Healthy or the Scourge of good health?
I am a gamer.
There, I have admitted to the world that I play games. However, I have been playing games since a little boy, some...um...well, let's just say it's been more than four decades now, and counting. So I know a little about the whole gaming argument, perhaps not an expert on the subject, but certainly well rounded in it, and an expert at the topic of what constitutes a game.
Video games are the subject of today's lazy authors, and I say this because it's easy to write about something you don't understand, or care to participate in. I could most likely write 300 pages on drinking and its evil affects on our children and adults, since I don't drink alcoholic beverages and could submit my views on the detrimental affects on those who do. i could say things in my tome such as, "Bush must drink a lot, otherwise why would he make so many poor decisions?", and no one would flinch, except those who drink with him.
Video games are different. They're the new "closet activity" and I find this, if not hilarious, at least funny. With sales of video systems in the millions, and games in the billions, it is hard to believe that anyone in American hasn't played a video game sometime in their life. Did playing that game cause them to go out and kill someone? Some have said "Yeha, playing F.E.A.R. made me want to kill zombified experimental creeps, but I couldn't find any, so I just killed the cops and a few nurses," and "Yes, I killed those children because I played Pac-Man for fifty hours nonstop and had to avenge myself on some small, defenseless people, and midgets are hard to find outside Hollywood." Let's me real, people kill because they lose it and take out their anger or frustration on someone else, who just always happens to be someone who is smaller, weaker, less intense, poorly armed, and always not expecting to be assaulted while at the playground, or store buying chewing gum. When I was using the venerable Commodore 64, a wonderful machine and great for entering the computer world, I designed and wrote a Star Trek program...a game. Yes, I know, everyone was writing Star Trek games, and all of them were fun or at least interesting. Mine had graphics in color (16 was enough then) and it had long conversational strings that were all meant to daze and amaze. When complete it took all of an hour to play through, but I don't think anyone played it and went out vaporizing galaxies afterward. Maybe they did, the news back then wasn't so good at getting the really important stories, like they are now.
Having played Doom in all its variations, just about every first person shooter (FPS) ever created, and so many strategy games my chess game improved, I can honestly say the latest games out are no better or worse than the first ones. I can see why kids want to play the new ones, graphically speaking they rock, I love playing BioShock on my Xbox360, so much so my wife silently saved for two years and bought be one of those really cool Epson projectors with the 80" screen. It rules the living room and I have to say, "How did I every live without it?!" I must have been thinking that televisions were the only way to go. kill someone? Don't think so, but if you try to take by big screen away I will bite you, and God knows what'll happen to you then! Seriously, though, the larger screen is wonderful, and I hope to save up for a better, more, uh...what's the word...higher resolution, that's it, projector. I read a book a week, and once in a while I even watch the news, though i admit the older I get the less I watch. This might be due to the fact that after decades of watching things deteriorate, I've become too sensitive to it all, forced to take anti-depressants to deal with what I don't ignore. A nation that was once rapidly changing, seeking new and more powerful means to communicate and transport ideas, goods, and services, has become a nation of intolerant bureaucrats, confused citizens, and mass illegal aliens who insist on having everything their way. Time for me to reestablish the subject here...
Video games may in fact give kids, and some adults, ideas that are counterproductive to society. But some games have been used by the government to train killers for their purposes....I'm talking America's Army here folks, a game the Army helped develop and claims it uses in the training of young killers. And don't give me this crap about the terminology here...when you join an organization, ANY organization, whose sole purpose is to go and wage deadly combat against perceived enemies...you become a killer. You train to kill. You NEVER train to die. You NEVER train to be injured. You train TO KILL. To become a killer is the goal of basic training, and anyone saying different obviously didn't go through basic training. Now, with that said, all of you morons who are upset, cool down...then continue with the rest of us...
If playing F.E.A.R. trains you to kill in the same fashion as basic training, then I should be a damned ranger by now! I love that game, it just appeals to the soldier in my soul. I play it like the character is me, but when I'm done, I find no part of that character remains within me. I haven't gone out and even bought a rifle, (as yet), let alone grenades, pistols, machine guns, etc., etc. Hell, I don't even have a good flashlight that can shoot a beam of light so strong you'll be blinded eternally if you even think you've looked at it! I've played all the Call of Duty games and still haven't joined the Army as fodder. Though I think they'd take me even at my present age and physical dis-condition. I have enjoyed shooting by way through Gun, Half-Life, Quake (the whole series), and other shooters that have come along over the years. For the past five years I've been, lightly put, ill, and unable to leave the house save for doctor visits or hospital trips, and so my life has been playing out vicariously through games and the book I'm writing. Although the book, I admit, is nothing like life at all, mine or anyone else's. Games however, offer me freedom of action. Not thought, mind you, but action. Okay? In a game I can leap about like a fool, shoot a gun or variety of guns, and even die only to be reborn, fresh and ready to take up the banner once more.
