Ian Bogost’s “Cow Clicker: The Making of Obsession” seems to give some pretty interesting information about gaming. However, the section that impressed me most was #2 -Compulsion. I think that Bogost is totally on to something when he says “today much of digital life is compulsive.” I totally agree with him. I compulsively, almost religiously, check my email to see if someone’s sent me something. I also check my Facebook nearly 20 times a day to see if someone’s tagged a new photo of me or if they’ve written something on my wall. I imagine the same sort of thing would happen if I’d let myself succumb to social gaming. I guarantee that at least 5 in every 10 of my notifications on Facebook is someone inviting me to play a game. Naturally, I decline every request because I know that I’ll become easily addicted to these games. I know that if I accept even one of those requests, I’ll end up spending more time playing than doing homework and that’s not acceptable for a senior in college. So, I wonder what these social gaming compulsions say about our society and our generation. I think these games simply show where our society has gone as a whole. We’d rather spend time in front of the computer screen playing a game about clicking cows than spend time reading a good book. We’d also rather spend time playing Farmville than doing homework. It simply shows that we’re easily distracted. I admit that I’d certainly rather play a game than do research for a project, but it’s got to be done. We’ve become distracted in our society. We’ve also become very compulsive. I think these things will continue to shape our society until we decide to do something about it.

http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml#

http://images.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0PDoS7SQ11PMVkANCujzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBtdXBkbHJyBHNlYwNmcC1hdHRyaWIEc2xrA3J1cmw-/SIG=121iruir1/EXP=1331541074/**http%3a//www.clker.com/clipart-cartoon-cow.html (image credit)