What is the appeal of these games? I'm not anti-game, just don't see any appeal in them. Has pushing buttons and the resulting reward of fancy imagery somehow supplanted actually experiencing the real world as a way for kids to have fun? When I was young (and still to this day) there was no way you could even get me in the house before dark, much less sitting in front of a video screen. If I wasn't playing sandlot pick-up ball or shinny hockey, I'd be out climbing trees or inspecting the strange bugs or just riding bikes or something. I won't eat dinner until after dark on most days just because I hate wasting daylight. It's either gardening, skydiving, hiking in the woods, or even just laying in a hammock. Wouldn't even think of sitting in front of a video game as a manner of personal entertainment. I find it strange, not bad (well, . . . bad if I was doing it), and just don't understand the allure.

Oh yeah. I'd rate them all EUR - Extremely Un-Real. I hear people gushing about how real some games are. I have never seen one, (and I have seen most all of them), that is any more realistic than the average cartoon. The definition of real must have changed since I was a teenager.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley