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Cranky Editorials About Videogames
GamePolitics has a roundup of some game-related weekend editorials. Some of them are awful cranky and not terribly well thought-out. From the Peoria Journal-Star: "Many of my college students... seem to be less familiar with books than earlier generations. In part, you can blame the influence of video games in pre-teens' lives. If the choice is 'Moby Dick' or Playstation, I think we know which one a kid will pick... In other words, good writing means good salaries. Think about that the next time you choose between taking your kid to the video store or the library..." Another piece rails against the Columbine videogame, while papers in Louisiana are duking it out over the recently passed videogame legislation.
"If the choice is 'Moby Dick' or Playstation, I think we know which one a kid will pick"
When I was a kid in the 70s they said the same thing about television. (Jesus, don't people remember that? God, I'm not THAT old!) My grandmother told me once that they said the same thing about radio when she was a kid. So what did they blame before radio? I'd imagine it was wanting to play outside instead of reading. Hint: many kids don't like reading all that much, especially ponderous books like Moby Dick
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
That the kid would pick up the video game, for a number of reasons. Our society is too "traditionalist" as a whole, revering the "classics" while ignoring the quality that's both modern..and thus more relevent, that's under our noses.
As well, reading is much too passive an activity. It encourages mental passiveness, instead of being aware and engaged in our surroundings.
Finally, the reason why people read the "canon", is so that they'd have something to discuss with their peers during less important moments. It's a way to connect with those around us. Video Games, natch, pop culture as a whole serves the same purpose in the modern world.
I can believe this is a problem. (A coworker was recently ranting about someone who regularly sends her lengthy emails where the only vowels are the 'o's in 'lol'.) But IM, chatrooms and blogs seem like more likely culprits than games.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If the choice is 'Moby Dick' or pick-up a game of baseball, I think we know which one a kid will pick.
If the choice is 'Moby Dick' or going out on the lake for a day on a friend's boat, I think we know which one a kid will pick.
If the choice is 'Moby Dick' or hanging out at the local Denny's, I think we know which one a kid will pick.
If the choice is 'Moby Dick' or mowing the lawn with the blunt edge of a butter knife, I think we know which one a kid will pick.
Seriously. If we're going to bemoan the fact that kids generally tend to prefer leisure activities to poring over the great classics of Western literature, we could at least pick something that most kids might actually enjoy reading, like Shakespeare (Serial regi-patri-fratricide? Poison-tipped swords? Mass slaughter? Hot chicks? Rawk!)
But Moby Dick--well, what teen wouldn't be utterly enthralled by a several-hundred-page long account of the finer points of the early American whaler's life and amateur deck-pacing?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Not to be redundant, but I'd pick just about anything over Moby Dick.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I think (and will not substantiate with evidence, as is customary on this Internet thing) that the biggest problem with arguments like those mentioned in TFA is purpose and perspective. It has long been the case that the previous generation doesn't understand the current or next generation simply because they somehow forget that just a few years back it was they who were misunderstand by their previous generation. Age tends to lock us into our own perspectives, and we forget to look for others. I for one have always hated reading the "classics" because they lack relevance and tend to contain language that was long lost - yet society seems to have continued without "thee" "thy" etc.
I remember in senior English in high school reading passages from Beowulf, then trying to read the original text (in English, but in Old or Middle English). I wonder if the people in those times felt the youngsters were too radical and forgetting their heritage. Language is meant to allow for communication between people and cultures (and times, really). So long as we're able to communicate, and do so effectively, we're good.
That said, I think the more important dilemna is not youth's rejection of classical education for video games, but the lack of communication that exists between many youth and their parents/grandparents/etc. In most cases, it's not the youth's fault.
