Comments on: Games and the Human Imagination http://james.onegoodcookie.com/2006/03/22/games-and-the-human-imagination/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed Toward simple confusion Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:53:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= By: elisa http://james.onegoodcookie.com/2006/03/22/games-and-the-human-imagination/comment-page-1/#comment-2407 elisa Thu, 23 Mar 2006 03:08:19 +0000 http://james.onegoodcookie.com/?p=126#comment-2407 I am a bit bothered by the author's near blind enthusiastic support for computer games for the creativity that they foster. I do agree that those against computer/video games miss the bigger picture, but I think that the author also misses a good deal of it. Believing that video & computer gaming will eventually lead to a world "as a place for creation, not consumption" is a pipe dream. The contents of many video games today are oriented around consumption. Car video games are exteremely so. Most of these games allow the user to completely modify a car and even buy a car to sup up. With credits accumulated by your wins, you can turn a bust ass supra and turn it into the top-winning car of your video world with parts you purchase. Who are the hard-core players of these sorts of games: people who are obsessed with supping their cars. What is at work here: consumerism or creativity? There are a variety of other games that although they do help in the development of crucial non-linear problem solving skills often associated with creativity, I think that they do imbue a stagnation of the skills through which this creativity could be realized in their actual world. Perhaps it is the fact that the cyber world is unlike the real world in that things are not as easy as directing your character to walk to that hidden cave that took you 102 steps to reach and take whatever is inside to another hidden cave to continue on to your goal. In the real world, completing 102 steps to get to the oportunity for another 102 steps are not as easy as pressing buttons and the application of creative problem solving skills and the like. When you walk into a cave, you are really walking. When you have to research to no end leading to madness in order to write a 10 page paper in order get a good grade just to continue on to more similarly hard tasks with their own subtasks all just to get a good grade in a class which will eventually lead to other classes and in the fashion eventually graduate (long sentence in progress), then it is hard to loose one's way. No amount of creativity can help at times. Sometimes, what keeps you from learning from your mistakes involves a lot of what I think this generation is missing: Self-driven gumption & integrity. to When walking out of the cave, out of the darkness with whatever it took you forever to reach in your hands, sweat dripping from your forehead, legs burning like battery acid, exhuasted, frustrated, stressed - it is hard to remember exactly where you were going with yourself and such & such task. It is easier to give up or loose sight; to slip into back into the darkness. I am a bit bothered by the author’s near blind enthusiastic support for computer games for the creativity that they foster. I do agree that those against computer/video games miss the bigger picture, but I think that the author also misses a good deal of it. Believing that video & computer gaming will eventually lead to a world “as a place for creation, not consumption” is a pipe dream.

The contents of many video games today are oriented around consumption. Car video games are exteremely so. Most of these games allow the user to completely modify a car and even buy a car to sup up. With credits accumulated by your wins, you can turn a bust ass supra and turn it into the top-winning car of your video world with parts you purchase. Who are the hard-core players of these sorts of games: people who are obsessed with supping their cars. What is at work here: consumerism or creativity?
There are a variety of other games that although they do help in the development of crucial non-linear problem solving skills often associated with creativity, I think that they do imbue a stagnation of the skills through which this creativity could be realized in their actual world.

Perhaps it is the fact that the cyber world is unlike the real world in that things are not as easy as directing your character to walk to that hidden cave that took you 102 steps to reach and take whatever is inside to another hidden cave to continue on to your goal. In the real world, completing 102 steps to get to the oportunity for another 102 steps are not as easy as pressing buttons and the application of creative problem solving skills and the like. When you walk into a cave, you are really walking. When you have to research to no end leading to madness in order to write a 10 page paper in order get a good grade just to continue on to more similarly hard tasks with their own subtasks all just to get a good grade in a class which will eventually lead to other classes and in the fashion eventually graduate (long sentence in progress), then it is hard to loose one’s way. No amount of creativity can help at times. Sometimes, what keeps you from learning from your mistakes involves a lot of what I think this generation is missing: Self-driven gumption & integrity. to

When walking out of the cave, out of the darkness with whatever it took you forever to reach in your hands, sweat dripping from your forehead, legs burning like battery acid, exhuasted, frustrated, stressed – it is hard to remember exactly where you were going with yourself and such & such task. It is easier to give up or loose sight; to slip into back into the darkness.

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