Reading over Sam Anderson’s article about stupid games, I
feel pretty guilty playing them. It is very time-consuming trying to achieve a
high score on the leaderboards or reaching the next level. There is a something
that I want to point out, which is that in video games, like in all media,
there are stupid things and quality things. Video games, like books and movies,
have the potential to tell an excellent story.
Examples of games with excellent stories are Heavy Rain, Red Dead
Redemption, and Metal Gear Solid. Both games and books help me to learn new
things. My time as a gamer has expand my vocabulary, increase my capacity to
reason through puzzles and riddles, and to be immersed in a new world. Video
games encourage me to learn about new topics.
Most of what I’ve learned about the Renaissance came from playing
Assassin’s Creed 2. When you feel very passionate about something, you tend to
want to learn more about it and video games are a stepping stone for that. I’ve
read reports of ninety year olds who play their Nintendo DS to fight Dementia
and Alzheimer’s with outstanding results. Still, video games are blamed for
many of society’s problems.
Why do gamers get such a bad rep?
We are all portrayed as lazy, uneducated losers. Whenever there is a shooting
massacre, video games are used as the scapegoat. Unexpected acts of violence
have occurred way before the emergence of video games. Look at Elizabeth
Bathory and Emperor Nero. Would you use video games to justify what they have
done? When a psychopath guns down people at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and
Colorado , the media blames games for training these murderers to kill. Even our politicians like Hillary Clinton
want to ban games for this reason. What makes movies and television any
different? When I read the Bible, I realize how much sex and violence is filled
in it. They don’t censor radical radio
jockeys like Rush Limbaugh. If we can tolerate Communists, white supremacists,
and neo-Nazis, then surely we can tolerate video games. I blame ignorant people
who criticize things without facts to support their argument. What makes
playing a simple game so bad?
Most types of media are now connected to one another. The game called Game of Thrones is based on the television show. There are many video games that are based on movies such as Up, Spider-man, Ratatouille, and Men in Black. The list goes on and on. It is surprising to hear that a video game based on a movie does significantly worse than its movie counterpart. This shows that people judge video games, movies, and books by different criteria. This is plausible since they are different forms of story-telling. However, the line between the three are becoming blurred. The only difference is that one is in text, one is in motion-picture, and one is playable. A video game can be argued to take the place of both a book and a movie. A video game has both moving pictures and a rich lore. The work that goes into a video game rivals those of books and movies. I agree with you that singling out video games is the wrong thing to do.
ReplyDeleteAs stupid and pointless the games are they can easily get addicting. When you play a quick game for the first time you tend to get a low score and your inner gamer drives you to keep on playing until you get a higher score. Next thing you know you are addicted to the game. I can tell you this from past experiences.
ReplyDeleteAs stupid and pointless the games are they can easily get addicting. When you play a quick game for the first time you tend to get a low score and your inner gamer drives you to keep on playing until you get a higher score. Next thing you know you are addicted to the game. I can tell you this from past experiences.
ReplyDelete