Video Games: good hobby or bad hobby

[heathward]

Originally Posted by andyman1970

They are a complete waste of time. Only a bunch of NERDS and overgrown children who can't let go of their adolescence play video games. Not to mention the people who lose their grip on reality and try to live out the game in reality.

i hope you are kidding, because your avatar screams out HUGE NERD. i also see you are a buck rogers fan? you should look in the mirror first before calling any of us a nerd.

i'd like to add that soccer moms all over the world are pledging allegiance to the Wii and claiming that the video games have brought their family back together. still a waste of time?

i know i've posted about this before, but Discover magazine did a large piece about the benefits of video games in an attempt to put all the propoganda and bad karma to rest once and for all. this is not Maxim, or Men's Health, or Sports Illustrated...this is Discover: a scientific publication describing, analyzing, and applying the results of actual research.

A host of new studies suggest that video games build rather than diminish cognitive skills. Research reveals that typical teenage gamers are anything but addlebrained. "We had a hard time finding kids who were bad at school, but good at games."

Complex video games require far more than simple hand-eye coordination. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, the latest installment in a popular Tom Clancy–inspired series, taxes stealth and navigational skills as the player explores huge virtual environments in the guise of an undercover federal agent. To complete the game, you need to think simultaneously on four distinct levels.

1. MANUAL INTERFACE

To control the movements and actions of your on-screen character, you must memorize several dozen distinct button combinations on a video console handset or a PC keyboard. That’s a far cry from the simple jump-or-shoot interfaces of primitive arcade-style games.

2. CHARACTER VIEW

As the game progresses, you take in a shifting landscape of information about the virtual world, such as the sudden appearance of enemies, visual cues that suggest the existence of a puzzle to be solved, and overlaid interface elements that track your character’s health.

3. INTERNALIZED MAP

Most games involve exploring vast worlds as you struggle to learn the rules. You must remember all the twists and turns you’ve made, or you’ll get hopelessly lost. Lose your bearings on this giant ship in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and your character may end up dead.

4. BALANCING ACT

Playing complex games involves juggling multiple objectives, choosing what to prioritize and what to defer. The goals affect decision making on other conceptual levels: which buttons to press, how you interact with other characters, and which areas you choose to explore.

Among all popular media today, video games are unique in their reliance on the regime of competence principle. Movies or television shows don’t start out with simple dialogue or narrative structures and steadily build in complexity depending on the aptitude of individual viewers. Books don’t pause midchapter to confirm that their readers’ vocabularies have progressed enough to move on to more complicated words. By contrast, the training structure of video games dates back to the very origins of the medium; even Pong got more challenging as a player’s skills improved. Moreover, only a fraction of today’s games involve explicit violence, and sexual content is a rarity. But the regime of competence is everywhere.