Video games often come under criticism on the grounds that they produce nothing productive and are waste of time to the player. In his book Man, Play and Games, Roger Caillois claims that video games are “Unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game” (Caillois 10). In essence, Caillois is correct. From the start, it costs money to purchase a medium on which to play the game. After that expense has been had, it costs money to buy the game and often most MMORPG games require the player to pay a fee per month.
The above just states the monetary waste that is spent on video games. However the unproductively continues in a different form, human time consumption. As one who has played WoW for almost four years now, I clearly know how this is true. MMORPG games never actually end, allowing the player endless hours in the game, giving them endless opportunity to improve their character. This tends to become a quest resulting in literally 100’s of real life days played in the game.
People often try and justify this extreme amount of time spent playing by saying it builds strategy, leadership, and socializing skills. The claim that holds the most truth is the strategy and by extension quick decision making skill building, since most of the games require quick action. However, as for the leadership skills, it may be proposed that leading a raid in a game such as WoW constitutes leading a large group of people. Technically it is and as one who has for over a year now lead and scheduled raids for a guild I would agree it is not easy. But in actuality for leadership skills to have been built, actual face to face interactions with the people being lead is necessary. Imagine putting on a resume that you contain certain leadership skills because you led a group of people over the internet in a video game. We have not yet reached that point in society that skills gained over a video game have been recognized as worthwhile, thus keeping video games in the stereotype as just another game people play to pass the time.
Let me start off by saying that I can in no way define myself as a gamer. My extent of gaming is limited to the game Grid16, something a friend once showed me. I was addicted when I first found out about it and could not manage to leave the site for weeks, but slowly detached myself and have not played since. I agree with you that video games are essentially a waste of time. Personally, I do not see a problem with occasionally gaming, however once the addiction begins, it is hard to stop oneself. Someone can unknowingly begin to devote hours of time to a game every night. I saw unknowingly because I imagine that one does not sit down with the mindset "I am going to be here for the next several hours". From my Grid16 experience, I assume people set a personal goal: "only until I beat this level". However, this tends not to work because of certain gaming tricks. I will use Grid16 as an example because I do not have much else to work with. It is a very simple game. Therefore, when I lose, I convince myself that the next time I play I can fix that stupid mistake and excel. This never really ends up being the case, resulting in hours of wasted time trying to reach a nearly impossible goal.
ReplyDeleteAlthough many argue that certain skills, such as leadership as Kevin mentioned, can be attained from these games, I do not completely agree. I am sure some skills can be acquired, yet I do not believe that video games are the best way to get them. There are many other ways to develop these skills that can allow one to develop other ones as well along the way. Furthermore, only few games can allow this development of skills, whereas others are merely for "fun".
Kevin... check this article out: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/learn.html ("You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired!").
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt that people do get recognition for leadership skills acquired from video games. However, for the millions, and literally millions of users of such a game as WoW, a few cases here and there of people being able to actually turn these skills into something that will help them get a job is so few it may as well be coincidental.
ReplyDeleteAs for creativity and adapting to the situation presented by a particular boss fight, the game allows for this, but it is not what happens in actuality. As one who led raids, I am aware of how this process of learning a new boss fight happens. First, when reaching a new fight in a certain raid, the players instead of just going for it and adapting as they fail try and after try, they just start off by going to youtube and searching for the said boss fight to see how others worked through the fights in the beta testing of this raid. It seem as if this constitutes cheating, but after wasting hours trying boss fights on your own, any guild and this is not an exaggeration, has gotten to the point where members get angry and leave after repeated failed blind attempts at a boss fight. So to remedy this, instead of making everyone angry and wasting time, each member is told to youtube the fight and it see how its done so the boss can be killed and thus the raid can progress.