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A stout defence of computer games Nice piece in Wired magazine by Clive Thompson coming to the defence of video games, frequently a target for the culture scolds (“Quake made my boy a killer!”). This gives me the perfect excuse to remind readers of this fine book, Killing Monsters, which shows the beneficial side of playing such games for children’s development. Come to think of it, children – and not just boys – have played rough-house games since the dawn of time, so I do not quite see how computer games represent a major step towards cultural depravity. As a boy I played all manner of war games, not to mention staple favourites like chess.
Of course, in the case of chess, there are other considerations.
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Of course it is absurd to claim that people playing shoot-em-ups causes them to go and shoot people in real life (although the fact that such a claim is absurd does not stop some people from making it).
A related claim is about role playing.
Supposdely getting involved in a “fantasy world” is evil, and leads to people doing all sorts of nasty things in the real world.
Again this is absurd, although it has not stopped some defence lawyers trying to convince young criminals (who have never played a role playing game in their lives) to pretend that role playing corrupted them, or drove them mad (or whatever).
Role players (of whom I was one – and still would be if I could, it is geography not my advanced age that prevents me from being one), tend to try and play the brave and honouable people that they wish they were in real life. Although, of course, there is also the matter of trying to explore other cultures and walks of life.
However, even people who play evil folk do not rush out and rape and kill other real people.
Indeed, like many hobbies, role playing allows people a chance to share an interest and activity with other people.
It is the young (or non young) person with no interests and no hobby activites who is likely to get involved in crime.
The real damage that computer games do to children is reflected in their dwindling attention spans. Children today crave sensory stimulus – visual and aural – as an essential element of their entertainment. To be sure, loud, bombastic music and MTV-style action films have done their part in this; but video games are especially addictive and time-consuming. The concentration and imagination required to read anything of moderate difficulty has to be cultivated through experience, and those “muscles” are unlikely to be properly developed in a gaming and internet-obsessed child.
JWK, I am not so sure about that. Some games last for hours, surely a sign that children enjoy engrossing adventures. And a lot of games require the player to come up with their own ideas, rather than passively just read a book.
Of course, some of the current flap about these games is focused on “obese” kids, but then the issue is more about the way in which children are often less free to play outdoors on account of their parents’ fear about crime and so on.
The real damage that computer games do to children is reflected in their dwindling attention spans.
That was happening a LONG time before computer games came to be I’m afraid. The ‘ten second attention span’ concept was being touted around in the late 1970’s, as I recall, as a reason for diminishing GCE grades; of course the answer then was the introduction of the GCSE and all that that entailed.
As for ‘Some games last for hours, surely a sign that children enjoy engrossing adventures’, sorry but (and I bow to the true expert on this, one P De Havilland) children are not the ones who play games through like that. Most kids get an hour or so into a game and then dump it – its just as easy to then go and trade it with Game.com for another one or with a friend than to stick with the game. The people who play games right through tend to be much older – often in the 31-44 age gap or higher. Take a look at Valve’s stats on Halflife 2 Episode 1 and notice the drop off time; also bear in mind that this is a computer game and not available on consoles yet.
All generalistations are false. Including this one.
Most children is the killer phrase. (My eldest played both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess to completion, the latter being over forty hours of play, and well worth the investment. He says.)
Sticking with a game isn’t neccesarily a good thing. Same as with a book. You know, 98% of everything is rubbish. Why 31-44 year olds plod through many modern dirges of RPGs is beyond me. Put on the deathmatch map cycle of Quake 2 and gather the office into the fray is a lot more fun.
Julian,
Kids do play games like that. I did, lots of kids I was at school with did, my wife’s ten year old cousin does. Paul is right to bring up the “escape into a fantasy world” thing. That is important for kids including this 33 year old one. It fires the imagination, stirs the senses and you learn Goddamit! It beats the hell out of a copy of “Treasure Island” and a crystal radio.
Computer games are the one true, original and new art-form of the late twentieh century. I wouldn’t trade the old Atari game for all the contemporary art in the world.
Link
JWK, I have been playing video games since the tender age of 7, I have also been reading what many would consider to be ‘difficult’ books since about that age (I read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant at 9, Plato at 10, The Dune Cycle at 11, etc, etc.) I am now 29 and spend a large proportion of my time in front of a computer and reading books (and looking after my son). I have never killed anyone, nor have I stolen any cars, neither have I mugged old ladies. If your generalisation were true I would be a degenerate, illiterate prison dweller, and I’m not.
Video games are a scapegoat for bad parenting and bad education. Just as Rock’n’Roll was in the fifties, Free Love in the Sixties, Role Playing Games in the seventies, and Video Nasties in the eighties. Every generation of parents will find something that their children enjoy doing, but which they don’t quite understand, to blame for their mistakes in bringing their kids up. These days its video games, in another 10 years it’ll be something else. It is the fate of all great art to be misunderstood.
Nick, I agree completely, and as an art-form video games are only going to get better as the medium evolves. We were there at the beginning and that is something special.
Paul, You can play most pen and paper games online these days, but you probably already know this. This(Link) is just one of the many interfaces that are available for playing in small groups over the internet. I’m sure there are many more, alot of them free (that one you have to pay for). Geography is no longer a barrier, telepresence is not just for businesses and lectures.
The real damage that computer games do to children is that they don’t get outdoors and exercise. Real muscles go fallow and nature fades away. I don’t think that is a good thing, even for adults; I spend far too much time at the computer, IMHO.
I play WoW, I am 40, I have a job, a wife, two children and a mortgage. My children both play WoW my wife plays WoW, my kids also play out and are not obese. I have watched my son complete various console games that required some lateral thinking and took many hours to do, Prince of Persia comes to mind. My son does not read books, I cannot understand why, my wife and I read quite a lot, but he will scour the internet and read up on games and I personally feel that this is a good thing, it may get the ‘reading muscles’ as alluded to earlier some needed exercise 🙂
The people who tend to blame ‘computer games’ for kids going bad are merely looking for a way to shift blame from the parents and the kids to some outside agency that they can then regulate.
Later
Gengee
Mandrill – I would keep quiet about reading the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant – Still, being only 9 at the time is some excuse I suppose 😉
On the main subject: Kids have been playing violent fantasy games since way before computer games or even D&D. All we needed were sticks (thinking about it not even sticks were actually necessary) and an agreement as to “goody”, or “baddie”, for hours of fun charging about “killing” each other.
I have yet to take a handgun (no doubt thanks to our munificent Gummint banning them) in to work and slaughter my colleagues, or go postal atop a tall building with a high powered rifle. Though the temptation is sometimes strong 😉
It always struck me as amusing that happy-clappy drones don’t like video games (they are evil) and neither do the PC/nanny/leftoid idiots because they hurt children’s minds.
In fact the former is just annoyed children are not going in for brainwashing at their local church while they other lot are annoyed they are not getting brainwashed by the BBC or other leftie outlet.
Video games are far better for non-atheltically skilled children than going out and getting the s*** kicked out of them by the moron jocks.
Needless to say I was a wargamer/pen & paper rpger and current video gamer. I have never once killed anyone or even tried.
I have no kids, but many of my friends do.
One 10 year old comes round with his dad and plays my games Call of Duty and Soldier of Fortune.
He came top in a history test about WW2 pretty much on the strength of information he had picked up from playing COD .
He is also fond of a world building game I cant remember the name of, which teaches him things like how to trade and forward plan and take calculated risks. Things that at his tender age were never taught to me. I was still playing with Airfix soldiers!
He is also inclined to stop playing and curl up with a book.Current read H G Wells War of the Worlds.
I think the younger generation are turning out fine on the whole.
Like those who clamour to ban Movies and TV programmes that they havent bothered to see, those who get their nickers in a twist about video games are generally people who have never played one !
