@insomniac7809 said in Emotional bleed:
If I don't feel things when I play a video game, it isn't a video game I'm going to be interested in.
I don't like this approach, and I'll expound as to why: We're not talking about just "feeling" things.
People like going to the circus because it makes them feel something. People like watching horror movies because being scared can be fun. People like Thanksgiving dinner because it makes them feel something. People like eating ice cream because there's fulfillment in it. People like putting dollars into the claw grabber machines knowing all the while it's a ripoff because it makes them feel something. There is not one thing that anyone does so in life because there is zero feeling/gratification in it. We're not robots performing tasks; every action taken is applied to FEELING something.
So I feel like this approach to the question of "emotional attachment and bleed" when it comes to online gaming and the emotional turmoils that come with that type of obsession shouldn't be written up as "If I don't feel anything it wouldn't be worth it to begin with".
FEELING something isn't the same as actuating trauma through a hobby. It's not people like you that I'm concerned about when it comes to these games. People like you and I do (did) this stuff because there was juice in the squeeze, but there are others who squeeze until it hurts, and maybe a little bit of upset when the squeeze stops hurting. There are plenty of players in the hobby that approach it with a balanced eye, but when the hobby causes emotional bleed that leaps off of the keyboard and into the RL/OOC realm in ways that aren't "darn, the claw grabber didn't get the Popeye doll; better luck next time" we then enter the realm of where things on the other side of the keyboard can go wrong.
So in that light I personally don't think this conversation should go in that direction. Example being stuff like the times someone's RL mental health resulted in conversations about suicide as the direct result of things that were (or weren't) happening IC. I've been there. Others have, too.