Originally Posted by Lazortag
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Stein's position is interesting because if he were just talking about regular video games, it would be extremely apparent that he was full of shit. The cognitive stimulation that someone gets from playing the average video game isn't really any worse than that which you'd be getting from the average book. This isn't to say that people shouldn't read, or that playing video games is an adequate substitution for reading, but rather that both have their benefits.
The truth is that most of our current media is actually way more complex than it was 40 years ago. Even god awful TV shows like Heroes have a bazillion more plotlines going on at once than the average show from back in the day. Again, this isn't to say that shows have gotten *better*, but that they've gotten more complex and stimulating, and that the conventional wisdom that they "rot our brains" is unsupported nonsense.
Video games can be very complex and challenging too. Even some older and simpler games like Smash TV or Contra 3 could be hard as hell and required people to think quickly so that they could avoid getting killed. And yeah, sometimes that meant that players just memorized everything they had to do to win, but that's good in its own way. There have been at least a few studies that I know of linking video games to improved memory, and it's not like that's surprising - people like to win at games, and lots of games reward people with good memories. Replace "people with good memories" with "people who are good at math", "people who think quickly", "people who can spell", "people who can read", etc. and that describes a lot of the people who benefit from games.
Even games that aren't that difficult can stimulate the mind. Lots of early SNES RPG's were really easy, but they were essentially no different from any other story-telling medium. If I were to write down the story to a final fantasy game and make a book or a play out of it, would that make it better somehow? Is there some reason why telling a story by using a video game makes it unstimulating, or are all stories in video games just bad?
Stein's argument is based on two things: the fact that games can be time-consuming, and the idea that the time spent playing games is "wasted potential". That's true insofar as the time spent reading the books in the harry potter series is wasted potential. People spend literally days reading all of those books, so like, shouldn't they be out working minimum wage jobs and stuff? Wouldn't that be more productive?
When people are playing everquest, maybe it's not that clear what cognitive stimulation they're getting out of it. But I'm sure you can't just reduce everquest to mindless grinding, at least not classic everquest, which we all know can be very challenging. The game actually does make people think, balance priorities, add, subtract, read, use basic math, etc. It also does kind of have a story - as I said, the whole experience isn't just limited to mindless leveling. Not to mention, it lets you meet some interesting (to say the least) people, and that's usually a plus.
Also, even though it's not terribly relevant, Ben Stein generally says very stupid things. I think he was the one who tried to argue that muslims were going to take over Europe in 20 years or something? Also if he believes in intelligent design like President says, then that's just unforgivable.
edit: TLDR: stein's dumb.
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02-02-2011, 02:16 AM
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