Video Virtue
Writing in today's Opinion Journal, Brian Anderson comes out in favor of video games. He makes a very persuasive case, too.
A few weeks ago, Sony and Nintendo both revealed their newest video-game systems to great fanfare, complete with slicker graphics and motion sensors. But not everyone was pleased. An increasingly noisy chorus of critics charge that the video-game industry–whose receipts now top the Hollywood box office–threatens to transform American kids into drooling zombies or out-and-out sociopaths. "We're trying to keep children away from R-rated violent movies that last 90 minutes," grumbles conservative media critic Brent Bozell, "but in too many basements and kids' bedrooms in America, children are role-playing murderers for hours on end, ad infinitum."
Raunchy, blood-soaked video games, unleashing "a silent epidemic of media desensitization," are "stealing the innocence of our children," agrees Hillary Clinton. That's why she and fellow senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh have introduced legislation to regulate the video-game industry, codifying its voluntary rating system and making it a federal crime for retailers to sell or rent inappropriate games to minors. Even the latest edition of Dr. Spock's famous guide to childrearing deems gaming a "colossal waste of time" at best, anger-stoking at worst.
The hysteria isn't surprising. New media have always met with suspicion: As The Economist editorialized a while back, a "neophobic" tendency dates from antiquity, with Plato's argument in the "Phaedrus" that the relatively newfangled medium of writing corrupted the memory-building powers of oral culture. Of course sometimes the new is bad. Yet the critics of video games are not only conjuring up a threat where none exists; they're ignoring the positive moral lessons and cognitive benefits that many of today's sophisticated games offer.
Now, I've raised two boys who video game and have been guilty of playing a few through the years myself. I'd agree that video games can end up wasting a lot of time, but it does keep one amused. Anderson offers some statistics that will surprise many critics: the percentage of racy or violent games that earn the strictest "mature" label is about 15%. Some 80% of the top-selling games earn the "E for Everybody" rating. So it's a lot less of a problem than you are being told by the media these days. Then there are the positives in many games:
The truth is, critics are often ignorant of the moral universe of video games–violent games included. Yes, the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series, in which the gamer plays a criminal on the make in the big city, is pretty amoral. But most violent games put the player in a familiar hero's role, notes Judge Richard Posner in a 2001 Seventh Circuit appeals-court decision overturning an Indianapolis anti-video-game ordinance. "Self-defense, protection of others, dread of the 'undead,' fighting against overwhelming odds–these are the age-old themes of literature, and ones particularly appealing to the young," Mr. Posner observes.
Nonviolent games like The Sims franchise, an open-ended computer simulation of suburban life likened by visionary creator Will Wright to a "digital dollhouse," teach players bourgeois virtues. Blogger Glenn Reynolds, who devotes a chapter to gaming in his recent book on technology and society, "An Army of Davids," overheard his young daughter chatting with a friend about The Sims (a favorite among female gamers). "You have to have a job to buy food and things, and if you don't go to work, you get fired," she said matter-of-factly. "And if you spend all your money buying stuff, you have to make more." Thanks to The Sims, Mr. Reynolds says, his daughter now knows how to budget and how to read an income statement. In SimWorld, he notes, "narcissism, hedonism and impulsiveness are punished" and "traditional middle-class virtues, like thrift and planning, generally pay off."
Video games can also exercise the brain in remarkable ways. I recently spent (too) many late-night hours working my way through X-Men: Legends II: The Rise of Apocalypse, a game I ostensibly bought for my kids. Figuring out how to deploy a particular grouping of heroes (each of whom has special powers and weaknesses); using trial and error and hunches to learn the game's rules and solve its puzzles; weighing short-term and long-term goals–the experience was mentally exhausting and, when my team finally beat the Apocalypse, exhilarating.
And surprisingly, the more constructive games if you will, hold the attention of the player much longer. That's something I've observed over and over again in my boys. On fact Anderson mentions though got me thinking; notice how there is a lot of screaming from the left about repression and how they're being silenced? Then why is it that the ones who routinely call for government censorship are always Democrats? Notice who was calling for regulation in the article.
Civilization, Media, Politics | Gaius Friday, 2 June , 2006
By Mike's America, Friday, 2 June , 2006 @ 11:37 pm
There’s an old Far Side cartoon about parents watching their child play video games and imagining in their head all the help wanted ads requiring video gaming skills.
It might not actually be so far fetched.
By Gaius, Saturday, 3 June , 2006 @ 5:59 am
It might not be at all. Weird world, isn’t it?