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Mainstream Press Still Needs Help With Games
Just when things seemed to be looking up, we have two prime examples of poor reporting on the gaming hobby. Chris Kohler, via a Game|Life blog post, points out an ABC report entitled Health Alert: Pulling the plug on Videogames. They list the dangers to your health that gaming can cause (excessive blinking, of course) and include a handly list of things to do besides game. Like 'Learn to change the oil or a tire on a car'. Meanwhile, the Jacksonville Daily News reports on those massively multiplayer thingies. From that article: "Anderson is one of an unknown number of individuals who split their time between the reality most inhabit and the virtual realities conjured by Internet role-playing game designers whose dreamscapes have become increasingly engrossing and even addictive."
They are an older generation who uses computers to word process and spreadsheet, if that. The newer generation of press, and media proffessionals know the lingo, know the basics and know how to report on these. Its not hard, its just similar to your parents, you wouldnt expect them to understand :)
Maybe they need to focus upon MMO addictions inplace of 'learning how to change your oil instead', and trying to say that computer games and MMO's specfically are a bad thing.
$15 a month is a lot cheaper, and a lot more safe than roaming the streets and doing drugs or being an alchy!
I hate to break it to you, but the mainstream press needs help with everything. As anyone who's ever dealt with them can tell you, they tend to run into a situation with their preconceptions firmly in place. They'll use up hours of your time just to get a badly worded sound-bite rather than any useful information. They'll leave, print your sound-bite, and still be as wrong as they were when you were first trying to explain it to them.
:-/
For a perfect example of this, dig up the old "Google has confirmed a web based OpenOffice!" Any idiot who had listened to the broadcast would know that Sun and Google merely annouced a bundling deal. Yet the press was convinced, so they printed it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
there are a ton of things your children can be doing instead of playing video games. Fun and exciting things like changing the oil in your car or changing your vehicle's tires. Of course my 9 year old daughter has been struggling with the hydraulic jack, but in the long run it'll be good for her health.
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. -Indira Gandhi
In other news, the Fox network has announced a new reality show. It will feature professional gamer Fatality as he plots to murder people in the highschool gym, with hundreds of spectators in the stands.
"I'm a Laver, not a Phyto[plankton]"
Or did I miss a D&D makeover, somewhere?
/rolls a 6
VOTE!
'Learn to change the oil or a tire on a car'
But what about the negative health effects of getting oil in my eyes, breathing exhaust fumes, or dropping the tire on my foot!?!?!
Ban violent game sales to minors. This will drive the game industry "underground", where it can churn out much more interesting titles without fear of censors. Small developers and collaborative open-source games will thrive, and maybe we can get some of these kids on board to actually develop what they play. Many of the amazing game mods were created by young people with too much free time on their hands.
Minors will get their hands on these games one way or another.
While it's clear that many members of the media don't grasp basic computer concepts beyond using Windows/MacOS for web surfing and office applications, this has very little to do with their ignorance of the gaming community and games as an entertainment medium.
This is all about ratings. If they ran a story that took a fair and balanced look at gaming and its pros and cons, nobody would pay attention. Gamers wouldn't pay attention because they understand it, anti-game advocates wouldn't like it because it didn't share their irrational bias, and the average viewer/reader wouldn't care because they wouldn't feel it was relevant or interesting. But if they run a sensational story about how games *might* be dangerous to *some* people who have *other problems* that are aggravated by excessive, obsessive gaming, people pay attention, the get ratings, and advertisers give them more money.
The public are the ones who need help. Help the people, you help the media. This applies to just about everything: Schools? Fix the parents, you fix the education problems. Environmental concerns? Get the people to care, corporations will follow the money and give the people what they want.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Non-gamers will never understand gamers and will always think that games are a waste of time. I have a friend who has said that she feels like she is wasting time when she plays games and would rather watch tv...because she can get more done......seriously she thinks that...so we'll just have to remember that just as other people think we don't make any sense playing games we'll continue to think they are retarded.
Mr. T carries a postage stamp in his wallet at all times on the back is a list of all the fools he doesn't pity
Whenever you despair over politics, or the news, or video game legislation, remember this:
People die. Usually as they get older. They are replaced by younger people.
At some point most of the government, the media, the police, etc. will be from your generation. There will probably be a president that has played Super Mario Brothers, or World of Warcraft.
