FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

ONES + ZEROS: Videogaming Your Way to Success

h4. "Ones and Zeros":http://motherboard.tv/profiles/ones_and_zeros/posts is Motherboard's daily investigation into the particle accelerator that is the internet. Ones, you’ll come to expect, represent what’s “good” and zeros, what’s “bad.” Get more...

Ones and Zeros is Motherboard’s daily investigation into the particle accelerator that is the internet. Ones, you'll come to expect, represent what's "good" and zeros, what's "bad." Get more through our Facebook and Twitter.

1. Aaron Barr becomes a meme

The consequence of flopping horribly when confronting an ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous these days is your very own meme.

1. Watson v. Humanity Part 1

1. Drink Different

via Scoopertino

Advertisement

0. Video games do not equal success

Yesterday was a day to give video games their due, a celebration of the continued evolution of a beautiful immersive art form. Today, an overenthusiastic author and video game designer, Jane McGonigal, has taken it a step too far, arguing that playing video games is the key to success these days.

The single biggest misconception about games is that they’re an escapist waste of time. But more than a decade’s worth of scientific research shows that gaming is actually one of the most productive ways we can spend time.

Which is not to say that I don’t disagree. Indeed, I have long been a serious patron of the arts, at one point even playing competitively. I’ll admit. I love video games. It’s her justification though, that just doesn’t do it for me.

No, playing games doesn’t help the GDP – our traditional measure of productivity. But games help us produce something more important than economic bottom line: powerful emotions and social relationships that can change our lives—and potentially help us change the world.

Bold words, but also general and ambiguous. Instead of any real support, she highlights the one fallacy of her entire argument — that playing video games inherently lacks real world productivity. As a learning tool, it’s certainly useful for teaching concepts but the same argument could be made for television and would you really say that watching TV leads to success. It’s a leisure activity with learning capacity but not with the same depth as say, reading.

Advertisement

Until artificial intelligence reaches some mythical Singularity level, video games are always restricted to their particular system. No matter how complex or realistic it is, it will always pale in comparison to reality and the life lessons learned through actual experience — participating in activities that offer true end products. Like sports.

McGonigal also downplays the negative potential, mentioning it briefly in her final paragraphs.

But when you hit 28 hours a week of gaming or more, the time starts to distract you from real life goals and other kinds of social interaction that are essential to leading a good life. Multiple studies have shown it’s the 21-hour mark that really makes the difference — more than 3 hours a day, and you’re not going to get those positive impacts. Instead, you’ll be at risk for negative impacts — like depression and social anxiety.

It’s a critical risk, getting lost in a fantasy world. It’s a journey on a path to nowhere, an exercise in futility, culminating in a narrow set of skills that offer little social value. Not that that things couldn’t change. It’s easy to imagine a world where video gaming does become exponentially more prominent in a time where athleticism reaches its cultural peak, if it ever does.

For now though, success does not begin with a controller sitting in front of the TV.