Technology for dummies?

This week we had the PlayStation 4 releasing in many countries, such as Canada and USA. Next week the video game is going to be released in South America countries and another places as well.  We can say that this is a popular activity is several nations and the PS4 is known in almost every culture. There is a huge amount of people wanting to buy this video game since it was first announced, and this is curious because this type of technology brings fun, but not real production.

The video games in general had the first technological diffusion many decades ago, but they were not as common as they are today. What we have today is a common sense about the best players, games, and also, the availability of worlds that this electronic life have. It is a funny activity and today it is also a way of living. Either by those who play or those who develop and create the games. People make money in competitions and people make money using the imagination to produce the scenarios, characters and strategies.

It is all so popular that in this latest release of this week, there were people making lines in stores, at midnight to be the first to buy it. I just wonder if these people keep playing the entire dawn until the sun comes up.  I also keep thinking if these people who bought it this week have other types of jobs besides playing. OK, I primarily understand that a creator keeps playing all the night to test, and to feel, to develop new ideas… But a player? A common person?

Because there is no increase in someone’s skill if they just play… Besides playing skills… And when someone is developing the game – then there are all the abilities in the 3D software’s that they improve,  practice and when they are playing they can have new ideas, it is just an infinite world. But it is a profession. Everyone should have fun. But there are limits. A normal person could just go in the day after the releasing date to buy it, and it would not make any difference.

So, I wonder why video games exist… This is not a technology created to help us in some task. This is not an extension of ourselves anymore – except when we talk about video games for airplane pilots, for example, where they need training – and we cannot even say that there is a productivity paradox, for those people who play for fun, because they are not playing to improve their tasks  at work. They are just playing for fun.

To sum up, video games can be a needed tool when we talk about training, or they can just be a tool for fun. But when you keep awake only to play – then it is not for fun, but an addiction, and this is the only factor I can think of that justifies why there were so many people on the line last week. Are the creators of games making profit on dummies that do not have any new skill to develop?