And, played on these powerful machines, the games are also more realistic, and therefore potentially more addictive. New technologies and cheaper computer horsepower mean that multimedia games often appeal to adults as much as children. At some companies, there is no debate. Once games are discovered, they're dumped in the electronic equivalent of the garbage can. Turn your back, some bosses believe, and everyone from executives to clerks will play computer games.
Some people say they get more satisfaction from games than their jobs.
It's whatever you make of it. It can be used for education, but many people are using it to goof off. Simply banning computer games, however, isn't going to produce a dramatic gain in productivity, according to Sabine Helmers, an anthropologist at the Social Science Centre in Berlin who is studying computers in the workplace. In any case, game playing is often a fad that runs its course quickly. Using such arguments, many companies with laid-back management styles justify game playing.