Whatever videogames are "doing to our kids", they have already done to us, and we're not exactly helpless.
If you'd like to worry about something long-term, think about this: the population of China is almost a quarter of the world's population. India and China combined is over a third of the world's population. In the grand scheme of things, our petty concerns over here have almost nothing to do with the state of the world.
See, I tried that. I stood in my driveway for like, geez, 30 minutes yelling "LFG change oil or tire" and the people in my neighborhood just kept shouting "shutup n00b" at me. I eventually gave up and went back to playing video games.
Slackware
While I agree that journalism has it out for video games (and porn, and gambling, and...), those aren't the only things that they have trouble with. In fact, there are a lot of other things that should be understood first in journalism, before understanding video games.
Let's start with little subjects, like Politics, fact-checking, and real news.
Then we'll worry about video games.
No no, that should read "collaborating with peers and then stabbing them in the back."
Another remnant of the paper-and-dice role-playing games that preceded the online incarnations is the free-form nature of the game, which allows players to deviate from plotlines.
Wait, deviation from plotlines? If you can deviate from the "plot" at all, it was fluid and probably not very important to begin with.
And when they do emerge from their self-imposed exile, most speak a language in which English words are interspersed with endless strands of indecipherable online jargon.
Apparently we speak in tongues.
While cloistering oneself up in the computer room for 30 hours a week may seem anti-social
And we're all addicts.
And no matter how long work and home keep him from his computer, Anderson's fellow gamers are always ready to bring him back into the fold for a few hours of orc-stabbin, sith-slayin', crime-stoppin' fun.
All in one game? Sign me up!
I play video games and I know how to change the oil and tires on a car.
Next.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
If "every hour a child spends in front of their console or TV doubles their risk of obesity", how come the stereotypical "gamer" is a skinny teenager instead of a 500lb slug? If you spend (only) an hour a day playing video games, doesn't that logic imply that by the end of the week, they are 128x more likely to be fat?
where i can go to complain about this? I dont feel like talking to anyone in person, and I dont know how to drive.
We went through this before with D&D. Nothing new here, move along...
The "CBS" article is not surprisingly really from a local news organization under the CBS umbrella. "Reporting" such as this show why there is never any reason to watch the local news outside of sports and maybe the weather if you like to pretend they can make good predictions.
....
It's all fear-mongering and inane chatter. Instead of mindlessly sitting on the couch watching reports of violence and learning more ways that I will soon die, I will do one of the following activities:
1. Play video games.
2. Go running.
3. Enjoy electronic interactive entertainment.
4. Transport body at a greater rate than typical walking.
5. React to stimuli on a viewing device with hand and digit movements on a mechanism that then controls activity occurring on viewing device.
6. Move body without assistance of vehicle from origin to a mid-point and back to origin in a manner that requires both feet to occasionally leave the ground.
7.
I change tires and oil all the time in my NASCAR RPG!! :-)
It is evident that the article didn't go through any proofreading or editorial process before it was published. Heck, I've seen better proofreading done by Microsoft Word (Hiss!).
It is not suprising that there was no by-line on the article; anyone with any self respect left would fear being found out and laughed at.
It is not a big leap to go from "lack of proofreading" to "lack of any critical examination at all".
Videogames also don't have to be socially isolating - regular MMORPG players certainly have more active social interaction than kids who spend all their time reading or watching TV...
I play Nerd-Folk!
...and even addictive
O' RLY?
-- All Gods were immortal.
-- S. Lem
Any Matrix nerds get a slight grin when the second article was talking about Mr.Anderson spending his time in a virtual world?
Oh, these "are" the signs?
Every hour doubles it? My risk of obesity must be almost infinity!
I dont see what was bad about the second article.
I mean perhaps im missing something but the majority seems to have a very favorable view of the MMO thing. It briefly talks about some issues with extremists, and thats true, there are wacko's out there who take it too far.
The first article was a little more unbalanced seemed to be all doom and gloom. Its psychological stuff is something that has bounced back and forth and there is currently no indication that games are any worse than TV and such. It seems to claim they are for a fact. Though ultimately its conclusion was that about an hour of gaming a day for children is enough. I dont really see the problem with that either.
All I could think of was "Holy CRAP that's a lotta blinkin'!" :)
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.