Or they’d just been humiliated playing Tekken with a ten year old.
Nice one Nick!
Never underestimate the petulant spite of Adults
that didn’t have all these groovy toys when they were kids…
Mandril you are correct in your guess – I am aware of on line role playing.
I suppose role playing for me has too strong connections of sitting round with friends, and those friends are far away (those that are still alive, some being dead).
On the point about exercise that Chuck made.
Not a problem when I was a young roleplayer. I used to walk about five miles a day to and from school and then a bit further in my undergradate days.
I did not walk nearly as much in my postgraduate days – but I put on no weight.
It is age, not roleplaying that has put the weight on me. I know I should walk a minimum of three miles a day if I want to keep the weight off – but I do not often do so.
Of course walking does not much help with the heart (one has to run or othersuch to help the heart), but that sort of exercise has never been a thing with me.
Judging by my diet and lack of exercice I should be in line for a heart attack. I can not say that the prospect upsets me – as long as the heart attack was terminal, rather than leaving me dependent on others.
Part of the dislike of video games and their makers is sheer jealousy. The geeks, nerds and oddbals the jocks and everyone else picked on when they were young are now very successful. They have the nice houses, the hot cars and in some cases the hot babes. Revenge of the nerds indeed.
Andrew Ian Dodge,
Sorry, but not everyone who dislikes video games is an intellectually stunted cave man, and your argument that they’re all jealous is just silly. Smart, athletic, good-looking people tend to do better financially than smart, ugly, nerdy people. Even in the digital age, and a few Bill Gates’ notwithstanding.
Caveat- I’m a computer network engineer, and I am bored to tears by video games. I enjoy some hand-eye coordination games from earlier generations like Tetris and Asteroids. Even those I haven’t played in years.
I don’t hate video games, and I’m certainly not arguing for more government regulation or banning thereof.
As Paul Marks says, it is not the video game that causes people to go out and start a shooting spree. But there is some legitimate cause for concern in terms of how many video games amount to classical operant and behavioral conditioning. Such as immediate reward/punishment feedback cycles that may be incentivizing pathological behavior. And not all video games, (or perhaps even the majority of them any more) have moral lessons to impart, some of them don’t have good guy roles balanced by your buddy temporarily and reluctantly playing the bad guy. Before video games isolated them (and I realize that collaborative online gaming is huge) people who played role playing games had the moral judgment of their friends, and they competed to be the good guy. Everybody wanted to be the cowboys, not the Indians, because the cowboys were the ‘good guys’ and destined to win.
So, should violent video games be banned? No- not only is it intrusive nanny state-ism, but in some circumstances, violence and practice for violence can be beneficial (vanquishing monsters and playing the white knight). Should more people be aware of how video game (and to be fair, movie and TV) violence might be conditioning themselves and their children? Yes. One should consciously choose the influences one allows in ones life.
Before you make up your mind on the issue, read some actual research instead of forming your opinion in a vacuum. I highly recommend Lt Col Dave Grossman, (USA Ret.) as a source- his books “On Combat”, “On Killing”, and “Stop teaching our kids to kill” are worth reading, even if you don’t buy everything he says.
I have avidly played video games since I was a kid, and continue to do so. I believe they have numerous advantages to children’s development, however I think much of this hangs on the child him (or her) self.
In other places I might blindly defend video games, neglecting to make any concessions against them. However, this being a place of fairly intelligent discussion,distinctly lacking in what our American cousins call “soccer moms” and their male counterparts, I can be more balanced without risking giving an overly negative view of these games.
Intelligent children with the necessary hand eye coordination to be successful will gain a lot from games. Stupid children and/or those lacking the dexterity to succeed, may simply sink into a sort of turgid mush of brain melting nothingness – rather like most television these days.
