This week, Cian O’Driscoll challenges the @rcade gang to one of the oldest debates in the history of gaming – Is video gaming bad for your health and development as a person? Well you should know or answer on that straight away but nevertheless we aren’t the kind of gamers to turn down a challenge and we took Cian up on his proposition.
Cian wouldn’t consider himself a gamer at all but has an interest in the culture behind gaming as well interests in music, journalism and politics.
Player 1 – Cian O’Driscoll – Video Games are bad for you!
Video games savoured by the young and enjoyed just as much by the young at heart. They allow for a world of escapism, joy and exhilaration, where one can feel in control winning a race or blasting down a mutated ninja. But is there more to the innocent fun than meets the eye, and should we really be encouraging our children to play so much in this virtual world?
Let’s start with the price, walk into any Game and from perusing the aisles you come to the stark realisation how much the new GTA game the child yearns for is going to cost you €50 or €60? Most new games in the top ten chart cost more to purchase then the cost of a Chinese takeaway for a family of four. Pressure on parents to conform and pay these extortionate prices is most unfair on the part of the gaming industry, but they know the credit card will eventually swipe, as parents give into the pressure from kids to buy the game, or face repercussions of a serious tantrum.
Next comes the obvious addiction that follows too many hours glued to a pixelated television screen. A recent Liveline show from last year springs to mind, where concerned mothers and distraught fathers rang into Joe Duffy to unburden their reservations about the amount of time their kids were spending on certain virtual reality internet games such as World of Warcraft and Runescape. Whilst it might be a bit excessive to suggest that such never ending stratagem games have subliminal hypnosis indoctrinating our kids to believe they cannot depart the online community into which they’ve absorbed themselves, as one caller suggested, it nevertheless raises the question as to how addictive these games can become. When a child, or more worryingly, a 30 something adult, chooses to stay in their unkempt stuffy room with blinds closed glued to the Xbox, rather than go outside and take a ten minute walk, we need to question where the balance lies between taking pleasure in completing a quest, and accomplishing a worthy goal in real life too.
Inevitably, too much play time will ruin children’s social skills. How can anyone pursue meaningful relationships or form proper friendships with other people if, bar playing a computer game, one does not read a book, play some sports or watch a good documentary? Granted, most kids will have friends in their social circle who are also into video games, but allowing your child to have gaming as their one and only exclusive hobby could lead to a fat, obese and socially introverted adult twenty years down the line. In an extreme addict’s case, bills would never get paid, the shopping from Tesco would never be purchased, and this article would never get put on the web because its author would be too tired from staying up till 3am shooting out virtual zombies. Pictures and screenshots are meaningless images encroached on the brain that salvage any chance of meaningful life memories. Thumping a few buttons on a console frantically with your thumbs is only going to lead to emotional heartbreak when you look back on your day and realise you achieved peanuts.
By all means, Video games connect communities regardless of language or culture, they allow escapism from the harsh realities of the real world and allow persons to feel more secure and in control of the reality complex they envelop themselves into once the console is switched on. However, balance is the key, and indeed, too much of one experience inevitably cancels out the endless other opportunities to be had outside of GTA’s shoot ups.
VERSUS
the @rcade – Video Games are good for you!
One of our earliest memories of our childhood is our family sat around the living room television set as Dad set up the Commodore 64 – we waited for the game to load and then when the bright colours flickered on screen we fell in love with the world of video gaming. A few years later we made our Holy Communion and rather than spend our money on useless toys and trinkets we bought our very first console, the Super Nintendo which came with the Nintendo Scope! For as long we as can remember video games have been a huge part of our lives and yeah it might not be everyone’s favourite hobby but to us it has become more than just a past time but rather a lifestyle.
It is argued everyday that gaming is bad for a child’s health and mental development; it impedes social skills and can have detrimental effects on eyesight. For the last twenty years (that’s no exaggeration) we’ve been playing video games and in that time the industry has shaped our lives and contributed in no small way to the people we are today – we are a perfect example of the positive effects gaming has on a person’s life. So let’s take a look at the arguments put forward by those who feel gaming is bad for your health and your social development.
People who game tend to be socially awkward and keep to themselves, clinging to the escapism offered in virtual worlds rather than face the ‘real world’. FALSE. That’s a gross overstatement in every sense – gaming, like any other hobby, be it playing sports, music, art or collecting, does have its fanatics and serious enthusiasts but it doesn’t mean a person becomes anti-social. Online games, such as World of Warcraft or EVE offer gamers an even wider social network than their normal circle of friends – players will have friends from all around the world, they might not ever meet but a friendship formed online between a Paladin and a Rogue can be just as real as two people meeting in a bar. The new trend in console gaming, online multiplayer (Xbox Live, Wii Network) and family or group (Wii, Kinect) oriented games means that the image of the lone gamer sat in front of a TV is fading away and gaming is now seen as something that the whole family can do by coming together and playing a party game.
Gaming is bad for your health – causing eyesight problems, obesity and an aversion to sunlight (much like vampirism…that’s a joke). FALSE.
According to research carried out by Professor Daphne Bavelier from the University of Rochester, New York, “…video gamers tend to be more attune to their surroundings while performing tasks like driving down a residential street, where they may be more likely to pick out a child running after a ball than a non-video gamer. The research also suggests that action game playing might be a useful tool to rehabilitate visually impaired patients or to train soldiers for combat.” With games like “Wii Fit” and the new game for Kinect, “Yourself! Fitness”, more people are using their consoles for than just simply gaming – they have turned exercise into something fun and enjoyable rather than slogging it on a treadmill down at the gym, you can switch on your console and go for a run or practice Yoga in the comfort of your own home and you can even bring friends over to work out with.
The next time someone questions your interest and love for gaming, well now you can point them in the direction of this article! We hope that the @rcade gang will be playing video games for the next twenty years and with the changes and improvements to gaming endless things can only really get better for us gamers!
Now that you’ve read both sides of the argument you can make up your mind and vote for whichever side you agree with, in our poll below.
