Quick fix gaming

Playing video games can turn into an obsession as recent reports coming out of Korea have shown. Gamers have been going into hospital suffering from malnutrition from playing games for hours and days on end. Some extreme cases have seen people dying from too much gaming one such incident in south Korea a man died of heart failure after a massive 50 hour stretch on a mmorpg. This is an extreme case and one that is hopefully not going to happen again, but this does highlight the addictive side of gaming.

These kind of horror stories reflect very badly on the gaming industry as a whole, it is already underfire from groups for encouraging laziness in gamers by encouraging them to spend lots of time on games. So maybe more shorter instant games are the key. Mobile games are designed to be able to be played and put down, there not huge epic games that require days and hours of gaming it is more like minutes with a mobile game,its more a quick fix instead of an immersive experience.

"In fact mobile gaming is part if an event rather the event itself, gaming will take placee
during a journey or whilst watching TV. It is normally a secondary activity, but nonetheless it is an experience that more and more people are doing. The main platform for mobile gaming does appear to be the mobile phone as people see the mobile as a necessity were as other platforms such as the PSP are more hardcore gamers". Goosen (2006)

So the order of the day with regards to mobile gaming appears to be short games that can be picked up and played at the drop of a hat. This will hopefully encourage more shorter gaming sessions and less gaming addiction