Wednesday, February 08, 2006

"I like to play computer games"

I read an article today about a man named Lim who is a professional gamer, and no it has nothing to do with killing animals, at least not REAL animals.
Every day I ask my students what they did last night. Ninety-nine percent of the time the answer is--"I played computer games." If not that, then-"I went to PC Bang." to play computer games. Boys and girls alike, same answer. Boys are more hardcore but girls are right up there. When I tell them I don't play computer games except maybe solitare or a word game every now and again, they don't believe me, or or completely awestruck. "Teacher, why?"
When I walk to work I see some kids playing outside, but I know there are more kids in my apartment than the few I see on the equipment. Where are they? A good deal of students have computers in their homes, but if not, they go to PC Bangs--computer rooms. When we didn't have internet we went here to check our email. They are dimly lit, smoke filled places. On weekends they are filled with kids, probably age 8-20 and up, and it's hard to find a spare computer. Besides smoke, the air is filled with sounds of guns firing, the dead groaning, and random hero speak. Most of the real people say nothing.
Here's the link to the article.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,399476,00.html
Let me know what you think.

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