Nintendo Switch – New Video Game System [video]
It&#x27;s interesting to me to watch a video about a new gaming platform and have that video show me all the ways in which said platform will destroy nearly all forms of real human interaction with others, reducing us to unthinking drones looking at screens moving little virtual characters around while our brains whittle away.<p>This is the problem with the gaming industry.  It&#x27;s the equivalent of very smart engineers using their skills on the web to find ever more effective ways to make people click on ads.  It&#x27;s such a waste of human talent.<p>Gaming is different but not really.  Most of the popular games have no real redeeming qualities.  They are black holes into which youth can get sucked into, burn hours, days and years and, in extreme cases, ruin their lives.  This, I think, is despicable.<p>If you want to do well in gaming you have to use your skills to find ways to create addictive games that shift a person into a Pavlovian state where they want more, they keep clicking the buttons and, eventually, they send you money.  This has certainly been proven by the iOS space.  Games like &quot;Clash of Clans&quot; is one of many examples of this.<p>Getting truly creative to find ways for people to engage with more intelligent and useful activities is very, very difficult.  And so, to usurp part of a phrase that paints an amazing image...when they go low, we go lower.<p>I have long been disenchanted with what the gaming industry has done to kids.  It&#x27;s making money at the expense of their brains and emotions.  It&#x27;s selling drugs in digital form.<p>I didn&#x27;t used to think this way until I saw the effect on my own kids.  To make a long story short, my two little ones started to lie to us and play a couple of these addictive games on their iPods.<p>We have a simple rule at our house:  On Saturday&#x27;s you can play the available games for a couple of hours.  The rest of the week play with legos, go outside, play with the dogs, etc.<p>This worked very well for many years (almost 18 to be precise).  In fact, in a lot of cases they&#x27;d play less than two hours because they&#x27;d get sick of it and prefer to go for physical play.<p>Until a couple of games surfaced.  And they, like evolved bacteria, became immune to the mechanism that made my kids decide to stop playing.  Soon we would discover them playing the games in secret under their blankets at 11 at night instead of sleeping.  Warnings did not work.  And, after a couple of them we took the iPads and iPods away.  They had become destructive devices rather than the opposite.<p>My kids were lying to me in a manner which I would imagine was no different than kids lying about taking drugs.<p>They&#x27;ve been off the iOS devices and these games for a year.  They get their devices back in January.  Cleared of all the addictive games.  We&#x27;ll see what happens.<p>So, yeah, I look at a video like the one for the Switch and immediately imagine how many lives it will destroy if used as portrayed.