Angry Birds, Farmville And Other Hyperaddictive Stupid Games?

“Just One More Game…: Angry Birds, Farmville, and Other Hyperaddictive Stupid Games,” written by Sam Anderson talks about the demand for video games. The invention of the Japanese game-making Nintendo was spread across the world in 1989. A hand-held, battery-powered plastic slab was created called the Game Boy. The Game Boy came with one cartridge known as Tetris which was a game that had a goal for people to rotate falling blocks – over and over – to build walls that would eventually disappear when the vertical or horizontal across the screen was completely full. The graphics of Tetris were simple enough to be done on the Game Boy screen and the motions were slow enough that they wouldn’t blur. The Game Boy and Tetris pair ended up selling …show more content…
They have also changed the whole economic view of the video-game industry and humans are living in a world full of video games. Studies have shown that games usually reflect the societies in which they are played in and created by. Tetris was created in a Soviet computer lab in 1984 and the game is known to reflect its origin. The game is busywork with no ending point and it is impossible to avoid or escape. Tetris is a very addicting game causing humans to continue to rotate blocks without a purpose and to be punished. A nearly bankrupt company called Rovio created a game called Angry Birds in 2009 which was 25 years after Tetris had been invented. The use of this game was the perfect way to involve the new technology of the touch screen on smartphones and other devices. Angry Birds soon became the most popular game on the iPhone. The game had been downloaded more than 700 million times and it even inspired merchandising …show more content…
These smartphones had a huge impact on game design. Game consoles, where most games came to life on a television or computer were now being played on a handheld device. These games could now be played anywhere and everywhere by any person on any level. Some people see these “stupid games” as a good thing and some see them as bad. The ones who believe they are good even think they are the answer to all of humanity’s problems. People have argued that these games are possibly even the best ways for humans to have a productive activity level and a way for humans to escape reality. These approaches might even be able to help solve real-world problems and help with successful everyday life. There has been a new problem created called, gamification. This is allowing companies to not only bombard humans with games, but to also send messages directly into the minds of humans by using ads that are disguised as games. Anderson fears that corporations are going to hire teams of behavioral psychologists to target and study the addiction of these “stupid games” to gain