Online Games
We all know the feeling, 4pm on a boring day in the office and you want to do anything but work. Enter online games. They are the perfect antidote to boredom, with bright color and flashy graphics, online games drag you away from the desk and into whatever realm your game inhabits. Whilst not exactly what you should be doing at work, playing a quick flash game can’t really hurt anyone. Or can it? Recent reports from within industry are claiming that the number of people wasting time at work through online games is reaching epidemic proportions. It is claimed that billions of dollars worth of man hours are being wasted every year through people being distracted, sometimes for hours at a time by online games.
Indeed, companies are responding to the threat of online games to their workplace in a number of ways. Many offices now block certain sites which exist to provide online games in an attempt to stop people playing games by simply blocking access. However, it is impossible to block every games site and if someone wants to play online games, they’ll find a way of doing it. Another attempted solution has been to explicitly monitor employees’ web traffic. This certainly tends to dissuade people from spending time playing online games however it is such an invasion to people’s privacy that many companies are unwilling to take this step to stop the gamers among their staff. As a result the only thing that really limits people playing games online is their personal guilt and the knowledge they do actually have to do a certain amount of work otherwise they’ll be fired!
However, for students this pang of guilt is often missing and as a result they continue to be one of the biggest users of online games. With hours spent online which were meant to be spent researching the temptation to go and play online games is often just too strong. At schools, websites offering games are often just outright banned with blocking software to strictly control pupils browsing habits and stopping those playing online games. At university however such restrictions rarely apply and so students often tend to play online games an awful lot.
So, despite online games having been around for years now, the novelty appears not to have worn off yet. Online games continue to effect productivity in the office and in the classroom with no real sign of letting up. With new types of games and new designs coming out all the time, there will always new reasons to play, and more online games to get into and waste time on. So, it is fair to say time wasting on online games won’t stop any time soon but perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Maybe taking a couple of minutes out each day to relax and distress is a good idea but I suppose that’s a decision for the boss!