Are you a video game addict, The New York Times asks?
In response to “Just One More Game: Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games'”
Somewhere, there is a yellowing photograph of me wearing a jersey featuring Smurfette playing at a Ms Pac Man video game machine: the kind that took quarters. It was 1982.
The hardware was all clunky and simple, and it was marvelous. No one before us had even seen a VCR, and then suddenly within a few years there were video arcades, and MTV, and home computing. This was the era of Bill Gates proclaiming that 64K ought to be enough for anyone, and all of us nodding in stunned agreement.
The graphics of our first games weren’t sophisticated, and neither were the premises. The most violent game I played was one very much like Angry Birds, called Potty Pigeon, for the Commodore 64. More recently, I have gotten sucked into video games that simulated work: making efficient stacks of odd shapes, keeping electronic animals fed. I can be lulled like the other electronic sheep.
The sorts of uber-violent games marketed to kids more recently, especially to boys, are a different kind of electronic animal. I am especially cynical about first-person shooter games.
The military seems to like these kids playing video games. It makes it easier to teach them how to use the military’s software.
Consider the T-shirt in the image above Exhibit A on the normalization of video game use. It reads: “Computer games don’t affect kids, I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive music.”
This is why my generation never amounted to anything. Slackers.
Finally, since I am leaning on the internet for my arguments against video culture, here is what Jon Stewart has to say about how useful video game violence is, and to whom:
“Maybe we should always show pictures. Bin Laden, pictures of our wounded service people, pictures of maimed innocent civilians. We can only make decisions about war if we see what war actually is—and not as a video game where bodies quickly disappear leaving behind a shiny gold coin.” (Source: The Crazy Left.)
First-person shooter games are not very good training for infantry tactics by any stretch of the imagination. I doubt they recruit very many young men into volunteering for the military. That connection is pretty weak. BUT, if you ask the Air Force about training people to fly Predator drones, you’ll hear a lot about how young people today are playing around with skills that translate pretty well into military applications. The Air Force would never say that it’s exactly like playing a video game, but they would admit there are many similarities. The sanitization of war and desensitization towards casualties… Read more »
Am bemused between the linkage between video games and the needs of the military. There is no evidence in reputable studies which links the playing of video games with increases in real life violence.
This posting is the most underwhelming I have seen as part of the Good Men Project. Fail
This is basically just a poorly constructed rant hating on the gaming industry. If you’d actually bothered to read research, you’d see that the jury is almost definitely still out for whether violent video games affect children. Some studies have found a correlation, and others have not, but it sure does make a good media flogging pole. Violent media has been around for a very long time, what is more important is the maturity to deal with it. Video games are not primarily made for children any more, and I would definitely argue that these particular games (Left 4 Dead… Read more »
The sorts of uber-violent games marketed to kids more recently, especially to boys, are a different kind of electronic animal. I am especially cynical about first-person shooter games. When it comes to the human factor of war there are two titles that scare me quite a bit. Metal Gear Solid – The Metal Gear series has mostly centered around a giant mech weapon that is capable of launching missiles several thousand miles undetected (unlike a ballistic missile the Metal Gear is basically a giant rail gun that launches payload like a catapult, therefore making it much harder to track). Also… Read more »
The Metal Gear series has actually always had a strongly anti-war message, to the point of arguably being hamhanded at times. And even more specifically, the message that the technology of war becoming more and more advanced does not mean that war is becoming any less terrible.
So, here you claim:
1) That the military “likes” kids playing certain video games
2) That your entire generation “never amounted to anything”
Do you have actual evidence for any of this? These are pretty serious claims. I’m reasonably sure I’ve met doctors and researchers who are part of “your generation” so I’m really curious about what people were supposed to amount to.
Similarly, I don’t ever recall seeing the military coming out in favor of video games, do you have a source for this?