Do the cons outweigh the pros in gamers?

In class the other day we discussed the pros of being a gamer and what skills would be developed by becoming a virtuoso in gaming. Things like task orientation and hand-eye-coordination were brought up, but overall it did not really seem like there were too many skills developed through gaming that could not be acquired somewhere else. In my life I have spent enough hours playing games to be considered a virtuoso in video games, but I did not develop any of the skills that we talked about besides a bit of hand-eye-coordination. I think ive gained more of a negative skill set than a positive one. I have become less social due to video games, while playing games i don't talk because the only person I would be talking to would be myself, which would be weird. I also did not really become socially aware of many things, including myself, until my junior year of high school. I also had gained a lot of weight because of my constant playing of video games leading to a sentient life style, which I have lost now but still regret having that happen. All of these things that happened because of video games have led to other negative things happening, as where the positives I got from video games never seemed to cause anything positive to happen. I think that people that are involved in a club that involves something that builds hand-eye-coordination would be better because they get a social experience, have to manage time to attend the meetings, and they also build hand-eye-coordination without doing something that could be harmful to a persons skill set.

Video gaming to solve world problems?

            Jane McGonigal makes the claim that video gaming can change the world.  I found the article “Wii Shall Overcome,” an interesting one without a doubt. But then hearing Jane do a TED talk over this idea had me come out with more questions than more answers.

            I commend Jane McGonigal for coming up with such a bold statement, although I do not necessarily agree with everything she had to say, I do think that this was an approach no one has attempted to make and she made some very valid points.  Video games has been taking over our culture for many years now.  With our generation and the upcoming generations being scolded for spending too much time playing video games, rather than playing and being active outside.  I myself am not a gamer, so my view on this may be a little bias, but listening to Jane in class gave me another perspective.  I think that the overall thought to bring another culture/environment of gamers to help solve world problems has the right idea in mind, in the sense that these people spend ample amount of hours playing video games.  With that being said, why not use that time to shift towards something more productive such as solving a serious issue.  But, I think the reality is that people play video games to escape from reality, separating themselves from the real world and the gaming world, in order to play an alternate persona in an alternate world.  I think that gamers would not be able to separate real life and virtual life.  I think that we would be wasting even more time and more money by attempting to do something like this.

            Ultimately, Jane had an original idea with the best intentions, but I think that at the end of the day it is unrealistic to try and mesh the gaming world with real life, in order to solve major problems. 

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