Combating exaggerations with more exaggerations #5

In our class discussion today, many students felt like video games are not as constructive as the article made us believe; I believe they are correct. There were a lot of assumptions in the article, and the author did a terrible job of presenting both sides of the debate. To me, it seemed more of an advertisement for the games that she was developing, rather than tackling a prominent issue in our society. Even within in her own debate, her logic seems to clash.

In the Ted talks, for the first 5 to 10 minutes of the presentation, she explains how people need to continue playing video games. However, she soon acts like we need to fix those gamers, developing world problem solvers. If there was nothing wrong with their habits and addictions, why would we need to change them? If playing video games promotes skills that lead us to change the world, then there is no problem. To me, it seems like she doesn't believe that commercial video games are all that constructive, but she doesn't want to step on gamers toes. Instead, she chose to patronize gamers, presenting faulty logic.

Along with a shaky premise, her idea for constructive games is idealistic at best. Algorithms of codes construct video games that several software developers produce. Unless you are hacking into the code of the video game, it is impossible to "think outside of the box", since the software developers have already established boundaries to the game. In order to believe that gamers could solve world problems with these games, you would have to assume that the game developers could develop a software that exceeds their knowledge. If you have experience with coding, you know that this spells out disaster. Developing a game that can exceed it's own coding potential doesn't make sense.

All of this comes down to one big problem; combating exaggerations with more exaggerations. People that are against gaming throw out tons of "bloated" material that may or may not true. Although this is the case, it is not necessary to treat video games as the savior of our world in order to combat irrational accusations. With that beings said, advocates of video games are not the own guilty party of this type of behavior. After I left class today, I saw a sign that read, "Broadband internet will save the world". Hyperboles, such as this, are not doing anyone any favors. Aristotle's theory of moderation could not be more applicable.

-Derek Miller