What games can teach us...nothing?

It's sad but true over the past I don't know 20 or so years I have been a user of games ( sounds like a drug addiction and its not far from it) at first they were just that fun and it was something to fill time as a child growing up as were action figures and playing outside. They are things to help you develop as a person and learn values to then take those "skills" and apply them to your life as an adult. As a kid I loved gaming but it came with limits such as play time and sharing. These simple rules in my opinion were the only things that kept me from getting addicted but sadly many of us are now way beyond that point as it has encroached on every facet of our lives to the point we don't even have real goals anymore. A great example would be from my time working a eb/gamestop for about 3 years. I was in college to learn game design to really put my passion to work but i slowly lost that feeling and my goals were dumbed down. It became this job sucks but (enter title here) is coming out I can't wait it's going to be so much fun. Gaming really is an addiction and those who are under it's influence need to come to terms with the fact that no matter how much fun it is and how cool you feel doing it your real life is suffering. I used to be upset with my brother over how could he not care about such and such a game when it was so close to release or the concept of the game sounded so cool but he would act as if it didn't matter to him and that's not to say he didn't like it , he did but it wasn't the end of the world for him like it is for most of us. I am jealous of that now I am starting to see that games are not everything and reflecting how "hooked" and committed as a user I was to not even see what a hold it had on me. I once made a joke that if my history class was about games I would get an "A" and that was proven years later when I began college to study how to make them but I now think about how stupid I must be to be proud that I can ace a game test about Nintendo's history but struggle over the western advances in the world markets in a business class which is a topic that relate to the real world and truth be told is far more valuable to know then what Mario's fist name was (jump man). I feel like I was brainwashed and allowed it to happen. For a few months now I have been living in an area that isn't controlled by games, games here are like a second thought still and for me that was a hard reality to get used to at first. "Your telling me I can't get the newest online xbox 360 game or the cool new DS game that uses all these features" That was gone for me and for a long time I was just like a drug addict doing anything I could to fill the hole. Download PC games on torrent sites watch game news more then real news and begin to dwell completely on trying to only solve one problem...how to get what I want where I am. Just listen to this blog it sound insane. I sound insane. So much time with only goal which all gamers share to experience the next big ride or high if you will. To be apart of it but what does it give back? Now to the meat of this blog. If your a gamer in any respect reading this then pay cation to my words this far because if your not in as deep as me its still possible and its highly destructive to every part of your life. Games as a medium so far have been attempting three things:
1. Emergent play, by this I mean creating stories and worlds that draw you in just like any movie or book. By drawing you in you can let your self go and be entertain for hours coming away from it excited to what's next or what just happened and when this happened you need more to feel that way again just like any-other addictive substance.
2. Attach loyalties, this product placement is proven with any top ten game list where the Super Mario Brothers always tend to find a way to the top three spots and that's because for many they were your first "joint" of games and so that game forever becomes something you will pay attention to even if it never lives up to your expectations you fight with yourself to stack it up with your childhood to that first Mario hit you took and compare them, you are using even when you didn't want to.
3. Taking your money, I'm sorry but this is a business and that's the thing that makes the world go round. they get you on a product sometimes under false pretenses, such as the DS isn't just a game system it can train your brain, which leads to once you have "trained" all you can train you ask "what else does this thing do?" *looks at a wall of games* and then WHAM GOTCHA! You have now went from a moderate user to a casual user and it only "levels-up" from there until your right where the rest of us are. Game don't DO anything for our lives. They are a smoke screen most of the time for us a world to hide in away from this real one. I used to joke about such thought but it's so more true now then before.

Overall games are entertainment and the trick is to not let them control you as much as you control them. Games are not more important then setting life goals games should never be a goal in your life trust me if you looked at the worlds most successful people I would like you to ask yourself if they are hardcore gamers? I would argue probability not even close and if they did play it would be minimal at best. I will leave you with one more quote I thought I was living by when it came to games but ended up being a huge hippocrate to:

"In order to be a great game designer you need to get out in the world and experience any and everything you can you don't create worlds in a basement" Shigeru Miyamoto
Now what If you take two addictive substances and use the in the same instance, such as smoking and playing games. I ran a test on myself recently on the ratio to cigarettes i smoking while engaging in a game over spending a night watching TV. During this time i would allow myself to smoke any time I felt like it for whatever justifiable reason I felt to smoke whilst playing a game "left 4 dead/Battlefield 1943" or watching Television "The Daily Show/The X-files". Let's look at the results. While playing game i tended to reward myself for good playthroughs or kills by smoking like palvios dog, then while watching TV i tended to only smoke when I became board of the show or someone in the show began to smoke making me a sheep big tobacco as a brainwashed drone. When I stopped doing both activities with smoking the effects became more noticeable while gaming. I would kill another play and become excited and begin to look around the room for cigarettes and then the game become more of a annoyance because i couldn't smoke and became aggravated and short tempered. Now people should be able to control their emotion at least behavior with games and many argue both sides but it is true if your easily aggravated in life games can amplify there emotion if you let them.

January 7, 2010