Games have come a long way
Pong: Pong was the very first video game. It consisted of nothing
more than two paddles and a blip. Get the blip past your opponent's
paddle and you scored a point. Simple.
After Pong came Space Invaders, equally simple but more challenging
as you fought back an unstoppable army of aliens. It truly launched the
video game phenomenon. Asteroids, Pac Man, and Donkey Kong quickly
followed.
I remember them all.
I grew up during the video game revolution, dropping quarters into
the machine like a junkie; sometimes begging my mom for a dollar so I
could play four more games, or even being so bold (and so hooked) that
when my friends and I ran out of change, we'd hightail it to the
fountain in the center of the mall and dip our arms elbow deep into the
water searching for nickels, dimes and the occasional quarter, but never
stooping so low as to gather pennies. We were never that desperate.
After taking a two-decade long hiatus from video games, in 2003, my
friend Larfus Markus turned on his Xbox and introduced me to Halo. I
couldn't believe what I was seeing: The two dimensional simplicity of
jumping over monkey-thrown barrels or eating dots in a maze was replaced
by something cinematic.
Somewhere along the way, game designers discovered the monolith and
the industry evolved out of the primordial ooze of blips and beeps into
an advanced civilization capable of intergalactic space flight.
Not even the fruit fly evolves so quickly! Today, games are no longer
limited to the arcade or the living room.
Thanks to the internet you can form an international team of spies to
take out a terrorist cell, lead your favorite sports team to the
National Championship, start a dance dance revolution, test your
marksmanship against a sharpshooter in Taipei or defend yourself from
the relentless roundhouse kicks being mercilessly delivered from a
12-year-old in Topeka.
No wonder video games are overshadowing movies' financial success.
Who wants to watch James Bond when you can be James Bond! However, every
major new technological development creates a wake of controversy and
consequences.
In August 2005, the BBC reported that a 28-year-old South Korean man
died of exhaustion after playing Starcraft for 50 hours. Games can be
incredibly addicting, but I never imagined someone playing a video game
until they dropped dead! Could the future of video games include halfway
houses and clinics for the chronically addicted?
Although it seems unlikely, researchers point out another troubling
trend in gaming: desensitization to violence.
A recent Iowa State Study by Nicholas Carnagey and Craig Anderson
revealed that playing violent games for even as little as 20 minutes
significantly reduced the subjects' reactions to real life violence.
Their conclusion: According to Anderson, "the modern entertainment
media landscape could accurately be described as an effective systematic
violence desensitization tool."
One institution that welcomes desensitization to violence is the
military. Already certain branches use video games to hone reflexes and
train soldiers in tactics.
Desensitization to violence is merely an additional perk. Killing is
much easier when electronic warfare transforms the battlefield into just
another game.
The evolution of gaming has been staggering. We've witnessed an ape
throwing a bone into the sky as it transforms into a spaceship. Games
have come a long way, baby! And the ride has only just begun.
Stormcrow Hayes plays games on his Xbox and desensitizes himself to
violence in Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A. For more information visit
www.stormcrowhayes.com. |