I like watching the Science channel and the Discovery channel as well. I spend about six hours a week on gaming, and twenty on television shows. Of the twenty at least half are educational shows, the rest serials and stuff I like. No pornography is on that list, I have found no need for it, but I don't say it's evil and you shouldn't waste your time on it. Blue Planet was a great series which I saved on my DVR and recorded to DVD so I could watch it again, which I will without doubt. As my son isn't able to see these kinds of shows where he's stationed, I also save them for his return to civilization and the land he is fighting for....uh, somehow that should make sense, but it still doesn't. World War II we fought for our country. Iraq isn't my country - Muslim isn't my religion, but I hey, I suck up oil the same as you and at one time my wife worked for Halliburton. Damn if she didn't leave two years or so before the crap hit the fan and Halliburton just happen to get ALL the no bid contracts in Iraq. We could drive a Jag on most days and pull out the Porsche on others, just to let those with less know for sure they are not as good as we are. Hee, hee, hee.
Video games may affect some but not the average player, they play and enjoy the time spent doing so. Some have even made playing games profitable enough to call doing so, "work", winning tournaments with huge payouts and living a lifestyle others dream of. Well, guess what? These folks chose to play games for a living, just because you didn't, don't dump on them, instead praise them for their choices and for the fact you and they live in a country where that is possible. Football players, basketball players, baseball players, all these dudes play a GAME to make a living...why not video players? Wrestlers play act extreme violence in the ring. Some go home and beat their spouses to death, or beat their kids. Some do not. Should you eliminate the entire wrestling forum to prevent this? Police it? Contain the violence to the ring and the problem is solved, but you must know what the cause of the rage is, and it's the steroids these guys take to make huge bodies that excite the crowd, male and female alike. Soldiers come home from wars with their minds unscrewed, and some commit crimes of violence due to post traumatic stress syndrome. I believe in PTSS, but not as a blanket excuse for violence. Not every soldier comes home with this, some come home reasonably normal. No one comes home unaffected. Unless they were in the battle zone with their head in the sand really deep. War does things to the mind, and killing people does not leave you unaffected, unless you have no soul...no conscious to deal with. Anyone who knows the difference between right and wrong will be affected by war. Period.
Moms and dads...where the hell are you? Your kids are playing a violent game...let's just say, RAW, a game of wrestling and beat downs. They get bored with cartoon figures on the screen so they wrestle each other. One body slams his brother into the glass coffee table and the little guy's head is cut to mincemeat. Where were the parents? You don't leave your kids to the television any more than you'd leave them playing in the front yard with a busy street 10 feet away. You watch your kids and you teach them right from wrong. You show them that the wrestling they watch on television isn't real, if it were no one would be healthy enough to do the next day's show! Get it!
Video games...I play them and I enjoy playing them and I will go on playing them. Of course, at $60 bucks a hit, I play only those that are the very best and I no longer buy a game on impulse. This is a decision based on lots of research and consideration. What's due out next and will it be better making it worth the wait, instead of buying a different title now? H ow much cash am I willing to blow on games each year? Well, to be honest, no more than 2 games worth, or about $140 (tax included) each year. I won't buy another system until the next generation of systems has proves itself. I admit I early adopted the 360 and I got screwed by MS like every other owner. 360 standing for the number of days the system works, wasn't one of the factors involved in buying it. My wife pointed this small detail out to be while I was stomping about waiting for the replacement unit to arrive. I sent out a broken $400 model only to receive a $300 model in return. When I called to complain I was told I was lucky to get any model in return. After all, the operator said in a surly voice, "You broke it, why should we replace it for free?" No more MS systems for me. When this one dies as it will soon, I will send it back for replacement but I won't buy a new one. When the next systems come out I'll dump them completely and just write and watch television. But I'm not ready to lose my video games just yet. Have three to finish and I take it as a personal challenge to finish every game I buy.
I will finish my book as well. This is quest I've been on for fifteen years, but more on that later. Right now, I have a cold controller calling me and a screen full of angry Big Daddies and frightened Little Sisters. (I rescue the Little Sisters by the way.)