Can someone explain this post’s focus on video games? It seems to me that games in “real life” (from solitaire to football) have exactly the same problem of lacking actual long-term consequences, and anything that might counterbalance this — playing with other people, training to improve, prizes/stakes — applies to video games just as well. If anything, many video games should be expected to be more emotionally involving than real life games simply because they’re designed to be. Also, because of the scale and resemblence to real life, it is much easier to take goals within a video game seriously than goals within a game of Settlers of Catan.
I also have the feeling that there are some key differences in the way people involve themselves emotionally. I have read a huge amount of books when I was younger, and while I found them fascinating and captivating, to this day I cannot understand people who find books or movies more emotionally involving than any mediocre video game where you actually do something. Yet these people do exist.
So why this video game bashing? I don’t understand it.
Probably because very few people propose playing solitaire and Settlers of Catan forever as their version of a Utopia. Spending eternity playing games on the holodeck, however, is frequently mentioned.
Can someone explain this post’s focus on video games? It seems to me that games in “real life” (from solitaire to football) have exactly the same problem of lacking actual long-term consequences, and anything that might counterbalance this — playing with other people, training to improve, prizes/stakes — applies to video games just as well. If anything, many video games should be expected to be more emotionally involving than real life games simply because they’re designed to be. Also, because of the scale and resemblence to real life, it is much easier to take goals within a video game seriously than goals within a game of Settlers of Catan.
I also have the feeling that there are some key differences in the way people involve themselves emotionally. I have read a huge amount of books when I was younger, and while I found them fascinating and captivating, to this day I cannot understand people who find books or movies more emotionally involving than any mediocre video game where you actually do something. Yet these people do exist.
So why this video game bashing? I don’t understand it.
Probably because very few people propose playing solitaire and Settlers of Catan forever as their version of a Utopia. Spending eternity playing games on the holodeck, however, is frequently mentioned.