We come to praise video games, not to shoot 'em up
From The Observer,
Sunday 10 January 2010
Most guides to child development would counsel against
encouraging kids to imagine themselves as mass killers, playing out repetitive fantasies
of butchery to the exclusion of social activity. So it is perhaps peculiar that
society is generally tolerant of video games that achieve just that.
But not all games, or even a majority, fit that description.
And, of course, they are not just played by children. Many require complex
problem-solving techniques and place the user in wholly peaceful scenarios
where they must exercise moral, diplomatic and commercial judgment. As the
writer Tom Chatfield argues in today's Observer, the sophistication of modern
gaming has not had due recognition as a transformative cultural phenomenon.
Games have been well remarked upon as an emerging force in business, rivalling
cinema in the entertainment industry and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs
in the technology sector.
The cultural backlash has also been well aired. An opinion
poll last week highlighted fears that excessive gaming saps children's speech
development. Too much screen time has also been associated with obesity and has
fed into wider cultural laments that children don't get out enough. It is worth
remembering in this context that novels were once presumed to corrupt the
morals of young ladies and that Elvis Presley's hips were deemed obscene.
Civilisation generally survives innovation in entertainment. The under-recognised aspect of gaming is in the conceptual
changes it introduces to the way we get aesthetic thrills. Gamers are the
subjects of the action, not passive observers. They also often interact with
other players. Within some of the vast online gaming environments, players
rehearse different strategies for consensus-building, regulation of competition
and restorative justice. At the very least, this gives social scientists
mountains of data to play with. In the past, revolutions in leisure, driven by new
technology, have catalysed equivalent upheaval in society. The novel, made
possible by mass printing, allowed people to retreat into an interior world of
the imagination. That fed the subjective individualism of Enlightenment
philosophy. Without rock'n'roll on the radio there would have been no 1960s
counterculture.
The virtual gaming experience of today will surely breed
some development with similarly powerful consequences. Too many people are having
too much fun doing something that their great-grandparents could never begin to
comprehend. That, human history teaches, is a recipe for social change on a
revolutionary scale.
[OK, maybe I wouldn’t quite go that far, but I think that
computer games are demonised far more than they should be or need to be. In one
sense they may be solitary activities (but so is reading don’t forget) but they
are interactive, responsive and, more and more these days, reliant on the
co-operation of friends and strangers to complete successfully. They have been
called escapist (again like books, television and movies) as if that is a bad
thing and much worst besides, but I fail to see how they ‘damage’ the people who
play them or the society which produces them in any way. Humans are natural
game players. Computer games are simply a modern manifestation of that trait.
As long as I am able to do so I, for one, will be playing them.]
11 comments:
The next time someone tries to tell me that playing violent video games makes one act violently, I'm going to shoot them in the face. ;-)
I see good and bad in them. I agree that video games have brought the kids inside when they should be out playing and helping their bodies grow. But, I also see how they have helped kids develop their brains and problem solving skills. Some say they interfere with kids developing social skills, but I disagree, I think, in my own son's case, they actually helped him. Through video games he had common ground with his peers, they shared a narrative by playing these games together. Through role playing in these games, he began to understand society's rules, the repercussions when you break those rules. He began to understand human interaction that he struggled with the first 5-6 years of his life. I believe my son has some mild form of Asberger's. I had to teach him how to read faces and understand non-verbal cues, even so, he didn't quite understand how to be a friend, make friends, or the very critical aspect of boys picking on each other and how to deal with that. Through video games, he could get his butt kicked by a "friend" when he did something wrong, without physically getting hurt in the real world. He could then start the game again, not make that same mistake and go further in the game. He translated this to real life. He learned, people can say or do things, make mistakes that hurt you, but that you can start again. You can learn from the mistake and continue on to a new game, a stronger friendship, etc.
I think in my son's case, he learned how to interact in the real world, by safely making his mistakes in the video world. He learned the rules of play, the rules of society from the safety of the video game. Oh he still got in fights, still had disagreements in real life, but he learned how he should behave socially, by playing those roles out first in a video game.
I agree with everything Vancouver Voyeur wrote.
Sometimes those video game skills can be life saving.
Boy Saves Sister from Moose Attack with Skills Learned in Warcraft Video Game
Mike, that was awesome! Who knew?
I thought it was a pretty cool story!
Where you at? 5 days and no new post? Unacceptable! ;-)
Agreed.
In the 6 years I've know CK, I can't remember him going this many days without a post. Myself, however ...
Panic over - I'm back!
Whew!
An absence of blogging is not an absence of thinking. It may be hard to believe but, gasp, there is a real world out there that occasionally infringes upon our time.
I'm sure CK donned his superhero suit and was out saving the free world in his absence. :-)
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