So when I first joined the site I said to Blokey that I was a writer and intended to write a piece for the site each week. Having joined UUDDLRLR over 3 months ago I suppose this is better late then never. I'll try to write a piece each week and see if it (Hopefully) generates some healthy debate about gaming in general. I don't have any motives for writing other then enjoying a bit of a debate about what I'm writing about. Some of what I write you may not agree with, some of it may sit pretty well with you. Either way contribute and let me know your thoughts.


Gaming is evil!!!????


If you are a reader of certain UK tabloids or US News sites (cough Daily Mail/Express/Fox News) the above title will sit fairly comfortably with you. I'm going to make some other general assumptions about you. That you are middle aged, a middle income earner (Possibly with children) and have never really gotten into 'that gaming malarky' that all the kids go on about. So to you gaming, and everything it entails is the route cause of all social problems, it causes children to go on shooting sprees in schools, makes children more aggressive and is the single biggest reason for the AIDS epidemic (I lied about that last one although don't hold your breath on the GTA 'Hot Coffee' glitch being blamed for that at some point!)


Regardless of the above situation it is an unfortunate reality that there are a significantly large group of people in the media, medical and general public who hold a view which is very close to the above example. There are many reasons for this view of gaming being bad for children. Some of it is blind ignorance, a healthy pinch is general lack of knowledge of the subject of gaming and rather disappointingly some of it appears to be just blind hysteria. Mix all of this together and you have a potent mix which pervades many levels of our society today.


Look in the media each week and the chances are there are either press reports asking for the latest FPS to be banned, 'new' 'groundbreaking research' that shows a link between videogame violence and real life aggressive behaviour in kids or some 'expert' peddling their misguided views on television in order to sell a new book or paper.


As I've said there are plenty of reasons for these reactions but as a gamer I believe that all of this has happened before in other forms of entertainment, what we as gamers are experiencing is nothing new. Granted its not nice to hear your favourite hobby being trashed week in week out by a media who seem intent on getting every avenue of enjoyment closed off to the general public. But we only need look back at the movie industry to see that actually these misguided views are way older then this generation of entertainment.


When movies where in their infancy there was a mixture of excitement and trepidation for what this new form of entertainment would bring to people. Would it allow greater expression, free speech, retelling of stories to new audiences or would it corrupt the very people it was made for? Would books no longer be needed? Would the youth be poisoned? As movie making matured their was the uproar at the first screen kiss, the first nude scene, the first on screen violence and the breaking of 'social taboos' which received criticism from all corners. Who remembers the video nasties of the 1980's? The outcry and threatened banning of Childs Play because of the Jamie Bulger killing? What about the actual banning of movies such as 'Henry - portrait of a serial killer' and the almost banned 'Evil Dead series'? We look at these movies now with a mixture of retro enjoyment and a stunned amazement that such movies could have ever been considered 'nasties'. Compared to what goes on in the world today the sight of Bruce Campbell being attacked by his own hand in the Evil Dead 2 seems almost tragi comedy rather then the type of thing likely to cause children to go ape s*it crazy with a carving knife.


Videogames then are reliving the environment our previous generation grew up in. For us who have grown up with games from their very infancy it is difficult to understand what all the fuss is about. We have lived through Gulf War 1 & 2, the end of the cold war, 9/11 and the 'war on terror'. We see things in the media everyday that sicken us, the stupidity of what one man can do to another is not lost on any of us. We've become hardened to it. But for the previous generation who lived through the swinging 60's and hippy 70's a method of entertainment that can simulate some of what we see around us today is just to much.


Gaming (Although 30 odd years old) is going through the growing pains of late youth right now, and sometimes maturity hurts, but at the end of it you are left with a smarter, more understanding person. So unfortunately for us gamers, we will have to put up with more misunderstood and misguided attacks on our pastime, we'll have to live with doctors telling us that games harm youngsters and see our hobby blamed for the failure of our social, domestic and government groups to do the job they should be doing. But at the end of it gaming will emerge with a better reputation.


These attacks are nothing new and are more down to a misunderstanding of people who unfortunately for us are in the position of being able to contribute to a media that likes to have a reliable victim and the downside for us is that gaming is the victim that keeps on giving.


Consider how often the release of gaming's benefits are reported in the media, or all of the medical research that points to gaming having as much adverse impact on children as their social upbringing. Ulterior motives? Or just biased reporting? I think we all know the answer.


So for now, us gamers will grin and bear it, considering games are due to overtake movies as the biggest form of entertainment this year and that fact that its now a billion dollar industry, its extremely unlikely that we will see censorship on the level that we saw in movie making in the 80's and early 90's. That's not to say there won't be certain taboos we are unlikely to see broken anytime soon (Children in sandbox games for instance is unlikely to go down well with the mob) but by looking at past methods of entertainment and how they matured I see only positive outcomes for our hobby.


Let me know what you think.

Wow... impressed. Very impressed. And totally agreed.

Elvis, Ozzy, nasties, Manson, games... all scapegoats for parents being lazy and governments being too soft.

The ironic thing is that people in various other sectors are looking to how gaming works with keeping players hooked even though they're effectively doing mundane tasks. Achievements, perks, and metaphoric level-ups are all seen as rewarding repetition, even though the tasks may be something boring like photocopying things.

Teachers especially are starting to look at the ways they can reward students in a similar way, either by lowering the difficulty of their homework if the class as a whole does well, or allowing them to choose a particular topic for a quiz later in the week. For classes with a theme of "general studies", pop quizzes are normally used as a way of embedding information, but with either little reward for absolute success, or unbalanced punishments for failure.

Rewarding students in GS classes might be done through letting them know what the topic of the quiz is going to be, seeing some sample questions, or even as a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, where they can skip a quiz, or at least skip the punishment for failing it.


So ironic that in a fair few cases, the same people who decry gaming, are looking at the techniques behind it in order to keep people attentive during boring tasks...