There is also the problems of physical development and of games monopolising a child’s time. Games, requiring no physical excursion, will not aid that aspect of development, so children do need to get out and do other things. As I mentioned above, there is the danger that children will not play games intelligently but instead play casually for cheap kicks and fail to challenge their minds. If this happens, then the game ceases to require any mental exertion, so it becomes the ‘easy’ option. A child can sit and play a game all day and be entertained, without learning anything.
With this in mind, I think it’s important for children to, firstly, play games intelligently (and to play intelligent games in the first place) and also for children to do other things like sports, walking, cycling, playing outside, hunting, fishing etc etc. If this is done, games can be an important and positive part of childhood.
Games are evolving to include physical activity. See this(Link) and this(Link).
The success of the Wii will force other console manufacturers to rethink how people play games.
Thebastidge:
Not so – many children want to be the Indians, if it is a woodland story. Or a story that includes that tracking (whether it is woodland or plains).
Remember most childhood games (of this sort) involve a story.
The honourable Indian is a stock character in many stories (going back centuries), and there are even many films who show him (“this is the first film to show Indians in a positive light” is a marketing trick that goes back at least to the 1930’s and has been used again and again).
Also the “paleface who speaks with forked tongue” is a stock character.
Although the actual term was “hair mouth” (nobody had a “pale face” in the sun of the West, but by the time Hollywood came along Americans had got into the habit of being clean shaven – so “hair mouth” did not make sense).
As for “not teaching our children to kill”.
Well in a world which includes many powers that want to kill or enslave them (radical Islam, the Nazi type regime in China and so on) not teaching “our” (the children do not belong to the state) would seem to be foolish policy.
If the next generation are not tough as nails they are going to be dead – or slaves.
Parents should play their part in trying to help their children be as tough as they can be.
After all (to ignore politics for a bit), school shootings happen because the killers can count on most people at the school being passive victims.
If people are taught “if someone is trying to kill you – take them out by whatever means you need to use” then school shootings would end very fast (and, most likely, never start).
Amusing computer game story – my teenage son plays Runescape, an online role playing game. He sometimes likes to earn “gold” by doing a repetitive (and boring) activity like mining and then selling what he makes to other players.
Once, he was picking flax, spinning it into bowstrings, and selling them. Then he figured out that he could earn money quicker by paying someone else to pick the flax, which he then spun. I think he even got to the point where he had other players doing the picking and the spinning, while his part was to run around making the connections and selling the bowstrings.
Now the funny part. One day, Runescape introduced a new activity for the players, housebuilding. Everybody dropped whatever they were doing to try out the new thing. Unfortunately for my son, this happened right after he had bought hundreds of bowstrings, but before he had lined up a buyer.
To make things even worse, he wanted to try housebuilding but couldn’t because he didn’t have enough money. All his resources were tied up in unsaleable bowstrings. Children, can you say “liquidity crisis?”
Runescape has taught him a few economics lessons in the midst of playing.
“On Combat” is an excellent book and is still worth reading, even if you’re firmly convinced that everything that Grossman says about video games is crap.
For what it’s worth, I actually agree that videogames that condition the player to kill, without moral constraint or consequence, are a huge problem for kids with as-yet undeveloped moral compasses. That’s not an argument IMHO for nanny-state-types to flap their gums, but rather an arguments for parents to get their thumbs out and take an interest in what the kids are doing.
Paul Marks:
I don’t think “stop teaching our kids to kill” is an endorsement of absolute pacifism (to me, a form of cowardice.) Rather, Grossman meant it as “Stop teaching our kids to kill without moral constraints.” As the man makes a career out of teaching cops and soldiers how to train to pull the trigger and deal with the moral and emotional effects of same, I don’t think he would have a problem with the use of force to protect self and others.
I stand corrected Sunfish.
I must confess my ignorance of Lt Col David Grossman’s position (having never read his works).
I jumped to the conclusion that he was one of those exmilitary people the left love to cite (military people who have “seen the light”).
And, as I deserved to for jumping to a conclusion, I find that I have jumped off a cliff.