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One of the criticisms aimed at a number of computer games and video games today is that the overall length of the game seems to have been increased, without necessarily including any more game content itself. Computer games used to be fairly short affairs, with no more than a few hours needing to be spent before completing the game entirely. Today, however, many computer or video games seem almost to have no ending at all, and can take many hundreds, or even thousands of hours to play.

There are a few features which have been introduced which enable these games to become so intense and last so long - some of which are positive and encouraged, but there are some which are being criticized increasingly.

The first method which seems to be used a great deal is to introduce extensions. This means that players can buy the original game, and play it through, but later on the publisher will produce an extension to the game, which can be bought separately. This means that players who buy the extension will be able to take the game further, possibly being able to explore more land area or geography that wasn’t available before, take part in new challenges or be able to create and play with alternate characters or races. This extends the game in such a way that it feels almost like a new game.

The advantages for players is that they can explore new challenges and opportunities that feel new and fresh, within a game context that is both familiar and one in which they feel strong and competent. Having spent so long developing a character, it becomes enjoyable to immerse that character in a new environment and test him further.

However, very often the extensions are as expensive as the original game, and with up to half a dozen extensions in some cases, this can become a very expensive game to buy, especially for someone who is just entering the game for the first time. Of course, for the publishers it means an almost guaranteed income.

Many of the major games companies have several million subscribers or players, and with even just half of them buying any extension produced, publishers have an audience ready and almost desperate to spend more money on the game.

Another way by which games publishers seem to be increasing the overall length of a game is by creating a vast landscape to play in, but spacing events, quests and challenges very far apart. This means that players have to walk their character through miles of landscape to reach the next part of the actual game. In some cases, the challenge itself is to go and speak with a character who is miles away. In some cases it can take half an hour to walk from one location to another, during which all you are doing is trotting along country roads, across rolling landscapes, through valleys and mountain ranges - all very pretty and interesting, but not actually terrible challenging.

For higher level characters, mounts and rides are usually available, so that you can ride a horse between locations. But many players are starting to find that more of their time is spent reaching the game quests than carrying them out! Many argue that this is a deliberate ploy so that game companies can advertise ‘hundreds of hours of game play’.

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From the very earliest computer games, one of the most popular aspects that helped to make them so popular was that they could support multiple players, meaning that more than one person could play the game at the same time. This meant that people could play against each other in competition, so that it was not wholly a player versus computer environment. Most people enjoy competing against friends and family, and reveling in success. Most of the highly popular computer and video games available today are multiplayer games.

The idea of multiplayer has three different meanings or interpretations, however. The first, and original, multiplayer games were simply those in which you took turns. The first player would attempt a level, or complete a race, or carry out some other task which would be measured in some way - perhaps with a high score or time. Once they had either succeeded, completed the race or failed at whatever task they were challenged with doing, the next player would take over and have a go. In this way, each person was able to have a go at the same task, and try to beat each other by either getting a higher score, a faster time, or by using whatever other measurement of success.

The second type of multiplayer game to come along, and which is still around today, are the split screen games. These work best for races, where the screen can be wide but fairly short - good for racing when you need to see a wide viewpoint to prepare for corner and obstacles, but there is no need for a tall screen as you’re racing on the flat.

In this setup, the two players see their own character or vehicle in a portion of the screen at the top, and the other player or vehicle in the portion of the screen at the bottom. Both portions offer the same viewpoint to begin with at the start of the race, but each follows a specific player. It is possible this way for both players to be competing at the same time, and against each other.

The player behind will even be able to see the player in front, and by glancing quickly at the opponent’s portion of the screen it is possible to check on where they are and how they’re doing. This offers real time action and competition, and is an engrossing way of playing.

Not all split screens are horizontal - some fighting games are vertical so that you can see the full height of the opposing player, but the majority are split horizontally. Obviously for this kind of game, either having a big screen or sitting close to a screen is best in order to see the detail clearly.

The third type of multiplayer game is the type which has players competing against each other, but where the players are not actually physically anywhere near each other. This can mean that they are actually playing against each other whilst on different sides of the planet! These games use the internet to connect players together, and then each player sees the game from their point of view on their own screen, and sees the opponent as a character within the game. In many cases rather than being an opponent, the other player may be an ally, and work together to complete a task or quest.

Whilst solo games will always be popular, multiplayer games have long ruled the popularity stakes.

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If you are shortly going to be going to hospital to have an operation, it might not necessarily be the most comforting thing to hear that your surgeon, in whose hands lies your life, has had a good deal of training playing computer games.

Yet, recent studies have actually shown that the vast majority of surgeons who do regularly play computer games actually have a much better success rate and accuracy rating than their colleagues who play games either very rarely or not at all. This might seem strange, but there are a number of statistics to back up this claim, and a number of reasons why this trend may be the case.

