I can remember countless times when my mom would come into my room and yell at me for playing too many video games. Her famous words were always, "You're rotting your brain!" Of course my twelve-year-old smart-ass response was, "No, Mom! It's educational!" which she never bought for a second. Although can you blame her? A loving mother walking in on her sweet, adorable little son massacring German soldiers by the dozens on the blood stained beaches of Normandy. Looking back on it, I would be a little hostile towards this as well.
However as I have gotten older, I have found some truth within those excuses I used to offer up to try to get just fifteen more minutes in order to pass the level. I started noticing that my friends and I were talking about different historical battles such as the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day, or the guns that were used like the Thompson or The M1 Garand. I was even able to recite General Dwight D. Eisenhower's D-Day address: "Gentlemen, you are about to embark upon this great crusade..."
Well Mom, it looks like Medal Of Honor: Frontline taught me something after all!
In Dave Gilson's article, "Wii Shall Overcome", Jane McGonigal expresses her beliefs in how "video games can save the world". The activity that what was thought to be such a pointless pastime, is now beginning to become recognized as a constructive, recreational practice. Games that involve thousands of people and attempt to find solutions to very real problems in the very near future are being developed more and more. This may someday link users across vast distances in order to collaborate on a scale that has never before been seen. However as there may be no way to directly improve the world through the use of video games in the near future, it can easily become more like a "networked creative writing exercise".
I hope to see a continued improvement in the means by which gaming can help solve real world problems in our everyday lives. Maybe now my mom will finally be able to stop telling me just how rotted my brain actually is.
-Stuart Cowen
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