The Summer 2006 issue of The Wilson Quarterly includes a long think piece by me on video games. I was having trouble summing up the article, which includes some discussion of the "serious games" movement, a brief look at the history of video games, and quite a bit of analysis and history of the "games are teachers" argument popularized in Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good for You. Fortunately, the magazine's editors did the job quite nicely for me on the table of contents: "Video games aren't for adolescent geeks anymore--if they ever were. Now they're powerful teaching tools, for better and for worse."
Although I'm basically sanguine-to-neutral on the long-term effects of video games on society, I'm particularly interested in what people think about my riff on the "for worse" part of the equation. I'll give away part of my conclusion here:
Shorter Wilson Quarterly: "The important thing to find out about video games isn't whether they are teachers. 'The question is,' as game designer Raph Koster writes in A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004), 'what do they teach?' ...
"Whether you find the content of video games inoffensive or grotesque, their structure teaches players that the best course of action is always to accept the system and work to succeed within it. 'Games do not permit innovation,' Koster writes. 'They present a pattern. Innovating out of a pattern is by definition outside the magic circle. You don't get to change the physics of a game.' Nor, when a computer is the referee, do you get to challenge the rules or to argue about their merits. That isn't to say that there aren't ways to innovate from within the system. Gamers are famous for coming up with creative approaches to the problems a game presents. But devising a new, unexpected strategy to succeed under the existing rules isn't the same thing as proposing new rules, new systems, new patterns.
"Our video game brains, trained on success machines, may be undergoing a Mr. Universe workout, one that leaves us stronger but less flexible."
The article isn't online, so head to your newsstand of choice (even in Kansas) and plunk down your $6.95 for the hard copy to read the rest of it. Alternatively, you could save gas money by mailing the magazine an $8 check.
Recycled video-game stories: The War on Terror's lamest video games; Madden: Sports' new arbiter of cool.
Just finished your article "Are Video Games Evil?" in the Summer 2006 Wilson's Quarterly, and was looking for the online link. I'm sending the link to my longtime gaming buddies (a mixture of ages, with board gamers, video gamers and role players) and hoping to promote some insightful discussion from them.
But, as I've found you, let me say I found your article intriguing. I was also extremely impressed by the surprising (and likely very accurate) conclusion on what seemed an almost tangential thread at the start.
As a longtime paper/board gamer who started with the earliest computer games, I've been torn on what the last ten years of video games REALLY teach.
As all good trainers know, games of any sort are always excellent vehicles to convey information. But we are also aware all games teach at a multitude of levels. Thus I found your conclusion chilling and thought provoking.
However, I would also like to ask, as gamers we frequently 'game the system' - learning to 'win' by playing the loopholes in the game/system rather than playing as 'designed.' I generally find that's the lesson most gamers will take to heart - even if it obscures the intended message the game was meant to convey.
Is my experience not the norm? If you do agree, does it still fit with your premise, or in any way mitigate your conclusion?
Also, the issue many might have expected you to face head on in this article - does violence in video games teach violence? Or more to the point, does the violence in video games inure players to violence? – is not really answered, is it? I realize there is not necessarily a difinitive answer, but what are your thoughts? I am assuming you held that out in an effort to keep a lid on the length of the article and not cloud your main point. But with the space afforded by your blog, would you care to expand on that theme? I'd enjoy reading your thoughts on that, since video games are not my primary method of gaming.
Either way, thank you again for an excellent and insightful article.
Russ Gifford
Posted by: Russell Gifford | October 05, 2006 at 08:15 PM