A Video Game Victory
Video games, a widely known, mass selling industry that has taken the spot for entertainment. It topped $21 billion in 2008, which shows just how much people like it. Many people wonder why we play, many parents use video games as scapegoats for their children’s problems, calling it “addicting”, or “bad for their brain”. This is not the case, we play because it’s FUN, simple as that, when video games were first made they made a slow rise from 2-D plat-forming to the 3-D high graphics home-consoles we have now. Video games are at the top of the food chain when it comes to entertainment; they improve concentration, look pretty, have worlds of fantasy, and you can control what’s going on at your command.
Yet even with these good aspects, there are many so called “bad” aspects that many parents use to blame video games for their kid’s problems. Firstly, video games aren’t “addicting”, they just have things in them encouraging long playing times, such as experience point bonuses for longer play times. This is why we need to just control when our kids play, rather than just saying it’s addicting and messaging the video game companies’ hate-mail. Actually taking action and being responsible enough to understand video games will make a successful kid that is responsible and can easily manage their time. Taking time to sit down and talking to your child about video games, time management, and setting up a schedule are ways to improve the time kids spend on video games. Controlling the time, and letting them play for extended periods when they have free time on the weekends let them think that they can still play for long times. The time controlling also stops the other problem, “bad for the brain”. Sure video games can be bad for you, but that’s only when playing like there’s no tomorrow, which is when your body becomes too inactive and your brain adjusts to the light being radiated in that one area.
One thing that most people probably don’t realize about video games is that they can actually improve your brain, rather than damage it if used wrong. Lots of games require precise coordination to do things in them, such as memorizing what each button on the controller does, and making sure to press the right one at the right time. For example, a dragon swings its tail at you, so you have to move at the right time to dodge it, and then proceeds to makes a secondary swipe across the ground, so you jump to avoid it. To dodge both attacks you needed concentration that we just never see people use in the real world. When you see someone concentrating on a particular hard puzzle like the rubix cube, but then you see them solve it easily in a very short time, you think that that person concentrated very hard and is very smart. Yet if you compare that with someone playing dance dance revolution on expert mode, which is when the steps move very fast and come in huge amounts, it just makes the rubix cube look pathetic when you say the amount of concentration required to play dance dance revolution. Video games are a breakthrough in synchronization with the mind, and one of the first things to do so while entertaining the player.
Video games are fun, which is why people play them, but why? Well firstly the graphics, which look amazing on 1080 HD. Some even say the quality is even better than a Movie when used on a HD TV. With these amazing crystal-clear graphics, players are easily sucked into the game, in which everything looks real, popping out with colors everywhere. Unlike other ways of entertainment, you just can’t see all these colors when playing a dull sport, like golf, which all you see is basically green and blue. A big example of this is Final Fantasy XIII, which looks pretty, and has colors bursting everywhere since it’s based on sci-fi.
Since video games have such good graphics, video game designers make use of that with their creative ideas. We’re talking massive jungles, deserts, a volcano with trees on it for Pete’s sake, these worlds of fantasy with the fact that the graphics are good just add up to look amazing, as if it were real. Many video games have creative ideas of environments and fiction in them, so you can do things in them that you would probably never do in real life. You probably never intend to jump off a volcano to grapple onto a crumbling edge just to land a single hit on a huge magma creature, let alone go after this creature in the first place. In real life, you can do things pretty dangerous, but end up risking your health if doing so, such as driving a truck off a cliff to take down a helicopter. You probably see these things in movies, but it’s lame because you’re just watching some hero do all the action. In video games, you can actually control what’s going on with the controller. Move the analog stick forward, and the truck starts moving, you gain speed, dodge the obstacles and eventually fly off the cliff, pressing whatever button is assigned to jump to jump off the truck, and watching it hit it’s mark. It feels so much more satisfying since it was you actually controlling it, not watching someone else do it.
When it comes down to it, video games are the best in entertainment, they show massive concentration, have good graphics, show ideas of fantasy, and allow control over the action. Restricting the unnecessary amounts of play time prevents problems that may occur, such as poor health and putting video games above all else, even school. They can improve performance in school, since video games practice concentration skills. You can actually control what’s going on in the game, rather than just viewing another person just looking cool, you can actually cause what happens. Video games also have very high definition looks, and utilize that to make the amazing worlds of fantasy look so real and colorful. With all these facts, we just need to accept video games as a part of our culture, and realize that this hobby has the potential to make our world better if we just utilize everything good about it.
