Are Computer Games That Bad?
Kids and teenagers today have been brought up playing games totally unimaginable to all us who are over 40 years old. Sports and other outdoor activities were dominating kids play until the game consoles dominated the market in the end of the 80s.
Judging whether the change has been for the kid’s benefit or not is something for the sociologists of the future to investigate and make conclusions. Older people, though, seem to disapprove that new lifestyle which is based on simulating any sort of physical activity from playing sports to feed animals, grow plants and even fall in love!
In my mind, because today’s kids are exposed to such a vast amount of information since the advent of the internet, they have more general knowledge compared to my generation that information was based on the TV and the newspapers.
It can be said that creativity and emotions into kids’ play has been remained pretty much the same although the way kids sense them has totally changes. A very good example taken from the time I was a kid is a great game boys used to play which we were calling ‘exploration’. The game was about locating an dilapidated residential building or a warehouse, break into it and try to get in every single room in order to collect as many strange and unusual objects as possible.
One of the greatest memories I have from my childhood is the day we entered that abandoned massive warehouse which used to belong to a electrical components entrepreneur who’s business had gone into liquidation. It’s not easy to describe our emotions and curiosity each time we were coming across unusual objects varying from cable ties to circuit breakers, it was all stimulating our minds big time.
The equivalent of that game today would be one of those amazing adventure games where the main character has the freedom to enter any building, wonder around, collect objects etc. In both cases, adrenaline is floating massively and the emotions are equal. Being lucky enough to belong to that transitional generation where traditional and computer games were equally important I can confess that both types of games were giving me the same ‘high’. Because of all the aforementioned reasons I am against all adults who disprove computer games as useless and dangerous just because the physical element is missing.
