Video Games Are Good For You
There has been a lot of protesting with the release of the new Grand Theft Auto IV. The media has really jumped on the idea that the game is bad for the people who play them. It’s nice to see an article that says the opposite:
Here’s how one video game addict describes the benefits he has received from playing World of Warcraft:
I’ve developed confidence; a lack of fear about entering difficult situations; I’ve enhanced my presentation skills and debating. Then there are more subtle things: judging people’s intentions from conversations, learning to tell people what they want to hear. I am certainly more manipulative, more Machiavellian. I love being in charge of a group of people, leading them to succeed in a task.
Adam Martin, from NCSoft, explains further:
“Computer games teach, and people don’t even notice they’re being taught. They’re having too much fun. I think the next big change will come from the use of video games in education. A large part of the addictiveness of games does come from the fact that as you play you are noticeably getting ‘better,’ learning or improving your reflexes, or mastering a set of challenges. But humanity’s larger understanding of the world comes primarily through interaction and experimentation, through answering the question ‘what if?’ Games excel at teaching this too.”
All of these articles miss the biggest issue. Video games are like any other entertainment. Just like a movie, book or television show, they can be a shared experience. Even though I’m playing a game in Utah, I’m having a similar experience as a different person in another part of the world. Video games have become part of our collective unconscious and not experiencing them can make you as much of an outsider as the kind of person who never watches television or refuses to read the classics.