Gaming

While Jane McGonigal's TED Talk is inspiring (I took three full pages of notes), I found another article equally inspiring (or rather depressing) that counters her arguments. 

CNN's 'The Demise of Guys': How video games and porn are ruining a generation discusses how gaming in itself is a real-world problem. According to the article, "...young men become hooked on arousal, sacrificing their schoolwork and relationships in the pursuit of getting a tech-based buzz."

McGonigal refers to this “tech-based buzz” as a high that people of the world should be feeding off. She says gamers feel a sense of urgency, fear, concentration and deep focus while playing games—something the world needs more of to solve its problems.

When gaming, McGonigal says we become “the best version of our self”, “the most likely to help at a moment’s notice”, “the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes…to get up after failure and try again”.

Yet, according to CNN’s article and the research therein, “the best version of our self” during gaming is essentially, the best version of our self during gaming and nothing more. We aren’t applying our gaming “high” to conquer the world, as McGonigal would like us to believe.

The CNN article continues: "The excessive use of video games and online porn in pursuit of the next thing is creating a generation of risk-averse guys [and girls] who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment.”

McGonigal states that when playing a multi-player video-game, characters trust each other without even knowing each other. “Characters are willing to trust you with a world-saving mission, right away,” McGonigal enthuses. She refers to this level of trust as collaborative.

But other researchers are finding gaming to be destructive rather than collaborative.

“Stories about the degeneration are rampant: In 2005, Seungseob Lee, a South Korean man, went into cardiac arrest after playing ‘StarCraft’ for nearly 50 continuous hours,” CNN states. “Norwegian mass murder suspect Anders Behring Breivik reported during his trial that he prepared his mind and body for his marksman-focused shooting of 77 people by playing ‘World of Warcraft’ for a year and then ‘Call of Duty’ for 16 hours a day.”

McGonigal argues that time like that spent gaming is time well used.

“When we talk about how much time we’re currently investing in playing games, the only way it makes sense to even think about it is to talk about time at the magnitude of human evolution, which is an extraordinary thing,” she says. “But it’s also apt because it turns out by spending all this time playing games, we’re actually changing what we’re capable of as human beings—we’re evolving to become a more collaborative and hearty species.”

Hearty might be one way to explain it, or, maybe, heartless.

CNN states that “…video games also go wrong when the person playing them is desensitized to reality and real-life interactions with others”, relating the disconnect between virtual-worlds and reality, where people aren’t given a “level-up” every time they do something good or given another life every time they do something bad.

However, our TED Talker and CNN may have finally reached a consensus on one thing: gaming is a way to “escape real-world suffering…to get away”, McGonigal says.

And that, too, is how I view gaming. That it’s neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It’s just another world—no different than finding yourself lost in a good novel or motion picture, no different than finding yourself lost in social media or the internet, no different than losing track of time talking with a friend or spending a day at the park, carefree of any troubles.

It’s just another world. Adults still play make-believe.