Games Teach Kids To Think Like Adults
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday December 8, 2008
OH, THE irony. In a week that the media became hysterical about kids not getting enough exercise because they stayed inside and played video games, we learnt the year's best-selling game was Wii Fit - a series of fun exercises for the whole family. So the problem was the solution.
Let's not be glib. Wii Fit (pronounced "we fit") may have sold a couple of hundred thousand copies, but that's a drop in the ocean of games that exercise the thumbs alone. Game sales are up 40 per cent on last year, in other words, after Christmas, Australians will have bought 22 million of them - that's on top of the fortune we've spent for the latest consoles to play them - Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the handheld Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable. Many non-players assume that even if games are not the sole cause of childhood obesity, they still turn our teenagers into zombies and criminals. Let's analyse the chart for the year so far, supplied by the research organisation GfK Australia: Best selling games of 2008: 1) Wii Fit; 2) Wii Play; 3) Mario Kart Wii; 4) Grand Theft Auto IV (PlayStation 3); 5) Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360); 6) Mario & Sonic At The Olympics (Wii); 7) Mario & Sonic At The Olympics (Nintendo DS); 8) Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii); 9) World Of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King (home computer); 10) Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (Nintendo DS). They fall on a spectrum from the wholesome to the antisocial. At left are the top Wiis, which emphasise dancing around, and three games that use cartoon characters - Mario the plumber and Sonic the hedgehog - whose leaps might inspire young players to seek sporting careers. No physical or mental harm there. Equally safe (but more time-consuming) is Warcraft's Lich King - an imagination-booster in the spirit of Harry Potter. At the other extreme is Grand Theft Auto IV, in which the player is an urban warrior who becomes entangled in a seedy underworld of gangs, crime and corruption that requires him to steal cars and kill people. Does this confirm your worst expectations? Time to quote Steven Johnson, US sociologist and author of Everything Bad Is Good For You. He says even if gamers don't go to playgrounds as often as generations past, they still end up better people because the games train them in the scientific method. They must think like grown-ups: analyse complex social networks, manage resources, track subtle narrative intertwinings and recognise long-term patterns. In other words, what they lose on the swings and roundabouts, they gain at the console - even if it's just a talent to steal and kill effectively. For details, go to blogs .sunherald.com.au/whoweare
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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