Just because people like to play games, so what. Yes, the internet and gaming has changed people's ways of thinking and writing, etc... but for the most part, it's for the better... you have more stream of conciousness types thinking things through like you get with people brainstorm, an activity that a lot of people didn't used to do so much a long time ago before the world was wired. Part of that comes from thinking faster, reacting quicker, learning how to work around problems and situations quickly, stuff that is essential in video games and online in chatrooms and stuff like that. Interaction is also a side effect of video games and the internet. Books make people go to their imaginations, solitarily, sort of like tv does - it's a one way communicator... you are being told what to think and what conclusions to come too, doesn't matter how many channels you have on tv or how many books you have on the library shelves, you can't talk back to tv or to the book or traditional tv... throw in video games that have some element of real world conflict and problem solving, or some internet stuff where communications can go too ways, and you have a lot more going on and it's better in a lot of ways than having someone sit in a room by themselves meandering over their own thoughts slowly, as those thoughts are being driven by words on a page. Yes, video games, and internet may not make people spell properly or capitlize words the right way, but who made up the rules for that stuff anyways? It's all made up rules that came about over the course of many years and decades... rules change, and should. People don't always use fully grammatically correct English in everyday spoken conversation, why would they online? Why should they obey such conservative rules that really don't help communicate the real meaning of what's being said all that much all the time anyways? Is "I'm very jovially pleased with your comments" really all that different from LOL?
Because the kids of 20 years ago were all about reading some Moby Dick.
Cranky editorials about the cranky editorials about video games!
Reading books like "The Golden Bough" or "Animal Farm" or any of those dusty old books by old, dead white men just encourages mental laziness - you're sitting there, reading words without any kind of interaction on your own. Also it reinforces eurocentric patriarchical values, which is bad.
Compared to Gran Tourismo 3, where you're mentally actively engaged in racing a really fast car or Donkey Konga, where you're using your powers of mental thinking to their utmost to make an ape jump and run using conga drums, reading some dumb book just so you can talk to people and look smart about knowing some old junk is plain stupid.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I was hoping for a return of Cranky Steve's Haunted Whorehouse map reviews. :mad:
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Is basically Moby Dick. There's some fucking Charles Dickens in there, too. It's a god damn literary bonanza!
So, my point:
Tell these fuck-muffin editorial "authors" to crank up WoK, and shut the fuck up while it's playing so their kid can get learned. Crank up the 6th movie (Undiscovered Country) and he'll be ready for a god damn degree in English Literature and Roman History. Print out an article on the Dewey Decimal, and he'll have an MBA in Library Science.
These fucking parents just aren't motivated enough to do any of this. They just want to sit around and wank about the Government not doing it's job. wtf?
Today games, yesterday TV, before that radio, before that it was the "bad books". And I'm quite sure that what we call the "classics" today were the "bad books" of their generation.
Yes, the language of our kids changes. For the better or worse, who're we to determine that? Looking back 200 years you'll see that the language was laboured, ponderous, loaded with terms and phrases that feel awkward to us today. Yet, if you spoke like we do today back then, you might have been called "simple" and "unrefined", because you use most likely fewer words to express what you want to say, and you do not try to create word constructs that make your listener doze away.
Language is ever evolving. And while I'm not really fond of the "OMG d00dZ!!!1!!1111" we find in chatrooms more often than people able to create sensible English sentences (non-native speakers are exempted from the requirement), they don't represent the language spoken. They are a minority (even though one that we, as computer users and most likely also chatroom users, tend to meet fairly often).
Don't worry. They won't write books, so our generation will not be judged by them by future generations.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ok, random thoughts on each of the articles referenced by TFA:
The Columbine game: this is one of those times when, even as a fairly straightforward, no compromises, advocate of free-speech, I wish I didn't find myself on the same side as some of these nutcases. Yes, yes, it's their right to say it and yes, I'll defend it. I seriously wish I didn't have to, though. I feel the same way about Rockstar sometimes. Their games rock in terms of the core gameplay (even if they have started recycling of late), they've reinvented several genres several times and if they want to make a game in which you dig up and rape the corpses of the grandmothers of assorted members of congress, then it is their right to do so. But for god's sake, guys, could you not grow up a little? Would make all of our lives so much easier and not make me feel... well... soiled, whenever I have to defend video-games against the latest loud-mouthed office bore.
