Discover Magazine for JULY 2005 Your Brain on Video Games:
Could They Actually be Good for You?
by Steven
Johnson
DiscoverJuly 2005 Article
Discover(letters)
This piece argues through various studies how games
improve your abilities in ways which are usually considered the province
of some other activity such as learning or surviving.
Professor James Gee is quoted as saying, "...video games externalize how the mind works."
Perhaps this is the beginning of a new understanding of life. But thls won't happen until the conventlon that games are dangerously addictive ls abandoned and people realize that games and their
addictions are all that keep us all alive.
Computer and Video Games Nourish Life
Many people who think of themselves
adults will waste their lives selfishly trying to make a better
world. Those people and others who proclaim a superior vantage point
often announce video games to be a waste of time, never seeing more
than what the standard western-world propaganda allows. They never
see that even if video games are being deliberately made to lull the
masses into accepting the way the world is, these games are not
better or worse than what the world is in itself, as an occupation.
Computer and video games are a reality that, in themselves, are worth
pursuing for themselves.
I personally enjoy strategy games which take
months to complete and cause me great stress along the way. I may be
letting myself be physically damaged, but as
long as I choose to do them of my own volition they are no better or worse
then life as a whole. Though at times one type of occupation will be better for me than the
other, I can decide what to do next. The point is you can play in the
video game or outside of it -- whatever is most valuable to you -- and
enjoy.
Geoffrey Hamilton July, 2003