Effects of Online Games to the Students Essay

As time passes by, technology continues to evolve. Because of technology, new things were created that sustains and lightens human work. Computers were created because of technology. Computers were the greatest thing ever invented by man itself. In the modern age, computers have become a part of man’s life. Almost all the things around us were made by computers with the aid of modern machines. From the edited books, design, special effects in movies, and televisions etc., were all made by computers. Along with the evolution of technology, computers continue to upgrade as well until the time that computer has now become a part of man’s everyday life that are hooked to computers. Computers can now edit documents to your PC, play mini games, search information you need using the internet, save documents to your PC and play online games. It’s like an all-in-one gadget that can do all the things you want anytime you need it. From 1990 to the present year, online games had a big impact to us especially teenagers. Online games have many genres, including FPS games, MMORPG, Casual games and multiplayer games. A game will become an online game if it involves in using a computer or a series of computers with one player in each computer to battle it out with other players using the Internet depending on the game genre. Games have always been a popular pastime, but with the advent of computer games they have become even more pervasive. Despite all this progress, we may still stop and ask what makes a game. Because computer games are a subset of games, everything we can say about games in general applies also to them. Nevertheless, computer games are also computer programs, and, therefore, lessons learnt in software construction can be applied to them. A third perspective to computer games is subjective and it concerns finding out what features the players expect from a computer game. A dictionary defines ‘game’ as ‘a universal form of recreation generally including any activity engaged in for diversion or amusement and often establishing a situation that involves a contest or rivalry. A computer game is carried out with the help of a computer program. This definition leaves us some leeway, since it does not implicate that the whole game takes place in the computer. For example, a game of Chess can be played on the screen or on a real-world board, regardless whether the opponent is a computer program The world of online gaming is basically all about community. Gaming has gained such popularity that it could now be considered as practically mandatory. Being great and skilled at playing these video games gives individuals several social benefits. Gaming communities have proven to be powerful, profitable, and at the same time, very fragile. Based on studies and research conducted, gaming has become one of fastest growing in the entertainment sector. It has surpassed the achievements of full-length films, revenue-wise. Gaming is truly a social activity and the mere act of playing games has been directly linked in the establishment of relationships as well as social hierarchies throughout history. Games could be engrossing for many different reasons. Online games or video games are those that could be played over some kind of computer games to those games that incorporate complex computer graphics with virtual worlds that are populated by a lot of players simultaneously. A lot of the video games today have their own associated online communities and these make online games a true social activity that goes beyond the single player games. Online gaming has really made it mark, being an innovative feature of the Internet which would surely be staying and developing in the many, many years to come. In the past, only those who were willing to spend expensive fees and put up with a hard setup process made up online gaming communities. Today, though, a lot of people are getting into, even the younger generation, which raises some negative implications as well on its effect on students. Background of the Study Development of technology brought many things that people do not have many years back. One of those things was online gaming that was provided by the internet. Online Gaming is one of the widely used leisure activities by many people. Teenagers who were playing these online games said that they were playing online games just for fun, to keep away from the heat of the sun, without knowing that there were a lot of effects of playing these games that are more than what they think. Playing online games enabled the mind of the players to be more active, especially those puzzled based-games. It helps the players to come up with decision tight situations, especially those adventure games that kept the players to be alert, active and strategic. Playing online games made the players experience different feelings because it was as if the players really are the one taking the challenges. Despite those benefits, playing online games also brought negative effects, it requires much of the playerâ €™s time, leaving school activities and homework unattended. The Internet has pervaded our society rapidly. It has been major means of communication, used for the exchange of information, for news and for shopping, and now one of the most popular online contents is the game. Online gaming was mainly concentrating on gaming over the internet, where an amount of money is bet on the prospect of a player or group of players winning. Those types of games were usually referred to by the websites as games of skill, and include chess, backgammon and solitaires. Online gaming is a technology rather than a genre, a mechanism for connecting players together rather than a particular pattern of game play. Online games are played over some form of computer network, now typically on the Internet. Some of the advantages of playing online games are, the ability to connect to multiplayer games, although single-player online games are quite common as well, and the ability to build the confidence of the individual in the game that they have used to play. Some of the disadvantages also on playing online games were; the students may be too much hooked on this game and may have insufficient time to study their lessons that their teachers taught them. In the year 2008, most high school students have played a lot of online gaming, and it is very popular. Online games were inspired by video games. The first video and computer games, such as NIMROD (1951), OXO (1952), and Space war! (1961) were for one or two players sitting at a single computer which was being used only to play the game. Later in the 1960s, computers began to support time-sharing, which allowed multiple users to share use of a computer simultaneously. Systems of computer terminals were created allowing users to operate the computer from a different room than where the computer was housed. Soon after, Modem links further expanded this range so that users did not have to be in the same building as the computer; terminals could connect to their host computers via dial-up or leased telephone lines. With the increased remote access, â€Å"host based† games were created, in which users on remote systems connected to a central computer to play single-player, and soon after, multiplayer games. Online games can give us positive effects and benefits to us students, but on the contrary we notice that the students spend more time in playing online games rather than it in such a productive way. Online gaming is an emotionally draining and time-consuming activity. To create more time for the computer, gaming addicts neglect sleep, diet, exercise, hobbies, and socializing. They let their own health go as they do not get the proper rest and nutrition they need. They may suffer a number of health problems from back strain, eye strain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and repetitive stress injury. In this study, sophomore students of College of Business in Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) are the respondents. We chose them as our respondents because we see that most of them are addicted in online games. They are given an opportunity to answer and evaluate themselves whether they can handle playing online games and at the same time can do other important activities. It is for the reason that we are interested in taking a more serious look in the effects of online games particularly to the sophomore students of Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) who are the role models of freshmen students. Theoretical Framework Game theory is a study of strategic decision making. More formally, it is â€Å"the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers.† An alternative term suggested â€Å"as a more descriptive name for the discipline† is interactive decision theory. Game theory is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic and biology. The subject first addressed zero-sum games, such that one person’s gains exactly equal net losses of the other participant(s). Today, however, game theory applies to a wide range of class relations, and has developed into an umbrella term for the logical side of science, to include both human and non-humans, like computers. Classic uses include a sense of balance in numerous games, where each person has found or developed a tactic that cannot successfully better his results, given the other approach. Early discussions of examples of two-person games occurred long before the rise of modern, mathematical game theory. The first known discussion of game theory occurred in a letter written by James Waldegrave in 1713. In this letter, Waldegrave provides a minimax mixed strategy solution to a two-person version of the card game le her. James Madison made what we now recognize as a game-theoretic analysis of the ways states can be expected to behave under different systems of taxation. In his 1838 Recherches sur les principes mathà ©matiques de la thà ©orie des richesses (Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth), Antoine Augustin Cournot considered a duopoly and presents a solution that is a restricted version of the Nash equilibrium. The Danish mathematician Zeuthen proved that the mathematical model had a winning strategy by using Brouwer’s fixed point theorem. In his 1938 book Applications aux Jeux de Hasard and earlier notes, Émile Borel proved a minimax theorem for two-person zero-sum matrix games only when the pay-off matrix was symmetric. Borel conjectured that non-existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games would occur, a conjecture that was proved false. Game theory did not really exist as a unique field until John von Neumann published a paper in 1928. Von Neumann’s original proof used Brouwer’s fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathematical economics. His paper was followed by his 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour. The second edition of this book provided an axiomatic theory of utility, which reincarnated Daniel Bernoulli’s old theory of utility (of the money) as an independent discipline. Von Neumann’s work in game theory culminated in this 1944 book. This foundational work contains the method for finding mutually consistent solutions for two-person zero-sum games. During the following time period, work on game theory was primarily focused on cooperative game theory, which analyse optimal strategies for groups of individuals, presuming that they can enforce agreements between them about proper strategies. In 1950, the first mathematical discussion of the prisoner’s dilemma appeared, and an experiment was undertaken by notable mathematicians Merrill M. Flood and Melvin Dresher, as part of the RAND corporation’s investigations into game theory. Rand pursued the studies because of possible applications to global nuclear strategy. Around this same time, John Nash developed a criterion for mutual consistency of players’ strategies, known as Nash equilibrium, applicable to a wider variety of games than the criterion proposed by von Neumann and Morgenstern. This equilibrium is sufficiently general to allow for the analysis of non-cooperative games in addition to cooperative ones. Game theory experienced a flurry of activity in the 1950s, during which time the concepts of the core, the extensive form game, fictitious play, repeated games, and the Shapley value were developed. In addition, the first applications of Game theory to philosophy and political science occurred during this time. In 1965, Reinhard Selten introduced his solution concept of sub game perfect equilibria, which further refined the Nash equilibrium. In 1967, John Harsanyi developed the concepts of complete information and Bayesian games. Nash, Selten and Harsanyi became Economics Nobel Laureates in 1994 for their contributions to economic game theory. In the 1970s, game theory was extensively applied in biology, largely as a result of the work of John Maynard Smith and his evolutionarily stable strategy. In addition, the concepts of correlated equilibrium, trembling hand perfection, and common knowledge were introduced and analysed. In 2005, game theorists Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann followed Nash, Selten and Harsanyi as Nobel Laureates. Schelling worked on dynamic models, early examples of evolutionary game theory. Aumann contributed more to the equilibrium school, introducing an equilibrium coarsening, correlated equilibrium, and developing an extensive formal analysis of the assumption of common knowledge and of its consequences. In 2007, Leonid Hurwicz, together with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics â€Å"for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.† Myerson’s contributions include the notion of proper equilibrium, and an important graduate text: Game Theory, Analysis of Conflict (Myerson 1997). Hurwicz introduced and formalized the concept of incentive compatibility. Modern game theory began with the idea regarding the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games and its proof by John von Neumann. Von Neumann’s original proof used Brouwer’s fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathematical economics. His paper was followed by his 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, with Oskar Morgenstern, which considered cooperative games of several players. The second edition of this book provided an axiomatic theory of expected utility, which allowed mathematical statisticians and economists to treat decision-making under uncertainty. This theory was developed extensively in the 1950s by many scholars. Game theory was later explicitly applied to biology in the 1970s, although similar developments go back at least as far as the 1930s. Game theory has been widely recognized as an important tool in many fields. Eight game-theorists have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and John Maynard Smith was awarded the Crafoord Prize for his application of game theory to biology. Game theory, is a branch of applied mathematics that provides tools for analysing situations in which parties, called players, make decisions that are interdependent. This interdependence causes each player to consider the other player’s possible decisions, or strategies, in formulating his own strategy. A solution to a game describes the optimal decisions of the players, who may have similar, opposed, or mixed interests, and the outcomes that may result from these decisions. Although game theory can be and has been used to analyze parlour games, its applications are much broader. In fact, game theory was originally developed by the Hungarian-born American mathematician John von Neumann (http://www.gametheorysociety.org/)