Video Games (was Re: (TFT) back from the olympics)

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

At 15:23 -0400 3/27/10, David wrote:
> Healthier than video games?  That's if you buy into the rhetoric that
> violent conflict inside of a video game is un-healthy.
>
> I've been playing video games, of all sorts, for the past 29 years. 
> It's my hobby - my devotion - my passion - and my career.   So far, I
> have not become a crazed homicidal maniac, or exhibited any kind of
> antisocial tendencies whatsoever - I've never been in jail for violence,
> hell, I don't even know how to really fight very well.
>
> So, when I see sweeping generalizations like this, it makes me wonder
> what sort of evidence you are using to back up the notion that violence
> in video games is unhealthy.

	David's right, I made a sweeping generalization. I think it's 
fair to say that almost *no* statement could fairly be applied to 
"video games" in general, because there is such an incredibly wide 
range of them.

	And, I have to point out, there are a lot of games in that 
range that even *I* consider pretty healthy.


	Wii Fit
(well, duh...)

	Dance Dance Revolution (and clones),
...but I have reservations about the sex-centric videos backing a lot 
of the songs. Ok, yeah, I'm a parent....

	The Adventures of Cookie and Cream
You can't get *anywhere* without cooperation. Good teamwork practice.

	Gran Turismo (whole series, I have IV)
*Really* realistic driving simulation. I'd bet a GT4 player who 
suddenly drives onto an icy patch of road is *far* better at 
recovering than your average driver.

	Star Wars Bombad racing
Getting 4 players together, and interacting, is a good thing, I 
think. Similar applies to many 4-player games (Shrek 2, etc.), as 
long as they encourage the people to *talk* to each other and don't 
have deplorable objectives.

	Frequency and Amplitude
Ear rhythm training, musical concepts


	BUT.... I do pretty much buy into the rhetoric (and studies, 
as John pointed out) that indicate that long-term exposure to violent 
images and plots does encourage violent behavior. There are explicit 
links sometimes, but generally speaking this is a statistical thing 
and hard to trend or prove (thankfully, there are not a whole lot of 
data points showing really extreme behavior).

	FWIW, I think the same thing applies to movies and TV; video 
games have what seems like the exacerbating factors that they can go 
on for a *long* time, well into what would normally be sleep-time, 
and that they reward the participant for his or her input. If people 
*can* be trained to commit violent acts, it's a little hard to think 
of a more effective way to do that than some of the games out there 
(Grand Theft Auto springs to mind here). Repetition, hypnotic 
effects, sleep deprivation to remove judgement, reward for (bad) 
behavior - it *sounds* to me like the perfect way to brainwash 
someone into being antisocial.

	Both video games and movies can have what seems to me to be 
the undesirable trait of exciting strong emotions while not providing 
for any physical outlet to express the emotions. That's worthwhile in 
some cases, if the emotions are *positive* ones and the internalized 
message will lead to a happier existence. "Chariots of Fire" is a 
good example here.

	I truly applaud the history teacher John mentioned. Physical 
activity, use of imagination, cooperation, human interaction and 
discussion - perfect! FRP (paper) games like TFT hit on all but the 
physical activity, and even there there's fidgeting, walking around 
the table, grabbing chips or soda, rolling dice, and so on. FRP video 
games generally miss almost all of that. Multi-player (on the same 
console) video games do pick up on the cooperation and vocal 
discussion, but you don't generally have time to really look the 
other player in the eye and try to truly understand him (or her), so 
it loses a lot of the benefit. Multi-player (over the internet) video 
games lose even that. Almost no video game leaves anything for the 
imagination.

	So what I did I mean by the generalization that TFT is 
"healthier"? The reward structure in most video games is very rigid, 
and often it's keyed to how many bad guys you kill (or how 
efficiently you kill them). In TFT, the same is true, *but* there's 
the referee's option to award experience for good play. I try to make 
sure when I referee that a solution that saves lives gets rewarded at 
least as well as one that concentrates on hack-n-slash. Generally, 
video games simplify that option out of existence.

	BTW, I'm really glad David can play video games and keep it 
straight that they are games and not become *anti*-social. I think 
with many games, it's almost impossible not to become *a*-social (in 
other words, the quantity and quality of human interactions suffer in 
proportion to the time spent on the console); at least that has been 
my experience, and I do feel sad for anybody that suffers a serious 
loss of human interaction due to excessive video game (or movie or 
TV) usage. I think that includes a *lot* of people today.

	TFT (and other paper games) don't really trigger intense 
emotions, do allow physical movement, require the use of imagination, 
encourage social interaction *including emotional involvement* with 
the other players, and require cooperation both in planning and 
executing. I think of that as being healthier than video games, by 
and large.

	I do think there are a lot of video games that are, or could 
be, beneficial, as my list above indicates. I have helped organize 
video-gaming sessions for years - it gets all my old high-school 
buddies together, we swap stories and have a great time (lots of 
human interaction) in between turns of SpaceWard Ho! or bouts of 
Marathon. But recently, I've been moving back toward TFT, for the 
reasons above.

--
						- Mark     210-379-4635
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