Video games. Arguably they are one of, if not the single, favorite past time of mine. I remember back when I was 4 and 5 playing games such as the original Super Mario Bros. 1,2 and 3 on the original NES. When my dad was reassigned to a duty station in Hawaii, our NES was damaged in the move. My parents replaced it with a Sega Genesis. I've played Kings Quest 5-8 on the PC. I own, presently, an Xbox 360 with 120 gig harddrive, purchased back when the black Xbox was a new release onto the market. A few months ago I upgraded my computer, building one for the first time. I spent more money (after mail-in and immediate rebates) on my graphics card than I did on the processor (which is not to say I bought a sub-par processor), ensuring that I could play Skyrim in all its glory. I even recently took on a position of lead in-game moderator for a new public Minecraft server. I devote more than 70% of my free time to playing games.
Naturally when someone decries games as terrible, devil sent, or a bad influence on a person, I get a tad bit upset. How can games really be that bad if I turned out well? Am I an exception or am I the rule?
For the first few posts in this blog I intend to look into the effects games have on people. What effects do, or can, video games have on a person? Can games have a positive effect or are the detractors opinions accurate that games are inherently evil? Personally I believe games can offer a variety of positive effects. I recall that athletes, football players in particular, were training hand-eye coordination with video games. I can't deny, though, that games could have a negative effect on a person. But as the single source that opponents would say they are, I argue against. I sincerely doubt that any negative effect a game could produce in a person could not also be produced by being subjected to violent movies, television, music, or even literature.
Detractors often argue that we should "think of the children!" when unilaterally declaring games to be evil. So I'll be inquiring as to whether any effects are age-based. Are younger children more likely to be influenced? Are young-adults (I'm thinking early 20's and up here) immune?
For anyone who wants to follow along with, and maybe even do their own inquires or offer contributions, I'll be starting at Wikipedia. Yes, I know that Wiki is considered untrustworthy, especially from an academic stand point. However I find that it happens to be the single perfect place to start a search for information, more so even than Google. While the content of the article may be edited by anyone, a well written and important article is monitored to ensure accuracy whenever revisions are made. But more importantly, a well written article cites sources. Wikipedia will show me the opening s to the avenues of research I will drive down.
As for Wikipedia, we will be discussing it as a "credible" source (or not) next week. You are welcome to begin your search there, BUT later when you write the research essay, I will expect more specific sources, not general encyclopedias.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the positive aspects of games, I remember seeing a segment on the Colbert Report about this. I did a quick Google search and the name Jane McGonigal came up. Among other things, she's written a book called "Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World." She seems to be a respected voice in this conversation, so you might look up her work.
As a mom of a super gamer from the time he could hold a controller, I have to say that gaming made my son a better person. As a youngster he did learn extraordinary hand-eye coordination, and as a teen, all those violent games, made for an excellent outlet for his teen angst frustrations. And as for all those hours spent in the house playing games? Well, he wasn't out causing a ruckus in the neighborhood, or getting in with a bad crowd of kids, or getting arrested for something stupid because he was bored, or worse, getting peer-pressured into doing dangerous drugs, or getting some girl pregnant. Instead he was inside his own head, and learning strategy, and compassion for saving entire worlds, rescuing people and aliens alike, building entire civilizations, and economies. Yes, he had friends. Online friends and real friends. And lots of them the world over. Being a gamer did not make him anti-social, in fact, he is quite the opposite. A super-social. And while he is no extrovert, he still loves to meet new people, and go new places and investigate the world. Not two weeks after his 18th birthday, he had no qualms whatsoever about travelling by train across the country for an entire week by himself. Where was he going? To meet up with some online friends he'd known for years, for the first time - at a gamer convention. :)
ReplyDeleteThis will be an interesting topic to cover! Recently I had a human development class where the topic of discussion was the effect media had on children and violence. For class we watched a video by Albert Bandura of children and their response to a video they watched in which a model would beat up a bobo doll. These children were then left in a room by themselves with the doll and their actions were recorded. While this is not quite like them playing video games that are very violent I think that it is similar and may help you with your research!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0iWpSNu3NU