this is messed up... when stuff gets to this point, its time to take the computer away from your kid... fuckin ridiculous. even if the kid says he knows the difference between real life and virtual life; getting married, divorced and having virtual children is beyond what you can define as entertainment and is entering the realms of living online. kids need to find other things to do then online gaming when they are lonely, their parents needta rectify this situation or their children are going to grow up zombified and jaded to the outside world.
meh, I put this one the same level as when China banned Death Notes from schools because kids were writing names of other kids they hated in them.
It's just a RPG getting out of hand. Of course kids may lost touch with reality and get jaded, but then we could have said the same thing about watching too much TV or movie. There isn't always a happy ending in life, nor is there a save-load option. If they sunk too deep into the game and not realize there's differences between reality and the make-believe, it's totally their own fault and no one else's. It's just life. And parents overreacting? Totally.
you dont build an emotional attachment with a TV show or Movie though... dont get me wrong, im a huge fan of RPG's and games, and i would have a very difficult time living without my computer, but when it gets to the extent that you are building major attachments with other characters online, the game becomes your life.
It may be true that you may not have the emotional attachment as the plot of the TV or film is directed toward you, however the "nearly-always-happy ending" will totally jade people in general? But I guess if your social network become integrated with your virtual social network, it may be an alarm bell...
lol when your virtual social network is your only social network, that is when you have a major problem... and i know many people, especially in china are getting to that point... remember the story of the fat chinese man who died during chinese new years because 'there was nothing to do except play world of warcraft'. case in point.
I'm not condoning this, but this is not much different from playing Second Life, except that I don't know of any publicized cases of children so young playing SL.
God... this is so stupid, but they are impressionable kids... hopefully they grow out of it, but then again you get some adults that have their life online -rolleyes
getting married online...seems like more and more stuff are available online...what's gonna be next...
