Nerlyn Galan/Contributing Writer
Video games have been popular since the 1970s, and by the 1990s they could be seen in
almost every home in the United States. So while spending almost half of my winter
break playing my brand new Assassin’s Creed 3 game I began to wonder: are video
games good for us?
In my opinion: Yes.
But I wanted to see how others felt about it. So I went to the halls of our beloved GC
and asked around at our local GameStop to get more information on the subject.
I learned that there are hundreds of different types of games with the four most
popular being first person shooters (FPS), action role-playing games (RPG), sports,
and finally strategy. Almost every video game now has multiplayer options
connecting you over the Internet to other people playing the same game. The most
sold games at the Modesto A. Maidique Campus are first person shooters and sports games, mainly for the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles.
Through interviewing patrons and employees about their favorite types of games
and the average amount of time they spent playing them, I found that the majority
of the students in the store were mostly FPS and/or RPG gamers.
RPG games have been around since before computers had graphic images and were composed mostly of text, while first-person shooters were first invented by the military as a training tool for soldiers and eventually found their way into the hands of the public.
It has become a trend in the media and the general public to credit these games as being addictive, robbing people of real life experiences and even causing the consumers to become violent.
According to my survey, the average RPG and FPS gamer spends 2 to 5 hours on average each day gaming, which is about equal to the 3.8 hours that users spend on social media, according to marketingcharts.com
Video games, while in some instances consuming much of a person’s time, at least cause gamers to critically think, requiring them to use strategy and skill to solve complex situations.
Multi-player options enable you to play with others, creating a sense of community for the players, in a way being a more interactive medium than all the so-called “social media” sites.
These games are a safe haven for anyone who plays them allowing an easy and
harmless escape from reality.
The general public argues that it’s a violent and inappropriate escape causing our youth to have more violent tendencies and outbreaks. However, many gamers didn’t agree with this statement saying that in reality they would not do the actions they do in the games, but simply enjoyed playing the game.
This led me to believe that maybe this is what the media and general public were trying to get at: The parents lacked the understanding of which age group the games were appropriate for and didn’t regulate the amount of time their children spent playing. But instead the video games got the bad reputation, when in reality they offer a lot of great advantages; when consumed in moderation and properly, they can actually be healthy.
Regardless of what the media publishes I know we will keep doing what gamers do best: Keep Calm and Game On.
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