On games resulting in poor literacy: this article's slightly better than the snippets in both the summary and TFA. I've worked (briefly) in a school and there's no denying that standards of literacy are hideous today. Is the growth of the games industry a factor? Possibly. There's certainly an extra level of distraction that has resulted from the easy availability of games. However, I think this is missing the point a bit. The primary responsibility for ensuring a child's literacy is split between parents and schools and there are too many cases where both of these fail. I strongly suspect that many of the teachers complaining about videog games are themselves part of the problem. If they would stop chasing after the latest politically correct, culturally sensitive educational paradigm and start actually teaching kids how to write - including incentivising failure and penalising failure - then they might find that school-leavers would suddenly be able to string two words together in print again.
And the Louisiana thing: Oh for god's sake, have these people nothing better to do? They know the law is unconstitutional and will, after much time, effort and expense, be struck down. Is there not a case for prosecution here, on the grounds of misappropriation of public funds?
I have a BA in English. I can remember a few of my classmates who were a semester ahead of me in credits, and ended up in a Senior Seminar course with one of the most respected and well-liked professors of the English department (with good reason, he is an excellent professor). Unfortunately, for both him and the students, he chose Moby Dick as the subject for this seminar course. I never heard so many students turn on a good professor so quickly, and look so dejected and defeated after class every day.
Pick something a little more upbeat and of interest than Moby Dick, please.
P.S. - Even with an English degree, I still very much DESPISE the classics.
As a bored teenager many years ago I decided to read Moby Dick simply because it is considered a classic (and I wanted to know what the big deal was) {as a bonus, Picard kept making several references to it too}.
While it was quite slow in places, I did enjoy the book. But I sence that my reaction to it might be unique.
Am I the only person who thought it was (mostly) Very Funny?
Disclaimer: yes there are some very somber parts, and humor was not the "all-encompassing" point to the book. Lest we forget the real moral to the story either.
But, damn I was Laughing out Loud at several parts of the story. My mom would ask "What's so funny?" My reply of "Moby Dick", would only cause her to give me an odd look.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
This is just people failing to understand. I read some, a long time ago, but it is not the main attributing factor to my college and professional success. I think that computers, video games and in many cases television can produce children who are intelligent and still become successful in a variety of fields.
The people I know who read the most are English and Lib arts majors. Now, this could just be the people I know, but I am doing better (money wise) as a recent graduate (about 2 yrs) engineer then some of them who have been out of school much, much longer. So reading != success by any measure.
One day maybe I will figure out what we are suppose to do with our kids. If they stay inside to much and sit around they get fat and lazy, and last I checked reading a book does not equal exercise. If we let them run around and play all day they do not read, so they may be fit but will be dumb as rocks. Seriously, people need to stop generalizing and creating some sort of super child, who is fit, smart, and actually understands science and math (and computers) beyond what little may have ever read. Some people are going to be smart and become the scientist and engineers. Others will become thinkers and educators and turn to, well, teaching and philosophy or writing. Some become great athletes and entertainers, even if they are as dumb as rocks. For those that fall into other categories, I suppose you could call them failures, but remember, we still need people to do the jobs that others do not want to do. So you will always have some people who underachieve (or don't achieve at all) throughout life, and it just has to be accepted.
BTW, Moby Dick is really not a pre-teen book. I would put it late high school or college because it requires a sort of analytical analysis that you only get in later years of literature courses.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Is THAT what they're calling the Columbine video game?
What's next? Eric and Dylan Superstar Saga?
If you want to get a kid to get interested in Moby Dick, give Moby Dick a +5 thunder harpoon and put steel armor on the whale. Put all of that into a FPS where all the shipmates have RPG's, and an army of pelicans dive bomb the boat while a gigantic squid tries to overturn it, and you have sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads!
Now I'd play THAT!!!!!!!
If you want to get a kid to read about Moby Dick...maybe get that kid to read something more interesting first. Maybe Tom Sawyer. Maybe even a comic book. Go to a PTA meeting and tell his or her teachers to get some quality reading material in the classrooms.
Is that like that thing in Sims 2 that you choose Study, College, Read from?
If so, they make to many piles on the floor, like dishes.
