Video Games are the Spawn of Satan

I didn't know what to write for today's blog, so I thought I'd take a look at my favourite French geek blog, Nioutaik, and I came across an interesting article, which you'll be able to read if you click on the title. It was so interesting and so true that I decided to write a condensed, English version of it (the style is so cynical I could never translate the whole thing directly). It's an issue I feel rather strongly about.

The article begins with a piss-take of all those ads you see around nowadays that try to tell us how to live, attempting to replace the common sense which a small but loud minority don't have, and annoying the rest of us. Then it shows this, a real ad which you've no doubt already seen if you happen to live in the UK, but which I discovered just a few minutes ago:

Lovely, innit? Now, you non-geeks out there may be wondering why the author of Nioutaik and I (as well as any self-respecting geek) are so offended by this. After all, video gaming kills, right? It drives people mad and then they go and shoot people in school. It makes children obese and diabetic. It kills their brains. Right?

Yeah, right. Video Games Are Spawn Of Satan has long been an excuse parents and teachers use to cover up for their own incompetence. Your kid prefers gaming to running around a playing field, getting a ball thrown at his head? Video games' fault. Can't get her to do her homework? Of course you don't have authority issues - she's been playing GTA IV for the past hour and she's learned a few new words, that's all. And no, you didn't see the "18+" symbol. Of course not. And what about all those high school shootings? ZoOMG he played Tetris the night before, Spawn of Satan I tell you! (Here's a recent example of what I'm talking about, by someone who apparently agrees with me, for once)

The government and the press just love to milk this for all it's worth. Of course, there aren't really enough geek journalists or politicians to set the record straight, but for those of you who are intelligent enough to know a massive international scapegoat when you see one, here's the truth of the matter: firstly, what they tell you is pretty much all lies.

To illustrate my point, allow me to nick another image from that inspiring Nioutaik article, one I'm pretty sure the author made himself (or herself? I think he's a he):

Here's a quick translation:

Cerveau actif - brain active
Mains actives - hands active
Possibilité de grignoter en pratiquant cette activité - snacking opportunities while practising this activity.

As you can see, video gaming being the most interactive of the three activities, it engages the mind and physical reflexes by forcing the gamer to respond to visual and auditive stimuli. It also prevents you from snacking, because your hands are busy and it's very, very annoying to have to press "Pause" every five seconds to take a mouthful of crisps.

Also, I don't agree that it's impossible to snack while reading, since I do it all the time. My pages get spilled on sometimes, but there's a knack to it. TV, of course, is the worst of the three activities - but the ad isn't going to discourage TV, they need it to throw even more propaganda at us.

Which brings me to my second point: video gaming is good for you. I already said it engages the mind, allow me to illustrate: my little sister learned to read partly thanks to World of Warcraft. Of course, in-game speech between players isn't very reliable, but the quests are given in good French (and sometimes good English), and the introduction to an MMORPG has encouraged her to read more fantasy stories in particular.

Strategy games develop thinking skills, while Sonic, Mario and the earliest games, even going so far back as Tetris and Pong, help develop fast reflexes, concentration and hand-eye coordination. Street Fighter, Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive strengthen your memory - there's not much difference between remembering how to do a shoryuken and that weird formula you have to learn for GCSE maths.

There's also the question of general knowledge. Nowadays you can learn much from playing video games, because they're influenced by real life. Who's at war with who and why, what exactly happened during the Cold War (I recommend Metal Gear for this). You also learn how to separate fact from fiction. Spore teaches you have evolution works. Braid tells us about Einstein (no seriously, it does, although it's so obscure and complex you're better of finishing the game before looking it up). Many Japanese-made RPG games inadvertently teach us about Japanese culture.

Languages. My boyfriend learned English almost entirely thanks to video games. If it was thanks to the brilliance of his teachers, his classmates would have done better too. He also knows a surprising amount of Japanese, a good few zombie phrases in Spanish from Resident Evil, and a bit of German warspeak. Granted, knowing how to say things like "you shall now suffer the wrath of the dragon knight" isn't quite as useful as knowing how to say "where's the bathroom, please?" but once you know the basics of a language, it's rather easy to learn the rest.

Music. When you play the right video games, you learn to really appreciate music. Music can make or break a game. If you like jazz, Metal Gear IV might be your cup of tea. If you like calm, Irish-sounding ballads, try the first level of Braid. WoW is good for the kind of modern classical stuff, played by a symphonic orchestra, that you find in most films. And so on.

I could go on about how brilliant video games are, but you're probably sick of it already. My point is that video games don't kill, or make people obese or diabetic, or deform their thumbs. People do these things to themselves. Of course, if you sit on the sofa and read all day, every day, the way people think most gamers play video games, you'll get fat and deformed as well, even if you're reading about nuclear physics.

As the author of Nioutaik so aptly points out, gaming is most often a consequence of the problems they're blamed for, not the cause. That kid who shot his classmates didn't do it because he played video games - he played video games to forget how crap his life was and how much he wanted to blow everything up. Most violent video games are said to be cathartic, and if the kids who end up killing half their school do that after gaming, then perhaps the game is just not cathartic enough.

I'm not saying there aren't a few risks. If you give an 18+ game to a ten-year-old, they may become violent, just like they might if you let them watch violent films or TV programmes. It's not the video game's fault you have no common sense. And if you let them play all day, and they get fat, well that's your fault too for not limiting their time spent gaming, as you should limit time spent in front of the TV or on the phone, or surfing the net, and send them outside in the sun for an hour or so.

Of course if your parents brought you up properly and you choose to stay indoors and play video games all day anyway, that's your own fault. Don't come complaining to Squaresoft when you're diagnosed with back problems - that's your own fault you lazy arse.