The study was carried out at a medical centre in New York recently, and they found that those surgeons who, on average, play three hours video gaming per week managed to work almost thirty percent faster than those who did little or no gaming, and were over forty per cent more successful in operations. The tests were carried out on simulated operations, using virtual reality and computer controlled equipment, which is in many ways very much the way some operations are now carried out.

With more and more operations requiring finer accuracy and greater precision, human hands and clumsy tools are not always able to achieve the standards required. Therefore, computers are used to carry out the surgery, controlled directly by the surgeon. Shakes, tremors and inaccurate movement can be ignored by the computer, and where the surgeon moves his hand a long distance, the computer reduces this proportionally, so that very fine work can be carried out by the surgeon which would not be possible using the hands directly.

It may well be that this type of surgery is closer to playing a computer game, by interacting through a computer, than the traditional surgery normally carried out, that does not involve a computer in any form other than to monitor life signs. For this reason, the familiarity with using a computer, including visual interpretation, control and understanding, could mean that surgeons should be playing computer games more often in order to improve their skills.

Certainly no one would complain if surgeons were bought a computer game for them to play for three hours a week, if it meant that overall surgical operations were carried out nearly thirty percent faster and with a greater degree of accuracy, exceeding forty percent gain.

This study did focus on one very specific kind of surgery, but it does pose a number of interesting possibilities. With computers increasingly becoming tools which are used in every day life, to what extent do skills gained either directly or indirectly through playing computer or video games transfer to these real life skills, providing a better training and improved performance overall?

Taking this ideas further, should all students in school be provided with three hours of dedicated playing time per week in order to speed up their work success rate and improve their grades? It is unlikely to happen, but the theory at least does pose a number of interesting points. Certainly it is unlikely that the idea would be discouraged by the students concerned.

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It’s a strange word, and one you may have only come across either within gaming community forums or in game publications, but what exactly is a MMORPG? To break this acronym down into meaningful words, a MMORPG is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. To the uninitiated, that means about as much as the acronym, so let’s break it down further to try to understand exactly what this is.

There are many different types and variations of computer games and video games available today, many of which have inherited their categories and genres from some of the earliest computer games first developed in the 70s and 80s. Some of these computer games involved playing a sports game against the computer, or completing certain puzzles or challenges, but some of the games make you take on the role of a character within the game, often with your character depicted on the screen.

Usually this involves you maneuvering your character about, interacting with the environment and with other characters in the game. These types of games have become extremely popular as they allow the player to be fully immersed within the game making it seem as though they are someone else. These games have been referred to as RPG, or Role Playing Games, simply because the player takes on a role within the game.

With the growing developments in internet and network technology, and with greater bandwidth and speed being available to a greater number of players, many computer games have allowed players to play against other people using the internet. In this way, one player in the UK can quite happily play against someone sitting in New Zealand, with no delay between their movements and actions - everything happens immediately for both players.

This adds a whole new dimension to game play, as humans provide two aspects that a computer can’t really provide effectively. The first is unpredictability. Although computers can try to replicate this, it is never genuinely unpredictable. A computer is programmed to be unpredictable, but the level and nature of the unpredictability is, naturally, pre-programmed, meaning that eventually the unpredictability is predictable. Humans can not only be very random and unpredictable, but they can also be both very clever and original in tactics, and very stupid, making mistakes which may, or may not, turn out to be successful.

The other aspect is of course the interaction and conversation which goes on between players. When playing against a computer, you don’t tend to talk to it, except occasionally to shout at it in anger. When playing against a human, the social interaction can become part of the fun and appeal of the game itself.

As games have developed, technology has improved, and games companies are able to expand the borders of what they can provide. A number of games are now available which combine the idea of RPG capability with the online element, but go one further and allow not just two or three players to compete against each other, but many thousands or even millions. It is these games, which involve vast numbers of people playing against each other online in a role playing game that has spawned the descriptive acronym MMORPG. The most popular MMORPG at present is World of Warcraft, with over 8 million players online.

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Very few parents would be especially surprised if you suggested to them that their child was addicted to video games or computer games. Yet the reality is that a great many children and young teenagers are addicted to video games, and that in some cases this is having a detrimental effect on them, both physically and emotionally.

Playing video games is not, for some people, an activity to which one can become addicted. Having said that though, it is only fairly recently that it has been admitted and accepted that gambling can be addictive, in the medical sense of the world, and increasingly addiction is being investigated as a consequence of a whole range of activities. It is even possible to be addicted to sport and exercise, to the extent that it can cause harm.

So what is meant by addiction, as far as doctors and medical practitioners are concerned? Basically, when the body or brain is engrossed in an activity, chemicals are released into the bloodstream, and quickly end up with the brain. These chemicals can make a persons’ mood change quite dramatically, cheering them up, making them feel happy or good about themselves, distracted from the stresses and strains of life, and generally feeling positive and satisfied. Similar words and concepts used to describe addictions to drugs, cigarettes and alcohol. When an athlete runs or exercises hard, endorphins are released into the body and these can actually have the effect of giving the athlete a ‘high’, making them feel a rush of positive happiness. This can become very addictive, just as the body can become addicted to any chemical introduced to the brain which makes the brain feel good.