I think I'll just watch TV and learn cooking skill instead, thanks!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
People who care about learning, history, etc. will eventually tire of as much video gaming/tv/etc and turn to books. As for everyone else, let them have fun, tv, games or otherwise. After all, plenty of people read The Da Vinci Code and were dense enough to think that it was fact or something, I don't even know where to start with that, but reading books doesn't mean you must be a genius.
stuff |
By the way, don't bother pointing out my lack of civility. I never claimed to be succeeding any better than you. Your best bet would be to combine big-sounding words in a big-sounding way in order to talk about something of which you have actually no knowledge.
Sometimes we'd have class discussion. Since most of the reading fell in to the above category, we'd do the discussion without reading. There's an art to to asking questions about something you haven't read and aren't "prepared" for. We dropped the ball once, he went down the rows asking if everyone had done the reading. Less than half the class answered yes, then he turned around and gave us writing assignment.
Other than "Negroes", which word do you prefer to use to describe people of sub-Saharan African descent without regard to their nationality? "African-American" does not apply to word-that-you-prefer-to-"Negroes" living in Europe, and whether it applies to word-that-you-prefer-to-"Negroes" living in Canada or Mexico is debatable.
if you can't get past that point, I'm not surprised you hate the classics- they all take a refined reader to understand and appreciate.
The trouble is that curriculum designers expect high school students, whose brains' emotion centers are not yet fully developed, to already be "refined" as you define it. Being forced by the school system to pretend to appreciate college or grad school level themes while in high school is enough to turn a student off from reading fiction.
Moby Dick despite it's ponderous nature is definately worth reading so that one can truly appreciate the masterpiece that is Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan.
"To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee." - Herman Melville (and Khan)
Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
A coworker was recently ranting about someone who regularly sends her lengthy emails where the only vowels are the 'o's in 'lol'.
G crrspnd wth smbdy frm Isr'l or th Arb wrld. Thy us evn fwr vwls bcs thr ordnry wrtng sstm skps mn vwls. It svs spc, dsn't it?
(Go correspond with somebody from Israel or the Arab world. They use even fewer vowels because their ordinary writing system skips many vowels. It saves space, doesn't it?)
Beowulf was pretty bad ass. I mean he held his breath for like a month looking for Grendel in that lake.
Either that, or he was bad ass in the MacGyver sense, by building an underwater breathing apparatus.
Shakespeare, of course, does a good job of getting its point across
The problem here being that too many high school curricula that include William Shakespeare's plays present six of his plays, all tragedies (namely Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, the Scottish play, Othello, King Lear, and Hamlet), leaving the comedies and histories completely out of the picture.
(Nit: English of AD 1600 is not "Old English". It's early modern English.)
One of the best reasons to familiarize oneself with the classics (and I don't know why people keep putting that word in quotes; they are still defined as classics, regardless of one person's opinion as to their value) is to understand all the references from them which make up a great deal of popular culture. More often than not, a modern book, tv show, movie, or video game that is attempting to make a remotely serious point will employ a reference to something from classical literature, from the Bible all the way to 1984. As a somewhat overdone example, see the video game 'Deus Ex'; sure it is possible to understand it on a basic level without reading Chesterton, Locke, Voltaire, etc. but if you have, you discover the game has a great deal more depth than was first apparent.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Plus being introduced to Shakespeare by reading is completely the wrong approach. Oh sure the language can be analysed to the n'th degree - and there's lots to learn in there - but to 'get' Shakespeare you need to be introduced to it live from a good company to pick up the visceral punch. Too many people are introduced to him by wading through the prose for weeks before seeing a first play from an indifferent company.
We took our 12 year old daughter to see Macbeth for her first, by a good professional company. We gave her a quick 2-minute outline of the plot before she saw it and then dropped her in iat the deep end. Verdict: that was scary! (but good).
PKD was a drug-addict speed-freak. He kept himself hopped up on amphetamines so that he could crank out the words to keep bread in his pocket. Your holding him up as a paragon of literary merit is like calling Charles Dickens a great writer.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We actually read Comedy of Errors and Much Ado About Nothing in HS, so we got a good selection and Shakespeare experience.
Counter-nit: I said "the old english," not "the Old English." I can understand the confusion.
Correlation != Causation
Zonk referring to a videogame editorial as "not terribly well thought out."
Oh, that's rich!
