You may have seen the video linked in the news story:
'Kid goes crazy after getting an Xbox 360 for Christmas.'
Video
The sight of that kid going crazy for his Xbox made me both nostalgic and anxious. I'm not saying he shouldn't be happy with his present, but what worries me is that, maybe, nothing else, out of all the gifts you could get a kid at Christmas, could make him happier.
Of course, it's natural for kids to obsess over things they want. But, more and more, it's games consoles and not action figures or toys that they can touch - play ‘with’ and not ‘on’.
Games are great. But they don't encourage the imagination in the same way as toys. I'm in my mid 20s and I've played games since I was this kid's age, but, to be honest, back then I would never have been so obsessed with owning a console. 12-13 maybe. But not at this kid's age. Games simply weren't developed
enough to hold my concentration or give me as much excitement as my Action Man (who, to this day, probably gave me better adventures than any video game could).
But if I'd grown up in this age of Modern Warfares, Uncharted 2s and Fallout 3s. Well. I wonder if my good old Action man with his 'eagle eyes', would have got a look in. And, perhaps, I wouldn't have developed as mature an imagination or capacity for creative thought as I did - or at least, think, I did.
I say all this because I've been working as a Teaching Assistant these last months, helping out with kids (often those who need extra help in their classes) just a little older than this boy. All they talk about is games; I can see them day-dreaming about being on their Xbox when the teacher is reading a story in English, and while it reminds me of how I was at their age (Perfect Dark was a great day-dream), I can't help feel that their were also 'other' distractions I had which were as important (trying to make Star Wars LEGO before Star Wars 'did' LEGO, for instance). It scares me when the conversations I hear between these kids revolve entirely around the different ways you can kill people in MW2 (a game they shouldn't even be playing. Ha, ha, ha), or how good the graphics are in ... oh yeah... MW2.
Now, it's natural for these kids to find these things cool. What kid wouldn't? But what saddens me is that the kids don't engage with gaming on an intellectual or creative level either. They go on and on about what sweet bits of action they've had blasted through their eyeballs, or who they've recently 'OWNED' at FIFA 57,009 but they never talk about the stories in their games or imagine improvements to the games they've played - in other words, they can't access what communities like this talk about all day.
To me, this kind of shallow addiction or obsession with competitive or violent games is symptomatic of a younger generation who don't have to look far for an adrenaline rush. Heck, they only have to turn on the Xbox or PS3. And while I think games ARE more active than cartoons, and I'll be a lifetime hardcore gamer, I don't think children can be raised soley on the videogame industry's current output of titles. Gaming isn't the same for them, they can't appreciate how it's grown or that there WAS anything else we did for fun. It would seem rightly absurd to them, given how good videogames are today. But kids should be able to play in the purest sense shouldn't they? Without computers. As adults, we find it hard to go back to a time when a broom handle could be a lightsabre, or cardboard box a general purpose tool for inventing sets for toys. These kids might lose the ability before they knew they had it.
I know that if I have children, I wouldn't want them to miss out on what the virtual world has to offer, for games opened my eyes to some great ideas, but I would consider it a loss of innocence on their part if they couldn't see the fun to be had with a box of LEGO or my collection of Star Wars figures.
In short, I consider myself lucky to have had both traditional, low-tech play and a high-tech, virtual play as part of my upbringing. Today, I'm in awe of how far games have come. But such powerful machines would have robbed me of part of my childhood - I am almost certain of it, given how much time I spend with games as an adult.
The undertone to this blog: this video could show the day this kid stopped 'playing' in his mind, and started playing on his TV. I hope not.
What do you think?
Kids today are getting way to immersed in games that require little thought and imagination and while there is a plethora of those titles out there kids that young don't play those to the same extent and if it was the case that they those instead of their precious MW2 that as you mentioned they shouldn't even be playing in the first place.
But I think it is all due to the marketing hype of a game on the scale of MW2 and that its basically a fad, something "cool". If creative games like LBP (that did reach a wide audience) where more encouraged in the gaming industry and age limits were re-inforced in stores and first and foremost parents took an active stance on the amount of time spent on a console vs other activities that engage the creative mind more. It's a problem indeed but in an age where everything has to be easily accessible, quick and without effort it will undoubtedly inspire laziness unless preventive steps are taken.