Wide Area News
A load of rot?
by Russell Brown
Not everyone thinks that video games are turning our kids into murderous zombies.
In a thoughtful essay in the January issue of the Utne Reader (www.utne.com), Chris Suellentrop wrestles with the idea that video games are rotting the minds of our children.
He notes that the mind-rot theory has thrived ever since young people were able to own computer games, and asks why, then, “do IQ scores continue their slight but perceptible rise if an entire generation of children, the oldest of whom are now in their thirties, stunted its development with electronic pap?”
And “if such games are nothing more than ‘murder simulators’, as one critic has called them, why is it – as gaming enthusiasts never tire of pointing out – that the murder rate has declined in recent years, when there are more video games, and more violent ones, than ever?”
The truth, Suellentrop suggests, is that games are a form of mental exercise: “Games of all kinds are a part of almost every human society, and they have long been used to inculcate the next generation with desirable virtues and skills. We enrol our kids in Little League not only so they will have a good time, but also to teach them about sportsmanship, teamwork and the importance of practice and hard work.”
He concludes that all games imply learning, even those with revolting elements, but wonders what they are teaching. As well as encouraging mental agility and enterprise, are video games teaching obedience?
“Whether you find the content of video games inoffensive or grotesque,” he writes, “their structure teaches players that the best course of action is always to accept the system and work to succeed within it.”
To emphasise his point, he quotes Raph Koster, the creative brain behind Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies: “Games do not permit innovation. They present a pattern. Innovating out of a pattern is by definition outside the magic circle. You don’t get to change the physics of a game.”
Ah, but sometimes you do. Your teenager might sit and dutifully play a game title out of the box from beginning to end – or he or she might load it up with downloaded “mods” (modifications) and patches that change the playing experience and, quite often, the physics of a game. It’s what keeps PC games interesting, as opposed to those on the Xbox or PlayStation, which are controlled environments for obedient consumers.
Trouble is, changing the physics will often mean getting around a challenge: cheating, in other words. This isn’t a problem for the solo gamer, but it’s ruinous in the case of an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game), such as the hugely popular sword-and-sorcery game World of Warcraft. If everyone is not playing by the same rules, there is social breakdown. Gamers who use hacks to unfairly advance are sought out and ejected.
World of Warcraft, for all its popularity, is far less flexible than its predecessor, Warcraft III, which gave players tools to design new maps and allowed them to create custom characters and games with entirely new themes (as the Iraq war loomed in 2003, a themed game was posted – the Iraqi side was oversubscribed).
So, if we’re to adopt Suellentrop’s theory, which games stand between us and a society of servile social units? The answer may surprise you. It’s the games with the least social merit: the first-person shooters.
Expert gamers can gain access to the back end of the Quake series and radically alter the look of their world. The tools available to create new models are so useful that they often form part of tertiary design courses.
Another shooter series, Half Life, has been extensively modified by players. One “mod”, Natural Selection, created by a group of gamers turned developers, changed the title from a shooter to a strategy game, altering its entire concept. Another, Gary’s Mod, functions as a 3D development tool, enabling players to (in my son’s words) “put themselves in a sandbox situation, allowing them to create all sorts of different things, with a variety of tools at their command”.
This doesn’t mean that any old blood and gore is fit for your kids – it isn’t. But, however intuitive it seems, the most violent games in the hands of a clever and inquisitive player may offer the broadest horizon for learning.
Email: russb@dubwise.co.nz
