There is no doubt that from their lonely beginnings in the days of Pong, to today, computer games have infiltrated our society in ways we would never have imagined. Today, you find them popping up everywhere. We have Pac-Man on cartoons, and World of Warcraft showing up on the South Park TV show. Here are a few examples of how computer games have changed the world.
Computer games can influence the real world
Video games as a new medium
Just like movies before them, video games have given us an entirely new medium for entertainment. Just as movies have developed in sophistication over the decades since the early silent films, video games have come a long way since the old Pong games. Movies gave us a new way to experience stories, ideas, and worlds. They make us laugh, cry, and almost scare us to death sometimes. Video games now offer another way to explore new worlds and engage in new stories in an interactive format just like Dirt Bike Games 365, and they can sometimes scare us, too.
They’re not just for teenage boys
The stereotype is that video games are all teenage boys, who sit in a darkened room with a bag of chips, playing games for hours on end. While there is a reason for that stereotype, it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are now people who like video games in different age ranges, including men and women, boys and girls. Generations have grown up with video games, and now parents may even play video games with their kids.
In some scenarios, video games can be used to help people recover from severe health conditions, like dementia for example. There have been many studies performed on this matter, and it looks like video games managed to improve a patient’s cognitive functions.
Coloring our impressions of the world
Much has been written about whether violence in video games makes people more accepting of violence in the real world, or contributes to violent tendencies. While the jury is still out on that one, it is definitely a possibility. Another game that inspired controversy was Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, with people taking sides about whether she is a strong woman role model, or an objectified female plaything. For girl gamers, many were at least happy to have a woman as hero. Video games are also able to address more complex topics than just shoot-em-up violence. For example, “Papers, Please” is a game that examines guilt and evil in the world.
Changing a person’s life
One game industry reporter said that Minecraft literally changed his autistic son’s life. Though his son had books, Legos and plenty of other toys, Minecraft let him create his own imaginative world. He could design his own castles, filling them with traps, wild animals, and whatever he liked. It gave him an outlet for expressing himself that he enjoyed enthusiastically, and it let him create a world where he was the master.
Because video games are so successful, and have a way of getting people’s attention and drawing them in, gamification is a new trend that injects game-like features into other products. In games you can score points, and get rewards for completing certain quests or objectives. Sites everywhere now have incentives and rewards based on video games.
For instance, in the social site FourSquare, you earn points for every check-in, see where your score ranks against your friends, and get badges for completing certain activities. Gamification is everywhere, and it’s just impossible to stop it. How can we persuade people from playing video games when they’re so entertaining, challenging, addictive, and yes, in some ways they can be educational too.
