November 8 resulted in fried retinas for stereotypical, middle-aged men living in their parents’ basements, conventional ‘hot’ girls and adolescents everywhere. The release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, one of the many video games that has caused a lowering of productivity for students across the nation, is only a recent addition to the phenomenon which began with our parents and the archaic arcade game Pong.

I was 10 when my then 13-year-old brother received a Gamecube for Christmas. Although already outdated back then, games like MarioKart and SuperSmash Bros have spanned the gender discrepancies between my predominantly male extended family and myself, enabling ‘hanging out’ to involve something other than gladiator-style street hockey. Ourselves outnumbering the controllers, we were forced to develop the commonly used ‘you die, you give it up’ policy, teaching ourselves cooperation and friendly competition.

Flash forward to the present. An eight-year-old sits immersed in the game of Minecraft for hours on end, sometimes putting the needs of his cubic agriculture before his own in the name of the game.

The difference? Age, of course, and era, but largely the lack of an auxiliary device. Non-compact disc requiring computer games are largely one-player. If they are multiplayer, they are for the most part wirelessly connected to one another. Without joysticks, the argument for increased dexterity is expunged, and depending on the player’s location (computer desk or laptop) posture is thrown out the window. Internet games mean access to infinite resources, inappropriate or otherwise, and the ability to purchase goods and services at the push of a button. Memberships and accounts often require large computer memory usage and can welcome in viruses and slow down functioning.

Sure, computer games have many pros. They can encourage little ones’ independence, for example, my younger sibling can already effectively type and operate Youtube (tutorials) at the age of eight. There are many free, educational online games parents can use as fun teaching resources. When the former and the latter are combined effectively, the result spurs intellectual curiosity and self-motivation to succeed. What a rainbow of possibilities, right? Wrong. Getting the concoction correct is as hit-and-miss as playing Russian Roulette.

Although there are violent video games, reality-disconnecting headsets, non conviviality-encouraging games and socially constricting, expensive handheld devices in the Nintendo/affiliates world, the cons of computer games outnumber those of auxiliary devices’.

‘What about Wii?’ you ask. Wii Sports and Wii Fit are to exercise as LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) is to socializing. It’s just not the same thing.

There is a happy medium between becoming “Benchwarmer’s” W.O.W. peanut butter castle inhabitant and a Gameboy Color, Pokemon- dominating “My Life is Bro” subscriber. Depending on the degree of your gamer enthusiasm, it might take anything from a serious bout of gamer rage to prompt your mom to restrict your hours, to trying new experiences (for example, the Class of 2013 actually attending homecoming, rather than a COD marathon) to find yours.