>>a several-hundred-page long account of the finer points of the early American whaler's life and amateur deck-pacing?
If that's all you got out of the story, then you have my sympathy. I suspect you were simply trying to be funny, but Moby Dick is one of the finest works in English literature. It is excellent and rich; hardly a 500 page story about deck-pacing.
For those who have not read it, Moby Dick is a story about how the single-minded need for revenge, fueled by hatred, can grow to consume both the hunted and the hunter. It is a warning about the dangers of human emotion, especially anger, and contains a remarkable subtale concerning loyalty, honor and friendship; it is a serious and cautionary story about obsession and emotion. But it has big words, and big ideas, and requires patience and consideration to read and time to reflect upon. For those reasons it may not be suitable for everyone.
For those, I recommend Bugs Bunny or the Three Stooges, or maybe Treasure Isle.
Black en español es negro. Volvemos a la área primera.
Black in Spanish is negro. We go back to square one.
For this exact same reason, many white people find the word 'gringo' offensive but don't object at all to being called 'white'.
"Paragon of literary merit"? I dunno, depends on who you compare him to. Compared to Melville, Dickens, and Dostoevsky, well sure, he's a paragon. What do the amphetamines have to do with anything, though? Judge the writing on its own merits. PKD's writing was original, edgy for the time, often thought-provoking, enjoyable. I don't like all of his stuff blindly, but I'd definitely say he holds up against many of the "classics", about whom you could say the same thing as far as their indulging of the popular drug of the time goes.
The great thinkers have a name for your conjecture: false dichotomy.
As my friend, Stephen Colbert, succinctly puts it, "I've never been a fan of books. I don't trust them. They're all fact, no heart."
One reason they stick mainly to the tragedies is because the comedies are "dirty"... We can't have High School children reading a play with sex and potty humor... Same thing gets done to Chaucer...
Personally... if you want "classics" that the kids may like to read, and will probably enjoy... I would lean towards Bradbury (short stories only... his novels are usually meh... IMHO), Chandler, Lewis (Don't tell me the Screwtape Letters isn't an interesting piece of literature), Dumas, and Hammett... If you're just looking for good books to get kids interested in reading... you've got Pratchett, Gaiman (children's books ONLY... unless you want to explain some very strange concepts...), Heinlein (Same as Gaiman), Card, Rowling, Lewis, L'Engle, and Asprin... (In no order other then what popped into my head...)
I know, after teaching my neice to read... and letting her have access to my library (with my supervision of what books were picked up... ten year olds should not be reading American Gods... unless they're your kids, in which case, let 'em at it...) she started trying to pilfer more books all the time... and started branching into books herself that looked good/interesting to her...
Getting kids to read is sort of like being a drug dealer... you just need to get them hooked... then once they've got the monkey on their back, just leave those classics you want them to read sitting around... eventually... they'll be out of books, and needing a fix... and they'll pick it up, and start reading it...
Nephilium
Goodness without wisdom always accomplished evil. -- Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land*applause*
I couldn't have said it better!
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Not only that, but what exactly makes one piece of literature better than the other? I'm a voracious reader, and I consume books only a daily to weekly basis. That being the case, I'm still not a fan of Moby Dick or even most Shakespear. I'm also a big fan of modern sci-fi and fantasy, but I'm not really a huge fan of Tolkien in comparison to some of the recent authors, though I do appreciate his value in a historic sense.
Take the above and substitute "Moby Dick" or even "Shakespeare" for their modern counterparts of "Harry Potter" or perhaps "Narnia" (ok, not so modern since I read that one as a kid, but it is getting a rehash and good marketing lately).
As per your point: many kids do, or would, enjoy reading. However, making them read books created in decades (or centuries) past replete with outdated forms of the language adding additional difficulty just doesn't work. Perhaps if more english-professor types encouraged reading amoungst a choose of good books, rather than reading what *they* think are good books, it would help.
On the other hand, some rather dull books are more useful for their underlying themes. Certain authors such as Orwell aren't that useful in regards to their books' appeal to young minds, but rather due to the lessons and/or socio-political connotations of their works.
But again, as you said, Moby Dick. Classic, yes. Interesting, no.