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Playing Games Seen as Brainless Hobby?
Richard Goodness writes "Recently I watched Simon Bysshe's film Modern Day Gamer. The film is a natural springboard for some talk of the shared experience of videogames and the legitimization of gaming as a form of entertainment. Therefore, in '2 Legit 2 Save and Quit,' I come to some conclusions." A good article, with some excellent points. I took this to heart, but I see a weekly D&D session with friends as being akin to a weekly poker game but with less financial repercussions, unless one counts all the books needed.
Brainless??? I play Ragnarok Online. You know how much thought has to go into being a merchant. It's like the stock market or something. You gotta price low enough to undercut competition yet sell high enough to make money.
Should be used in moderation. Is eating chocolate bad? No. Is eating a pound of chocolate a day bad? Yes. What I'm trying to say is that there is nothing wrong with video games, or tv, for that matter, if used in moderation. But if you watch, or play, videogames/tv for 3 hours straight, I can't necessarily say that's good for you. I do think, though, that online games have more "interaction" then any other form of digitalized entertainment. And they are a great way to unwind at the end of the day.
If we are talking about brainless hobby, watching TV is much more brainless than playing games. How many people have fallen asleep playing a computer game (we are not talking about extreme circumstances where gamers have stayed up 72 consecutive hours playing an RPG). I have countless times falling asleep casually in front of the TV -- I must have not used the brain very much to achieve that. Afterall, slightly more intellectual games (adventure games, puzzle games, and even flight simulators) requires sound judgment and quick thinking.
The fact that people who 1)grew up before video games went mainstream 2)are socially closed to games and 3)have never played games - don't like games shouldn't matter to people as much as this article proves it does.
Look at your culture, man! The fact that we're embracing interactive entertainment instead of passive narrative is something to be proud of. The people who tell you your feelings are not valid, the people who tell you that you are wasting your time, the people who don't view video games as a form of artistic expression DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. Literally, honestly, they wouldn't know Grand Theft Auto from Super Mario Brothers. Stop worrying about it, and talk to your peers, not the establishment.
People who disparage video games are simply painting an unflattering picture of themselves in the books in tomorrow.
Warning! The link to the 2 legit article above attempts to install something from IE Plugin LTD, a spyware program which, amongst other things, tracks your surfing habits, pops up advertisements, and opens a backdoor for future program updates. Their terms can be found here.
If this is not just a fluke page served up by allrpg's advertising company, please remove the above article. Such behavior is not acceptable in a public forum. Companies should not abuse Slashdot as a way of sliming spyware onto people's computers.
Now I need to give this computer a bath.
The ______ Agenda
AllRPG.com doesn't control their advertising, they don't have the income to afford their own server. Their network, Gamesquad Network, is in control of it, and since the hosting is free (with the exception that they're required to surrender their advertising rights) they can't help it. If you're gonna blame anyone for spyware downloads, go to GameSquad Network, but don't blame AllRPG for taking the server hosting they can get.
I'm inclinded to think that it's women who are the most vocal about games being "anti-social"... at least, that's how it's been in my life.
My girlfriend doesn't like it either... because it takes time away from HER... and she's much happier being passive and watching TV like a mindless sheep, rather than having to use her brain to play a game!
When she wants to though, she can play a mean game of Mario Kart.... but before long it bores her.... so...
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I think that anyone who would say "video games are mindless entertainment" obviously does not understand enough about games to make such a judgment. That said, games run the whole spectrum from purely mindless entertainment to extremely though provoking.
Lets start out with an example, two games that I play alot are Kolf and KBounce, both are relativily simple and quite mindless games. These are games that I play during commercials on TV if i'm watching a show, during a lul in the conversation when i'm on the phone, while i'm waiting for a huge file to compile, or any other time when I just want some small distraction while I wait on something. These games are really mindless.
Lets look at another game that I play quite a bit. Soul Caliber II. This is a game that combines quick reflexes with strategy to defeat an opponent. It's not chess but it will keep you thinking, especially when you are playing against a human opponent, who's tactics are not quite as predictable as the computers.
Now for a third game, Neverwinter Nights. Since it's hard for my friends and I to get together and play D&D like we used too, usually a couple nights a week we will fire up Neverwinter Nights and play a DMed quest. This game definitly involves heavy thinking. Not only are there puzzles to be solved and tactics to be developed, but you must also manage inventory, remember to play in character, keep track of your health, spells/special abilities, the status of your party. If you are the DM for that particular game things get even more complicated as you have to have interesting and realistic in character text for NPCs, keep the flow of the story going etc.
Now, lets look at what non-gamers see when the look at each of these games:
Kolf and KBounce - a bunch of clicking
Soul Caliber II - pressing buttons and beating eachother up.
Neverwinter Nights - clicking on monsters and IMing your friends (remeber to someone who has never played D&D there is no challenge to playing in character, in fact few of them probably even realise there is such a thing as in character)
The thing is, most people have played solitaire (pretty brainless), or have played those brainless games on Pogo or the click the box game or whatever. Those are brainless games for (mostly) brainless people. When these people look at other games being played, they do not realize the though requied and associate the difficult level as being the same as the games they play. One has to realize that it is difficult to "see" thinking.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
People who criticize video games are hypocrites -- every single one of them. They would never DARE to level a complaint against any of the other trite, meaningless forms of entertainment.
It's ironic that women are the first ones to criticize video games. Conventional forms of entertainment (film, TV, literature, music, etc) don't allow any kind of social interaction -- something women are unusually fond of. Video games, on the other hand, do. Most games support multiplayer, in-game chat, emoticons, etc. Why aren't girls all over this? I'm surprised they aren't the primary consumers of video games.
We've come a long way since the inanity of Pong (face it, it didn't expand your mind at all)
I daresay that, among those whose first introduction to games was Pong, there were many who could not previously grasp the concept of being able to control the actions of something on a TV screen by pressing buttons. So I'd have to disagree with your assertation - maybe Pong didn't have riveting social commentary, but it did expand people's minds.
That's the whole point. Just because video games are entertainment, doesn't mean that they're devoid of valuable cultural expression. There are video games that speak to their players just as profoundly as Casablanca, Beethoven's Ninth, or Catcher in the Rye.
Video game, ultimately, are superior to all known forms of entertainment, because of the vastly greater subjectivity that video games permit. A novel is a simple, static thing, with predigested emotions and experiences. A video game is dynamic, and can be as much an expression of yourself as it is of the creators. The experience is your own, the emotions are your own.