from old sub 75Hz CRT monitors but those days are long gone now. It was something I'd suffer with even if only writing code or a word processor, so not specifically a gaming issue.

Gaming doesn't need to be an unhealthy activity, as long as the gamer doesn't lock down and never do anything else.