"If we deny children access to all computer games, we deprive them of a rich and magical experience," argues Naomi Alderman in a post published today on Comment is Free. Alderman, an author and game writer, is irked by the decision of the Advertising Standards Authority to ban Kane and Lynch ads from tv on the basis that they are 'too violent". From the post:
It is interesting that adverts for last year's "torture porn" film Captivity were not banned, even though they were heavily criticised in the US. And no one even raises the possibility of banning such films outright. But then, computer games are our society's straw man for panic about moral decay, thought to have some special power to harm and corrupt.
She speaks as a gamer herself, and one of the authors involved in Six to Start's and Penguin's storytelling experiment, We Tell Stories. While the comments she receives on the whole are positive (it's still early days), some comments are not, and I believe concerns of the detractors deserve to be heard.
Two threads seem to obsess them: first, that games may be harmless, but to propose that they may be good for kids is to have drunk too much of the industry's Kool Aid. As Uncle Phaester says,
I think most video games are harmless but to pretend that indulging in them in some way opens up children's minds to the world is ridiculous and, coming from someone who writes games, should be give as much credence as we'd give the chairman of Shell arguing that his company was environmentally friendly.
The second line of thought from the game skeptics is that kids should be doing things other than playing games. lierbag, for example, claims that games are - ironically - 'passive' entertainment:
The problem with computer games, is that you are essentially leeching off someone else's imagination without making any intellectual or emotional contribution of your own - all possibilities and permuatations having already been programmed in. As such, it's partly responsible for ushering in one of the laziest-minded generations ever to grace the planet, and their 'culture' of completely passive receptivity.
Certainly different than your traditional, knee-jerk commentary which floods the interwaves when such pieces are published on less liberal news sources. I'd love to hear what you have to say. Head to Comment Is Free and add your tuppence.
