What Are Video Games Turning Us Into?
Page 5 of 6 -- Most games offer at least a soupcon's worth of value with their entertainment. Simulation games, like the wildly popular Sims series, give players control over every aspect of life in a virtual city, from individuals' personality traits to transportation infrastructure - which takes no small amount of work to control. Titles like Civilization, an epoch-spanning strategy game that takes players from Babylonian villages to F15 fighter jets, are based, if loosely, on world history. Perhaps most significantly, video games have joined television and movies as a social leveler that cuts across geographic, economic, and, now, generational divides.
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"The reason why my mom started letting us watch cartoons on Saturday mornings was so we would be able to have conversations with other kids, and the same went for video games," says Craig Colbeck, a 26-year-old Harvard graduate student who, as a latchkey teenager, spent many hours playing video games after school. "People always talk about how isolating the games are, but really, if you want to isolate your kid, send him outside to climb a tree. You climb a tree, you're the only one up there."
If the cliche were ever true of the lone teen outcast staring at a glowing game screen alone in a darkened room, it's emphatically not true anymore. Gaming consoles come with slots for four controllers, and in my house, those slots are rarely empty, as a rotating pack of fifth-graders socializes at decibel levels that make me long for a little treetop isolation. Multiplayer games, in which two or more people play together, are hot now, as is gaming over the Internet, either one-on-one or as part of what's known as a massively multiplayer online game, where thousands of players, or more, around the world interact within a fictional universe.
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All this talk of community building across the continents is a far cry from pistol-whipping prostitutes in the privacy of your living room. Which influence will prevail? And, practically speaking, which scenario will play out when the Connors of the world take their place in the cubicle next to yours? Optimists are bullish on gamers' potential contribution to corporations. In the next five to 10 years, says Jim Ware, an executive producer with The Future of Work, an online research and education organization, companies will seek out employees who can work independently, collaborate easily, and function in small team environments - all talents gamers have in spades. "What we call the iPod generation of gamers, they've grown up with technology and learned to collaborate with one another in a play environment," says Charlie Grantham, another Future of Work principal. "This all easily translates to a work environment."
Of course, there is one teeny hitch, Grantham concedes. All that empowerment gamers have gained by exercising their innate problem-solving skills might not be particularly management-friendly. "These folks aren't going to say, 'Is this what my boss wants to do?' They're going to say, 'Let's dig in and see what's under here,' " Grantham says. "That's bad news for bosses who are control freaks." Continued...
