Anyway, this article on gaming, entitled 'Rage against the machines', provides a few interesting viewpoints about gaming, an activity which has been slammed with far too many negative connotations and far too little credit.
"The best sign that someone's qualified to run an internet startup may not be an MBA degree, but level 70 guild leader status." Is there anything to this? "Absolutely," he says, "but if you tried to argue that within the traditional business market you would get laughed out of the interview."
"In Warcraft I've developed confidence; a lack of fear about entering difficult situations; I've enhanced my presentation skills and debating. Then there are more subtle things: judging people's intentions from conversations, learning to tell people what they want to hear. I am certainly more manipulative, more Machiavellian. I love being in charge of a group of people, leading them to succeed in a task."
On the other side, the Labour MP Keith Vaz responded to news of a reported stabbing in a queue to purchase the game in Croydon by telling the Times that GTA IV "is a violent and nasty game and it doesn't surprise me that some of those who play it behave in this way." Given that the GTA series has to date sold over 70m units worldwide, the fact that "some" players may be violent is hardly a revelation.
Specifically, Greenfield goes on to suggest, the fast-paced, second-hand experiences created by video games and the internet may inculcate a worldview that is less empathetic, more risk-taking and less contemplative than what we tend to think of as healthy. We may see people's mental lives transposed to "the fast-paced, immediate world of screen experience: a world arguably trapped in early childhood, where the infant doesn't yet think metaphorically."
He singles out video games as entertainments that captivate because they are so satisfying to the human brain's desire to learn. It's almost a mirror image of Greenfield's vision. Where she sees an identity-dismantling intoxication, Johnson finds "a cocktail of reward and exploration" born of a desire to play that is active, highly personal, sociable and creative.
These trends embody a familiar but important truth: games are human products, and lie within our control. This doesn't mean we yet control or understand them fully, but it should remind us that there is nothing inevitable or incomprehensible about them. No matter how deeply it may be felt, atavistic fear is an inappropriate response to technology of any kind.
"15 years from now, the prime minister of the day will have grown up playing computer games, just as 15 years ago we had the first prime minister to have grown up watching television, and 30 years ago to have grown up listening to the radio. Times change: accept it; embrace it."
But the doomsayers are right in one important respect. If we do not learn to balance the new worlds we are building with our living culture, we may lose something of ourselves.
haha sounds quite interesting eh? "In Warcraft I've developed confidence; a lack of fear about entering difficult situations; I've enhanced my presentation skills and debating. Then there are more subtle things: judging people's intentions from conversations, learning to tell people what they want to hear. I am certainly more manipulative, more Machiavellian. I love being in charge of a group of people, leading them to succeed in a task."
On the other side, the Labour MP Keith Vaz responded to news of a reported stabbing in a queue to purchase the game in Croydon by telling the Times that GTA IV "is a violent and nasty game and it doesn't surprise me that some of those who play it behave in this way." Given that the GTA series has to date sold over 70m units worldwide, the fact that "some" players may be violent is hardly a revelation.
Specifically, Greenfield goes on to suggest, the fast-paced, second-hand experiences created by video games and the internet may inculcate a worldview that is less empathetic, more risk-taking and less contemplative than what we tend to think of as healthy. We may see people's mental lives transposed to "the fast-paced, immediate world of screen experience: a world arguably trapped in early childhood, where the infant doesn't yet think metaphorically."
He singles out video games as entertainments that captivate because they are so satisfying to the human brain's desire to learn. It's almost a mirror image of Greenfield's vision. Where she sees an identity-dismantling intoxication, Johnson finds "a cocktail of reward and exploration" born of a desire to play that is active, highly personal, sociable and creative.
These trends embody a familiar but important truth: games are human products, and lie within our control. This doesn't mean we yet control or understand them fully, but it should remind us that there is nothing inevitable or incomprehensible about them. No matter how deeply it may be felt, atavistic fear is an inappropriate response to technology of any kind.
"15 years from now, the prime minister of the day will have grown up playing computer games, just as 15 years ago we had the first prime minister to have grown up watching television, and 30 years ago to have grown up listening to the radio. Times change: accept it; embrace it."
But the doomsayers are right in one important respect. If we do not learn to balance the new worlds we are building with our living culture, we may lose something of ourselves.
haha and we've started our housed blog! We're gonna post all our random photos taken together and hopefully it can be a group diary of sorts =)
0 comments:
Post a Comment