Forked Thread: "The Death of the Imagination" re: World of Warcraft

[Mercurius]

Okay, so what's the problem then? If the "condition" lifts when you're no longer playing WoW (the suppressing force going away), then why does it matter? So your imagination is suppressed while you're playing WoW, I don't see the issue there.

Two things come to mind.

1) The Addiction Factor. This should be self-explanatory: the problem doesn't go away as long as it is fed. And, I would say, the "suppression" lasts beyond the act of play.

2) Long-term Damage. As I said in a previous post, I think the human being is amazingly resilient and able to come back from all sorts of trauma, abuse, and misuse. But even so, sometimes there are lasting symptoms, even permanent "scarring." We just don't understand enough about the mind (yet) to know what we can or can't "come back from."

 

[Mercurius]

Nice post Goobermunch.

G'night, all. I'll be back to this thread sometime on the morrow.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

WoW in particular, I would suggest, due to certain design choices, limits the imagination rather than expanding it. It's an amazing game, with amazing art design, but I do not think it's design is inspiring, or even immersive in the normal sense, but rather it's enveloping.

To even suggest that people who play World of Warcraft are somehow depleted of some quantitative unit of imaginative faculty, as Mercurius does here:

But I don't think it is a stretch to conjecture that the imaginative faculties of someone before hours and hours of play are greater than after, if only subtly. Long-term play is more of a concern, and can be highly detrimental to one's imagination.

. . . is completely and utterly stupid. Mind-meltingly so.

Is Mercurius a neuroscientist? Has he identified the regions of the brain that make "imagination" function, and shown through peer-reviewed research that World of Warcraft is detrimental to these parts of the brain?

"Long-term play . . . can be highly detrimental to one's imagination" is a baseless statement, made with no backing whatsoever.

Mercurius spent the rest of his post asserting his conclusion (that D&D is a more imagination-encouraging game than World of Warcraft). He doesn't support these statements - he simply says them, as if they were fact, and expects you to agree and follow his conclusion simply because he said it.

He then claims that he's not saying what he actually is:

Now I am not saying that any amount of World of Warcraft (or TV) will harm one's imagination.

This quote makes no sense in the context of his statement earlier that the "imaginative faculty" of WoW players is lessened, especially over the long term. Either Mercurius doesn't know what he wants to say, or he's lying here to cover his butt.

Mercurius uses weasel wording - "I don't think it's a stretch to conjecture" - after admitting that he can't actually prove his conjecture. He then, however, goes on to make the rest of his post assuming that his conjecture is true, and drawing vast and damning conclusions about the negative effects of WoW on something he considers to be of "such importance to the quality of human existence".

It's a pile of crap as tall as the Empire State Building, and not even one-millionth as well-constructed.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

WoW limits imagination no more or less then other video games or TV does. Pointing it out as being "special" in this case isn't just wrong, it's kinda dumb, especially if you can't show how WoW limits imagination anything mroe then other sources of media.

Mind you, this isn't always a bad, horrible, evil thing. As I've said in other threads, it's nice to think that people should be able to express everything to the limits of their imagination, except that most people really aren't that imaginative, and quite frankly, enjoy limitations. Again, this isn't a BAD thing or some kind of insult, it's just how people work.

Oh, and while I don't think it's that well written, I've had plenty of fun with WoW's d20 game


Oh yes, and before I forget, the idea that playing WoW causes some horrible long lasting affliction on the brain is laughable in a very not-that-funny manner. Seriously, we're getting close to tin foil hat time.

 

[Teflon Billy]

To even suggest that people who play World of Warcraft are somehow depleted of some quantitative unit of imaginative faculty, as Mercurius does here:


. . . is completely and utterly stupid. Mind-meltingly so.

Is Mercurius a neuroscientist? Has he identified the regions of the brain that make "imagination" function, and shown through peer-reviewed research that World of Warcraft is detrimental to these parts of the brain?

"Long-term play . . . can be highly detrimental to one's imagination" is a baseless statement, made with no backing whatsoever.

Mercurius spent the rest of his post asserting his conclusion (that D&D is a more imagination-encouraging game than World of Warcraft). He doesn't support these statements - he simply says them, as if they were fact, and expects you to agree and follow his conclusion simply because he said it.

He then claims that he's not saying what he actually is:


This quote makes no sense in the context of his statement earlier that the "imaginative faculty" of WoW players is lessened, especially over the long term. Either Mercurius doesn't know what he wants to say, or he's lying here to cover his butt.

Mercurius uses weasel wording - "I don't think it's a stretch to conjecture" - after admitting that he can't actually prove his conjecture. He then, however, goes on to make the rest of his post assuming that his conjecture is true, and drawing vast and damning conclusions about the negative effects of WoW on something he considers to be of "such importance to the quality of human existence".

It's a pile of crap as tall as the Empire State Building, and not even one-millionth as well-constructed.

So...you love your World of Warcraft do you ?

 

[Foundry of Decay]

I'll weigh in here with my personal experience.

Now, keep in mind, this is just what both myself and a friend had noticed after roughly 2 or more years of playing warcraft. We weren't quite hard-core, but we definitely played the living daylights out of the game compared to any other activity.

In our case, it had a detrimental effect on two things: Our imagination, and to a lesser extent, our ability to focus on the creative process.

