MMOG pervasiveness and reading of games

There is a post in tiltfactor that provides a review of a book On Deep History and the Brain written by Daniel Lord Smail (New York Times review of the book is here) from the perspective of videogames and human paranoia. Excerpt from the post:

" Last month’s Harvard Alumni Magazine explains:
“In eighteenth-century Europe, Smail points out, the list of addictive substances to be used with caution included books. With the rise of the novel and the spread of literacy, a new fear of ‘Reading mania’ gripped the populace. He quotes one scholar’s account that young women were seen as particularly vulnerable, because they might ‘grow addicted to the pleasures induced by novels…have their passions awakened, and form false expectations about life.”

If similar sexist fears persisted today, we might expect girls to be the leading consumers of games… and they aren’t. The numbers are about even actually. Seems we’ve been wrong about these things before, so what do you think? Are games psychotropic? Should we care? I think they are, but I’m not sure I can tell anyone what to do about it.

It would seem that humans (male and female alike) have learned how to cope with the addictive qualities of the novel. Perhaps fears of addiction are misplaced when applied to all media. Or, maybe our biological “passions” are more intensely evoked by digital media. Are video games drawing more vulnerable consumers into escapism while the novel is left in more steady hands? ”

Inventions that revolutionize how people communicate, socialize, work and play bring about changes to the brain structures and afford people the ability to do things in ways previous generation find too much cognitive load. These affordances lead to different ways of being in this world, and previous generation frowned in dismay and concern of these developments because the new practices not only look different and did not conform to the usual norms, they challenged old ways of being into extinction. So in this light, the paranoia is understandable.

Print (paper) media generation have brain structures different from generations where mass media are predominantly radio and television. And now where digital media technology has become the natural landscape for us, we find ourselves a generation that is totally different, not only in our brain structures but our very ways of being is this world are unique to us. How we work, play and enjoy our leisure are poles apart to how generations before us carry on with their lives.

Silverstone (1999) in his book Why We Study Media argues that MMOG is mass media and he points to the convergence of play and media when he says, “play is the core activity of everyday life […] we can see media as being sites for play, both in their text, and in the responses those texts engender […] We play on the net, downloading games, role-taking, role-making with other players, players not known to us, except through the characteristics they take, as allies and opponents in electronic space. Play masters and mistresses in virtual dungeons” (p. 60). Silverstone’s argument underscores the fact that play in MMOG is an integral part of our daily life and can be both playful and productive.

How is reading a book or watching a movie or television series for past generations different to play MMOG for us today? How integral is reading a book or watching a movie to daily life for past generations? I am sure technology was not so developed then to allow these leisure activities to become so pervasive in daily life. Such activities would have definitely their own, in Huizinga’s words, magic circle i.e. their separate sphere and time that are distinct from daily routines. Technology affords MMOGs to be so pervasive and form an integral part of our life. How would this make our reading of MMOG be different to how people read book or movies in the past? Would pervasiveness and being integral to our life impact our reading of MMOG and what meaning take from it? If true, I wonder how is this so?