When children or young teenagers play a video game, they often have a great deal of adrenalin pumping through their veins, and the feeling of satisfaction, success, achievement or victory which the game provides can actually trigger the release of endorphins in the brain which make the player feel better about themselves. In some cases this can simply be a release or escape from the stresses of life - and let’s be honest, children - especially teenagers, do have a good deal of stress to worry about these days. The release of these chemicals during the video game can have a sub conscious effect on the child, and whilst they would strongly deny that they are addicted to the games, and deny that it is even possible to become addicted to computer games, giving up will prove very hard, if not impossible.

Having said all that, I am in no way suggesting that video games are bad - quite the opposite. Video games play a very important part in children’s lives, teaching them a whole range of very important skills, such as planning, logistics, teamwork, strategies, problem solving, saving, budgeting and so on. However, as with so many things, video games should be taken in moderation, and with enough variety of game types, and enough time spent away from the games, there is no reason to rush out and ban them all today.

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Is it possible that computer and video games have something positive and constructive to offer, and that rather than being a social menace which parents should be afraid of, they are in fact contributing a good deal to the development of the next generation?

Certainly there is no doubt whatever that the children of today will be living in a technological society, with computers and technical equipment part of everyday lifestyle. Although we’re pretty much at that stage now, many of us have either witnessed the introduction and steady development and integration of computer technology into our lives, or have experienced a world before computers came along, and have seen the world and our lives slowly taken over by electronic gadgets that seem to be far cleverer than we are. Children of today will grow up never knowing a world without mobile phones, satellite technology, worldwide file and information sharing and exchange, instant video communications with anyone, anywhere anytime, and although this idea might seem surreal to us, almost as though something from a science fiction novel, for our children it will be their reality.

In which case it is important for us to accept this change, and try to see a way in which our children can be adjusted to, and deal effectively with not only the technology around them, but also each other. Social skills, people skills and personal characteristics are always going to be important, and no one can live on an island with oinly a computer to keep them company. At the end of the day, it is not the computers which run society, but a combination of the people who design and program them, and the people who use them in their lives. Computers are, always have been, and will continue to be machines, tools, used by real people doing real jobs.

So what do computer and video games have to do with this brave new world? If you examine carefully the range of games available, you may simple assume that the games industry is owned by the US military or some other armed force, since so many games seem to involve military tactics, and the conquering or annihilation of the opposing force. Whilst this is an unfair generalisation, there certainly are many games which take the idea of battles and wars as their basis. One could argue that old games such as Battleships, even Chess, are about battles and armed forces - just a little simpler and easier to grasp.

But the point is that many of the games available necessarily require players to understand, learn and develop skills which have a great deal of value in the real world. Skill such as teamwork, coordination, planning, devising and implementing strategies, logistics, problem solving and even budgeting all come in to play - life skills which, whilst they can be taught in other ways, are not the main focus of any educational curriculum. Yet no one would deny the value of those skills. Perhaps gaming can become part of the curriculum at school in the future, allowing children to develop life skills through video games?

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Often people assume that playing computer games or video games is a very anti social activity, and is a solo activity which isolates an individual from the real world, cuts them off from other people and then allows them to sit on their own in a small dark room hitting keys over and over again in order to mindlessly destroy anything that moves on their screen. In fact, nothing could be very much further from the truth, and in fact those people who play computer games on their own, completely cut off from interaction with other people in any way are such a minority group it may prove hard to find anyone to actually put in to it.

Quite apart from not being a solo activity, recent research has found that over 66% of people who play computer or video games do so with their friends, either sat with them advising, or actually with a second handset competing in the same game. 30% of gamers play with their brothers or sisters and a quarter of all gamers play with either their parents or their partners. This completely goes against the argument that most people lay on their own, and shows that the majority of people play as a social game, in various combinations and ways.

Even taking in to account that there may be 20% to 30% of people who do play games without someone else being physically with them, it is still not possible to generalise isolation by suggesting that these people are cut off from any kind of social interaction. Many games these days are what is referred to as multi player, meaning that more than one person can play the game at the same time, and with a very wide number of the most popular video games being online too, this means that all players will be competing against and taking part with other real people, rather than the computer. In fact, many of these online multiplayer games have relatively little input from the computer, and far more input from the people playing the game against each other.

One of the main requirements of many of these multiplayer online games is that people group together and try to work out strategies and tactics to overcome certain obstacles, opponents and challenges. This will require great teamwork, very in depth discussions involving roles and group work, and will require people to work together as individuals and as a team. As a result, many players become part of a more stable and permanent group which means that there are people known to each other ready to take on challenges without having to start all over each time analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. These groups can become social groups, meeting outside of the game, and there are many examples where people who have met through these groups have gone on to develop meaningful friendships and relationships beyond the game.

Video games are most certainly not isolating - for many, they open doors to friendships that the real world may never have offered.

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