Beep Beep Boop.
November 16th, 2006 by Kevin
Can someone explain to me the point of the modern video game?Against my better judgment I allowed my father to purchase a Playstation 2 for the J-Man last Christmas. I have found that, if left to his own devices (which he is not), the child would sit in front of the thing and drool until sometime next month, foregoing food, drink, and probably even Legos in order to stare, hypnotized, at the screen.
If I do not check on him at least every two minutes he will attempt to stand up and walk into the screen like Carol Ann from Poltergeist. This scares me.
Anyway, while I am too uncoordinated to even consider handling a controller that has more than one button (With the exception of Dance Dance Revolution, because = AWESOME), I sometimes watch him play. I have come to the conclusion that these games are ridiculous. Nobody ever, ever dies.
If you die, you get your life back. You are not shackled with a finite number of lives, so you are free to do anything you wish, like jump off a cliff three hundred times in a row just to hear the stupid sound effect (I speak from experience). The game just goes on and on and on and fucking ON.
When I was young (here cometh the old fart story), we had a “ColecoVision” and I played “Q-Bert”. Q-bert was a little orange alien-thingy that had to jump up a pyramid of blocks without getting hit by falling balls or eaten by a snake. If you got hit or eaten, you bit it. It you lost your three lives, game over. You hit Reset and played again, trying to better your score and whup your mom’s ass. (My mom was vicious on the ColecoVision.)
Eventually I suppose you could beat the game - I never did, due to the fact that I have the hand-eye coordination of a dead squirrel, but I’m sure a lot of kids did - and then you would start over or maybe play a different game.
This is the sort of video game logic I understand, not this playing and playing and playing and saving one’s game for ninety years and never winning or losing or doing anything even remotely challenging because you know you’re not going to croak.
Everyone seems to be so surprised why kids are so inactive and so fucking glued to video games now - hell, it’s because they never die. They have no opportunity to say, “Well, fuck it, my game’s over, I might as well go outside/read a book/go torture my siblings,” because it just goes on and on and on and on; and kids are, are their own, not the best judges of when things should stop. If adults aren’t telling them to stop, they’re not going to ante up the controllers.
Forget these wussy games with their never-ending levels, I say. Bleh. Still, a half an hour of that thing bleeping and blooping and I’m ready to toss it out a window.
I have Playstation hatred issues.
It’s a good thing, too, or my kid would be mute and blind by now.
Happy Thursday.
dom wrote on 11/16/06 at 11:42 am :
games don’t have a Game Over anymore? what’s up with that? how long have i been away from video games that i didn’t even know this? and that seems to mean something philosophically. we’re teaching kids there’s no consequences? everything has a do-over?
Katie wrote on 11/16/06 at 11:51 am :
Adults embrace that kind of thing because they see it as different than the norm (because of Q-Bert style games), but it’s becoming so common, kids are adopting it as a lifestyle, not a fun but impractical alternative. They’re doing a lot of research about how that sort of thing effects test scores. Essentially, they’ve discovered that this leads kids believe in the power of “do-overs” a lot more than they did fifteen years ago, and they apply that knowledge to school. In some ways, it’s interesting because it should lead education away from standardised testing and “you know it or you don’t” and could lead to much more explorative learning. It also suggests that they’re more accepting of failure. Obviously, though, this just doesn’t apply to a math test, and lots of other pass/fail parts of life. Start that boy playing Number Munchers and Oregon Trail, he’ll learn (and then he’ll apprecite his graphics and game play so much more, having experienced 16 bit up close).
Rumblelizard wrote on 11/16/06 at 11:52 am :
It’s not just kids. My friend’s boyfriend got a Nintendo and she started calling it “No-Friend-O.”
trancejen wrote on 11/16/06 at 12:16 pm :
Katie, that’s really interesting, and I can totally see why kids would adopt a sort of blase attitude about things, given the fact that they never have to face losing. I know my own kid flips if he gets a bad grade, which is rare, but he can’t understand the concept that he Might Not Win. It’s been a hard thing to try to teach.
And Rumble, no shit. I hate when kids come over to ‘play’, and that’s what they want to ‘play’. “Play”, my ass. That ain’t playin’.
Loob wrote on 11/16/06 at 12:26 pm :
Not to be rattling the cage here or negating the Playstation hatred,
but heh!… I was wondering what the J-Man’s favourite Playstation 2 games are,
because last year my nephew got one and I gave him Crash Bandicoot, but this year I don’t know what to get him.
Veronica wrote on 11/16/06 at 12:30 pm :
Heh, Oregon Trail.
“Granny has died of Dysentery.”
Pam wrote on 11/16/06 at 12:43 pm :
You should read this
I’m 22 and my boyfriend is 24, our household income is $100k+, and we LOOOOOOOVE video games! We have a PS2, an Xbox 360, a gamecube, and a Saturn (we never play the Saturn). We’ll soon have a Wii and a PS3. Might I suggest you look into the Wii? It’s supposed to be a revolution in gaming (you move around the controller like a mouse, instead of using a bunch of complicated buttons).
Trish wrote on 11/16/06 at 1:03 pm :
Kind of like no winners and no losers in Kiddie Soccer. Every player recieves a trophy.
