A new link

Last night I had another idea of how I can link "In search of lost time" to online gaming.
The best way for me to explain this would be through an example:
A 70 year old man acting out an activity that he missed out on in his younger days.
So this man may have missed out on serving his county in a war, but now he can play in a virtual war in a first person shooter online.

Another thought,
Is it a waste of time if a gambler is playing on a online poker game and winning real money?

The Average Online Gamer - part 2

Just like Richard has talked about his online gaming experience, I thought that I would do that same, as there are differences in them.

As for online games, I mainly play Counter Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source, both which are mods using the Half-Life 2 engine. Both these games are 1st person shooters.
I play any where between 6 - 2 hours a week, depending on other work, like uni projects.

Although I have tried online RPGs, I never seem to get in to them, as to do so you need to spend several hours at a time playing, by which time I have become bored with it and need to move on.
With 1st person shooters, these can be played for much little times, for example 20mins at a time.

The Average Online Gamer

Since i am an online gamer myself i will talk about my experiences.

I play world of Warcraft approx 12-24 hrs a week, depending on how much uni work i have.

Why do i play online games? A second Life

Well the reason is, because there is a major difference between online and offline games, the 1 major difference is the social aspect, you cannot socialize with a NPC as you can with other characters that are being played by other people, and the amount co-operation needed to complete certain aspects of the game is demandingly high. As i think offline games are REALLY tedious and Boring unless they have a Very good story line, such as the Final fantasy series.

Such as going into a dungeon with 40 other players, without a strong leader to guide the party through the dungeon the party may not be able to complete it.

Also as i have played World of Warcraft for about 1 year already, i have quite a reputation, so this is why i continue to play as i have many online friends ( approx 200+). Some of which i May be able to use to seek jobs via them if they are in the right field of work. All of which come from all over Europe, the bond between players has to be strong for them to trust each other with certain responsibilities.

In my opinion playing online games is not a waste of time, as the more you get involved with the people in game the more possibilities can happen such that you could find a job in real world by talking to someone on an online game. you get to use the social skills, such as leading, managing things to do in a reasonable amount of time, working together to complete things.

i also guess this is kind of a way to get away from Real Life too if i need to get away from everything.

some things i cannot explain why i do so heres a link from cognitive psychology articles:-

http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/bryant-MMORPGs-for-SLA

http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2006/09/alternaworld_redux_or_world_of_1.php

Players and there avatars

I found this on BBC's website, showing pictures of online players and there avatars with a little info about them.
For example, one female players uses a male avatars as it suggests strength.
BBC - Online gamers unmasked

Time Regained - The Movie!

Well trying to get more into Proust, I stumbled across this film, 'Time Regained', which is based upon Proust's last volume of 'Remembrance of Things Past'.
Directed by the french director Raoul Ruiz and all in French with English subtitles, this film seemed pretty hard going and would be suggested to anyone with a sleeping dis-order.
Although I thought that it may help, I think that I will be better off with one of Proust's books.

After reading a bit of the book, from what i have read " the overture", i think its him the narrator talking about his past, and whilst he is laying in bed he has visions/ flash backs from his past, and sometimes his imagination gets to him and he starts to imagine scary things about the room.

in the first chapter its alot about his mind and what he can remember.

i find it hard to make sense of the book as the story gets deeper, i start to lose track of where he is in the story.

Proust

how should i start this ... Marcel Proust, author of À la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time), this semi auto-biographical novel has 8 volumes. ( will need to find an article on a bit of it way too large to read)

Quote from wikipedia

"In Search of Lost Time can be viewed as a vast bildungsroman in which the neurasthenic narrator discovers that he is a writer after a lifetime spent distracted by society and love."

"In search of lost time " Is our quote from this person to find the relationship between 'in search of lost time' and ' online gaming'. Bering in mind that Marcel Proust died before Computer games existed.

First thoughts of this is that "in search of lost time" could mean simple things such as wasting time playing online games instead of doing something more useful.

e.g:- its 11oclock at night. and Mat has alot of work to do for uni, but he's playing a counterstrike instead.

some would say why doesn't he try to finish as much of the work as possible.
some would say why not go to bed and go sleep early.

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From my own experience by talking to real people in game online, they seem to not to have a real life as such.

ie, basic routine would probably be:-

• Wake up
• go to work
• come back home from work
• Play online game
  
• Sleep

this quote "in search of lost time" could mean that they are searching for something to do to catch up on lost time, for example someone who just recovered from a coma, but in this case in such a hypnotic state that their lives revolve around online gaming some of the lucky ones can just quit it like that, some not so lucky and have to go for therapy to help them back into the real world.

so.. this quote can support the bad side and the good side to gaming.. will look more into it....