Unless
they live in a home with thumb-twitching teenagers, many adults haven't
fully comprehended the significance of these games. For a generation of
people, games have become a tool for solving problems as well as a
vehicle for self-expression and self-exploration. Video games are as
woven into this generation's lives as
television
was into that of their predecessors.
For
example, according
to several surveys, the percentage of American college students who say
they've played video games is 100. On campuses today you'd
sooner find a short-tailed tree frog taking calculus than an undergrad
who's never fired up
Myst, Grand Theft Auto,
or
Sim
City.
As two
Carnegie Mellon University professors write, "We routinely
poll our students on their experience with the media, and typically we
cannot
find a
single movie that all fifty students in the course have seen (only
about a third have usually seen
Casablanca,
for
instance). However, we typically find at least one video game that every
student has played, like
Super Mario Brothers.'
Some
people—many of them members of my own forty something
geezer set—tend to despair over such information, fearing that each
minute spent wielding a joystick represents a step backward for
individual intelligence and social progress. But that attitude
misunderstands the power of these games. In fact, John Paul Gee, a professor
at the University of Wisconsin and author
of
What Video Games
Have to Teach Us
About Learning and Literacy,
argues
that games can be
the ultimate learning machine. "[Video games) operate
with—that is, they build into their designs and encourage—good
principles of learning, principles that are better than those in many of
our skill-and-drill,
back-to-basics, test-them-until-they-drop schools."
That's
why so many people buy video games, and then spend fifty to one hundred
hours mastering them, roughly the length of a college semester. As Gee
writes, "The fact is when kids play video games they can
experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they're
in the classroom. Learning isn't about memorizing isolated
facts. It's about connecting and manipulating them."
Indeed, a
growing stack of research is showing that playing video
games can
sharpen many of the skills that are vital in the Conceptual
Age. For instance, an important 2003 study in the journal
Nature
found an
array of benefits to playing video games. On tests of visual
perception, game players scored 30 percent higher than nonplayers.
Playing video games enhanced individuals' ability to detect changes in
the environment and their capacity to process information
simultaneously.
Even
doctors can benefit from a little time at the GameCube. One study found
that physicians "who spent at least three hours a week playing video
games made about 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery and
performed the task 27 percent faster than their counterparts who did not
play." Another study even found that playing video
games at
work can boost productivity and enhance job satisfaction.
Therefore, you must understand video games. Seriously. You must. So if
you don't know a joystick from a jelly roll, spend some time getting up
to speed on games played on computers, online, and on special de-vices
such as Game Boys and PlayStations. Ask your kid. Ask your neighbor's
kid. Or
go
into an electronics store such as Best Buy, where the games are usually
on display, and ask for a demo.
You won't
regret it. And you may even become hooked. At the very least,
you'll begin to understand the powerful new grammar, narrative pattern,
and thinking style these games are teaching. For added nuance about this
world, page through any of the many gaming magazines now available.
(Look for them near the games in that electronics store.) And
investigate the following Web sites, which offer smart primers and some
snippets of cool games.
Game Spot—A comprehensive gaming site—one of the best around. (More
info: www.gamespot.com)
Game Talk—An online community for garners. (More info:
www.garnetalk.com)
Game Zone—Another comprehensive gaming site with news and reviews for
games on every platform. (More info: www.gamezone.com)
Newsgamng--Operating at the boundary of gaming and political commentary,
this site offers games based on current events. (More info: www.
newsgaming. corn)
Open Directory Project, Video Games—A massive list of just about every
good gaming site and online game on the Web. (More info: dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/full-index.html)
There—This site bills itself as an ' online getaway." You become a
character—and then hang out with other players on a nifty islandlike
setting. This might not ultimately be your cup of tea, but the free
trial is worth exploring to get a sense of what role-playing games are
like. (More info: www.there.com)
Wireless Gaming Review—This site is a great source of information about
wireless gaming—games you can play on your cell phone and on other
wireless devices. Lots of free downloads, too. (More info: www. wgamer.
com)
Women Garners—The Internet's largest portal for women gamers, this site
features the usual reviews and product announcements as well as great
information about industry trends. (More info: www.womengamers.com)
Yahoo! Games—A good introduction to online games, this site al-lows you
to play everything from backgammon to canasta to Toki Toki Boom with
people around the world. (More info: games.yahoo.com/)
Play Right-Brain Games: Two new wireless games are specifically designed
to test and enhance R-Directed abilities:
Tecmo's Right Brain Game features 12 activities that measure whether
you're right-brain dominant or left-brain dominant. (more info:
www.tecmogames.com )
Right Brain Paradise, which purports to be perhaps “the most
brain-stimulating mobile game ever created” moves you through nine
increasingly difficult levels that test the capacity of your brain’s
right hemisphere (more info:
www.bluelavawireless.com )
Creativity
requires spending time "doing nothing" - workaholism guarantees its
death
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