Addicted

I have become completely addicted to playing the original Nintendo. Sure, I have to stop it every once and a while and blow on the cartridge a couple times, but it lacks all the confusing nuances of modern day consoles. I never get dizzy or nauseous and there is something nostalgic about playing. As I am sitting there delightfully enraptured in my game, a few of my parents' friends come over for wine and, apparently, a FEMALE college student is not allowed to play video games. They can;t imagine the draw of video games for a girl. They are all astonished, not only that I am playing video games, but also at the fact that the Playstation 2 is sitting right next to me...unused. My mother's friend asks if this is what my college education has taught me. My dad smirks and tells them that I am in fact taking a Video Games class and this is "homework" (with air quotes and sarcasm). Another friend remarks that his 12 year old son is addicted to video games and they are thinking about not allowing him to play anymore because of the stereotypical objections (they're too violent, they promote anti-social behavior and laziness, etc). So, being the video game scholar that I am (or pretend to be), I try to explain that video games are much more than just a game that children use to be anti-social and lazy. Everyone quickly dismisses my argument.

Being a child of technology, I took to the internet and Google to find something scientific to prove my point. Thousands of results come back, but one study done by the University of Rochester was particularly interesting to me. A survey was taken of 1000 gamers. They were asked about their motivations for playing. The researchers quickly found that there was a deeper psychological need to play video games. "Players reported feeling best when the games produced positive experiences and challenges that connected to what they know in the real world...It's our contention that the psychological 'pull' of games is largely due to their capacity to engender feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness". I showed this data to my parents' friends and it was as if they could not fathom that there is any real value to video games. After three bottles of wine and close to two and a half hours of debate, they finally agreed that maybe there was more to video games than they had originally thought and that a class like ours did have a place in a well-rounded education.

With the debate done, I happily returned to my game of Mario 3, as they chattered on about how much the world has changed.

If you'd like to read the full article, here's the link:
http://www.physorg.com/news86358590.html