Every couple of months the faculty organizes a Parents’ Seminar for students across all the programs offered. The Seminars are actually pretty fun events. The food’s always good, the students get involved as ushers, and there’s always a sort of mini-festival feel to each event.
Now, one would think that parents are typically more interested to attend when their sons / daughters are in their first year, but in reality, there isn’t any sort of actual trend. I’ve got my own ‘group’ of 18 students in the Gaming program that I’m counselor to, though I haven’t actually taught them for more than a year now. They’re progressing onto their third and final year now soon, but their parents are still attending.
My role in each Seminar of late though isn’t just about giving parents the low down on how their sons / daughters are doing in the program. For the last year now in each seminar I’ve been also asked to give special talks on one aspect of gaming or another: e.g. on gaming addiction, and recently on Learning Opportunities in Games.
By far though the one I’m most often asked to give is on gaming addiction, and I’ve done the presentation also for special groups, e.g. visiting secondary school students. There’s a lot of stuff in it: what’s addiction, why do people get addicted to, the game design elements that draw people in and get them to keep playing, measures that deal with addiction at either the national or more localized levels.
Either way it goes though, addiction is a serious thing. There’ve been incidents where gamers keep playing to the point where they disregard bodily needs and functions, even to the point of death like this guy here and here. Or suicides from emotional disorders from gaming. Or murder committed because of game denial privileges. There’s the parental neglect, like this couple who spent so much time playing EverQuest they lost their baby girl. And there’s also spousal neglect, like those self-help groups formed when their husbands and boyfriends spend too much WoWing.
More in the next post.
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