I'll speak mostly from my case though.

Before I had gotten deeply into WoW I was a pretty prolific artist in the commissions circle. I also ran several D&D games and while I hardly count myself as one of the most clever DM's/writers out there, I was pretty good at tossing various interesting challenges at my players. I thought about various characters quite a bit even while working, drew a ton of fantasy genre artwork in my off hours, and even planned to do a large amount of 'cardboard furniture' for the gaming mat (Something along the lines of WorldWorks products but in a much smaller production scale).

However, I had started to become hooked on Warcraft. I'm not one of those who blames the game for all evils in the world, I'm an adult, I made my decision.

However I hadn't realized that the more I played, the less interested I became in doing anything D&D related. In fact, I had a hard time even focusing on getting a storyline down, or thinking up the next interesting villain. After a while, I dropped plans to do the cardboard furniture thing, my campaigns invariably fell apart because I just couldn't come up with a storyline.. I mean REALLY couldn't think one up. It was like 2 years of writers block.

I found most of my thoughts to start shifting over to strategy in WoW. In fact I started to have those dreams where you close your eyes and your playing the game again. This became more severe over time in fact, however I found that I just accepted it and adjusted to having those dreams and daydreams as part of a normal process. Soon, everything else became a flicker of thought here, or a brief idea there.

When I and my friend quit playing about six months ago, it took about 2 weeks to 'detox'. I'd still get those dreams, I'd still daydream about running in raids and whatnot, or worse, it would just be images of me randomly running my 'toon' around killing critters.. Utterly mindless stuff.

About.. I'd say a month later, I started becoming interested in reading again.. I hadn't fully read a book in those 2+ years. I started to get these little inklings in my head of fantasy characters and storylines again.

In time I actually started to create again. My imagination quite literally went into overdrive and I started churning out storylines and artwork like mad. I seem to be back on a regular path again. I can come up with intriguing NPC's that aren't just the 'I run up and smack him' variety. I've been really going loopy on interesting settings for things and started to write out in detail a floating city of industry that I'd had hovering in my mind again.

Moreover I find that I can actually focus for more than a fleeting moment on a single story idea or character idea again. I can actually sit and read again which is something I literally couldn't do after playing 6+ hours of WoW a day (Raids were longer, of course).

So in my case (emphasized) I really did become an unimaginative blob because of the constant point and click play of Warcraft. My mind became too used to the repetitive tasks and soon started to just shut down anything but basic functions when it came to the creative centers. There seemingly was some psychological shut down that occurred over my time playing online.

So that's my take. Again, its just what I've gone through. Every person will have different experiences and probably will have minds that multi-task better than mine could.

Warcraft is definitely a cool game. It definitely has a big expansive world. However in the actual game itself, there is very, very little true storyline (You have to read the books or online lore for any deep storyline). Its literally just a series of fetch quests strung together with killing bigger things in bigger raids, and even the raids aren't really much of a deep story.. You all learn tactics and soon the boss becomes trivial. He's just a giant cash machine full of bits of database numbers that make you slightly more powerful than before.

That's my toss of the copper though.

 

[hong]

So, how many hit dice does imagination have? And how much XP do I get when I kill it?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

So...you love your World of Warcraft do you ?

It actually doesn't have anything to do with it. I would say the same thing about Everquest or City of Heroes or Magic: The Gathering or D&D Miniatures or Warmachine or Gears of War or Bioshock or Unreal Tournament, or any other game I don't play.

I've lost a lot of interest in World of Warcraft - I've played about two or three hours total in the last month.

The point is: Mercurius's "arguments" are less convincing than Michael Jackson's marriages.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

I remember when D&D was about stimulating the imagination.
I remember how that changed, how everything had to be regulated and balanced.
I remember when it became a crime to use your imagination in D&D. (I mean that, too.)

If the imagination is dying, it's because a culture of surpressing the imagination came into being. Why? Because too many people were about controlling the imaginations of others, and not enjoying the game.

Look guys, the Young are the Young. You see them in restaurants, bowling alleys, gaming tables, schools, everywhere.
The Young are racuous. The Young are reckless. Wild. Full of the hot blood of youth and the certainty of their own immortality. Filled with the problems of their age, and oftentimes the lack of control over their newly released hormones.
They swear a blue streak. They bluster. They swagger. They stumble around threateningly. They are a disaster going somewhere to happen in an automobile.

In a game, they play characters to 100th level. They slay all the Gods, and take their place. They conquer the setting after levelling it first. They kill all the NPCs, because they can. They dare all the hazards, because of the thrill. They exploit all the rules mercilessly, because they feel like it.
In the imagination of the Young, anything is possible.

We were these people. We should know! All of us! We imagined, we dreamed, we ravished and conquered and exploited, we played D&D!

In the imagination of the Young, is the future of our Hobby.
Disallow the imagination, and you disallow the Hobby. There will be no D&D, without imagination. Only computer games.

So I say, encourage the imagination, encourage the Young, and let it be as messy as they wish to make it, because that's how we were, and that's how D&D came to be the great, popular game it has been.

Edena_of_Neith

 

[hong]

I think that dream vestige we fought in RttToH was epic and 50 HD or something. We didn't kill it though. I figure an imagination should be about that many HD.