Loob wrote on 11/16/06 at 1:33 pm :
We had an Atari and I was very Frogger adept.
Mish wrote on 11/16/06 at 2:48 pm :
OK, jealous of Pam’s happy though video game filled days. i once play with some friends and was so stoned i couldnt make heads or tails of the controller, but most likely would have been the same had i been sober. this was like 8 yrs ago so i actually died. and was happy. i hate todays video games but really wish my parents had not tossed my atari with centipede, frogger, asteroids, pong, traffic…etc
i miss them…
but you can play them online with a quick google
trancejen wrote on 11/16/06 at 3:10 pm :
I LOVED playing Frogger at the arcade. Man.
Cruel Irony wrote on 11/16/06 at 4:18 pm :
Here’s my old lady story: They had pinball when I was growing up. Not only did you have to leave your house, you also had to pay to play and you definitely “died” at some point. (I usually died very quickly becasue I couldn’t afford to play pinball on a regular basis.) Plus, you had to stand up and move around. Oh, and get this… sometimes you had to wait for a turn on the machine.
trancejen wrote on 11/16/06 at 4:19 pm :
SHOCKING!! LOL. I still like pinball.
Mare wrote on 11/16/06 at 4:24 pm :
I love Pinball. Like, I LOVE it. I could easily spend hours in front of one of those machines… and that’s as far as my gaming thing goes. You don’t have to understand the rules for pinball. You just have to hit the ball with the flippers. Easy-peasy, and FUN!
Deirdre-70 wrote on 11/16/06 at 5:31 pm :
You want to hear something “out there”? I do not allow video games in my home. Yes, you heard correctly, I have a 7 year old and a 15 year old that are video game virgins.
If they are sitting and playing a game, it is either connect 4 or cranium. Once in a while they dig out my old Battleship game or play a cardgame.
They also read books….do puzzles….or scrapbook with me.
I am definately not the norm, but I don’t feel that is a bad thing, not bad at all.
Deirdre
trancejen wrote on 11/16/06 at 6:12 pm :
Deirdre, I think you are fucking-A right on. I LOVE Cranium. We have both Cadoo and the regular.
Kungfukitten wrote on 11/16/06 at 6:18 pm :
I used to love Ms. PacMan, that was MY game. I was on Stickam the other night chatting with an entourage of 20 something boy geeks and they ALL had World of Warcraft or something like that, accounts. The only thing I know about that game is that South Park and American Dad both did hysterical parodies on it. I guess the more you play the bigger and badder your character gets, sort of like D&D and you can “conference” with your friends online and band together to solve quests or fight other people. Anyone here play it? Is it cool? Way of the future?
Meg wrote on 11/16/06 at 6:41 pm :
Kung Fu Kitten - yes, I play World of Warcraft and it is really fun. I thought South Park’s episode was really funny, but American Dad’s was just a rip off of SP, imo. You can work your way up to level 60 by doing quests, and a lot of quests are too hard to do on your own, so you can play with friends. If you have a microphone, you can all hear each other while you play. I mostly type to people. But then, I play with my husband and we can hear each other since we’re in the same room, heh.
My younger brother used to play video games all the time, and the games changed a lot over the course of our childhoods. He is only 2 years younger than me. So I witnessed a lot of the video game playing, even if I didn’t do as much of it myself. Anyway, the kid the used to write papers in school comparing the epic and long journeys (which do eventually end, btw, TranceJen; the reason you probably haven’t seen an end to the game is because your kid is still so young so hasn’t finished one yet, I’m guessing), to ones in literature. He even compared some scifi type games to scifi novels, and referenced literary allusions. Some of the words helped his vocabulary grow (where’d you learn that word, bro? the video game!), which was unexpected. And now he works as a video game programmer (after obtaining a degree from a video game centered university) and makes a sweet salary.
My husband is a big gamer, too, in hobby, and in his career. And my older brother is, as well, since he is an animator.
So coming from a family full of gamers, I’ve got to say I’ve developed a different perspective on it, and an appreciation for how video games can actually spark creativity, friendship, and fun conversations. Not all video games rot the mind or do bad things for kids. They are what you make of them.
Loob wrote on 11/16/06 at 6:49 pm :
I’m thinking this might be the way to go!
http://www.gamehead.com.au/product.php?productid=88548&cat=&page=1
monkey-king wrote on 11/16/06 at 8:01 pm :
Get the game “Monster Rancher” I got Kelly kinda hooked on it. That’s one you’d probably play more than J-man.
trancejen wrote on 11/17/06 at 10:31 am :
Loob, we have that game. LOL
Loob wrote on 11/17/06 at 7:35 pm :
Dang, that Monster Rancher game looks great, but it’s harder to find than hen’s teeth, here in Aus. Sucks to be us!
Loob wrote on 11/17/06 at 10:18 pm :
Ooh! Do you love the Lego Star Wars?? Cos I found one and bought it for my nephew! Hope he likes it!
Loob wrote on 11/17/06 at 10:23 pm :
Sorry I didn’t respond very quickly, the comment didn’t come through for awhile on my pc.