Researchers are finding players can make sharper soldiers, drivers and surgeons. Their reaction time is better, their peripheral vision more acute. They are taking risks, finding themselves at ease in a demanding environment that requires paying attention on several levels at once.
While there are countless examples of children vegetating in front of the box, real learning is going on as well. Children who go online to play the World War II shooter fantasy Medal of Honor Allied Assault might last all of 14 seconds if they just hit the Normandy beaches with guns blazing. To succeed, they must come up with a plan – either by typing messages or talking through headphones to teammates whom they may never have met. —Daniel Rubin —Ahead of the game? (Philly.com)
This reporter still equates videogames with juvenile behavior — the “cute” conclusion equates studying videogames with never having to grow up. Other than that, this is a good article, which very quickly moves beyond soccer-mom fears about computer games.
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Thanks for some excellent advice!
One learns to write by writing. I have been on deadline for a quarter century. Ground yourself in the toughest sort of reporting first. I started as a police reporter, and worked a career before moving to entertainment. Way back, in Norfolk, Virginia in the beginning of the 1980s, I covered police, fire and federal courts, and no one wanted to cover a Weather Report show. I volunteered, and quickly added The Pretenders, B52, U2, the Romantics, Stranglers, Springsteen etc.. Then continued on the straight and narrow, reporting on Naval supply thefts, serious stuff, moving to Louisville, where I just did investigative reporting, and then to Philly. I chose entertainment this fall after finishing three years in Berlin, as the European Bureau chief for Knight Ridder, which owns the Inquirer and others. This was safer than dodging bullets in the Balkans and Israel, which I did a lot. So my new beat is the business of entertainment, and I cover what I have missed in the past three years: how dessert in America became the main course. I am drawn to marketing, new media and music. I do a couple stories a week, typically, and get to choose about half my assignments – stuff like spam poetry, the politics of the iPod, downloading ethics, and now, edifying gaming. My advice, to recap is read and write. Then read some more, and talk it over with a friend. Then write like it keeps you from sinking.
Daniel, in my intro to journalism class last term, there were a few students who were very interested in being entertainment reporters… I focused more on the nuts & bolts of what journalism is and how it functions in society, though of course I encouraged them to write for the student paper. Do you have any advice for students who aspire to do the sorts of things you do?
Happily, there was no resistence to the piece’s premise, which I hoped would stir up some stuff. I agree with your needing to occasionally pinch: my father worried what would become of the kids who stayed in his room listening to music, and here were are a few decades later, writing about music etc… and still building that record collection.
I’ll admit… just this afternoon I was telling a colleague that sometimes I have to pinch myself when I realize what I get to teach and study for a living. I don’t think it’s a phenomenon specific to videogames — other forms of pop culture (comic books, anime, sci fi, fantasy, horror) are attracting the attention of people who grew up with it, who have had their morals and concepts of aesthetics formed according to these genres, who already spend hours cataloging, critiquing, arguing, and even offering their own fan fiction… while many are probably content simply to be consumers of popular media, many others are eager for the kind of enlightement that advanced critical study can offer. In my case, I notice this especially with weblogs.
As I said, your article was good — I’m just noticing patterns that journalists who write about new media fall into, and as a teacher I’m hoping to be alert to those patterns so I can point them out to my students. I recognize that as a journalist you are writing for a much broader audience than I would address in an academic paper or even in my classroom… but again, I commend you for acknowledging the mainstream resistance to game culture without wallowing in it.
Thanks for considering the kicker to be ‘cute.’ I was going for a different effect. What is amazing to most, i think, is that the focus of piece, Jamie, has grown up with games, studies games, and aspires to work in games. The rewards for this are more immediate and impressive than for, say, reading Beowolf, which is what my mother wanted.
Dan