In an earlier post I talk about games, video games in particular and the positive effects that they have on the people who play them. ( Video games. The bane of modern society?) For the average person they can help improve things like hand to eye coordination. They can also help with pattern recognition and memory improvement. For people with certain handicaps video games can often be used to help lessen the impact. They can do things like helping the deaf learn to speak.
All of that may be new to most people, but is something that I have known for quite a few years now. A recent article in Game Informer magazine about the effects of video games on the dreams of the average gamer, however, kind of blew my mind. The article says that video games actually change the way a person's subconscious mind works. It says that the minds of people who play video games on a regular basis are different from the minds of those who don't.
Yeah okay, different maybe, but in what way? The article went on to say that the average gamer has less nightmares than the average non gamer. At first I thought, that is ridiculous. How could that possibly be true?
But then, I really started thinking about it. I've been an avid gamer ever since about the fourth grade. And I really can't remember ever having any nightmares. In fact most of my dreams are freaking awesome. I have often wondered why other people have nightmares and I don't and I never really came up with a good reason for why not.
Video games teach creativity. They cause us to practice using our imagination to get out of difficult scenarios. I have known for a long time that they helped me to solve difficult problems while awake. It never occurred to me to think that they would do the same for problems in my dreams.
It does make sense though. For years I have known about something called lucid dreaming, where the dreamer realizes that what they are experiencing is not real and once having made that realization can change their dream at will.
When I am asleep there is very little I cannot do. I often have limitless power at my fingertips. I can fly, shoot lasers out of my eyes, blow things up with a thought and move impossibly large objects just by a few simple waves of my hands. I am never trapped and there is always something I can do, no matter what the situation.
After thinking through all of these things, it caused me to accept that the article may be right. So, having trouble sleeping? Break out the old video games and give them a whirl. And even if they don't work to get rid of your nightmares at least you'll have had some fun in the process and gotten your mind off your real world problems for a little while.
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Video games. The bane of modern society?
Awhile back, I made mention of a video game, Grand Theft Auto V. Within a couple of days of its release it had made over a billion dollars in sales. That is a truly astronomical figure and considering what the game is about some may wonder if life as we know it is being ruined by video games in general.
Don't know what I am talking about? Perhaps you don't have a child above the age of ten in your house. Or maybe you don't own a gaming console. As the name implies most of the series is about grand theft, either of or committed with cars and that's the lighter side of the game. Then there's the possibility of hooking up with prostitutes, having your way with them and then beating the tar out of them to get your money back. Although there is a main story line, the general idea is to commit as many crimes as you can possibly get away with all whilst avoiding or taking out the police.
Video games are certainly making a splash in a big way. Many of them such as the GTA series, are outselling every other form of media out there, including books, television, music and even blockbuster movies.
A lot of these games explore and even glorify the bad things that we do to one another. There are quite a few different gaming franchises where the entire purpose of the game is to murder a bunch of other guys before they murder you. Except instead of murder its called warfare. Semantics.
Are these games ruining the moral fiber of our country? I don't think so. I think it is the parents that allow their children to play these games that are damaging our country. And the problem isn't even the fact that they let them play the games. The problem is that they let the video games do the parenting, instead of teaching their kids between right and wrong.
Many young kids and teenagers today have such a screwed up moral compass because the only moral lessons they have received is murder, maim or mess up the other guy, before he can do it to you. Video games are just tools. While primarily designed solely for entertainment purposes, if there is no other source of teaching, they will teach the morals and ideas that are within them.
If however, we, as parents, teach our children right from wrong, how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, and that we want to be the good guys and then don't let our kids play the games that have all of those potential "bad" lessons until they have shown through their way of being that they are on the "right" path, then any game, no matter how violent or morally questionable goes back to simply being a way of blowing off steam. It becomes just a fun thing to imagine, but something we would never do in real life.
When I was a kid, I used to tell my parents that video games had a large range of potential positive effects, things like, improving my memory, teaching pattern recognition, improved creative problem solving and increased hand to eye coordination. They, of course didn't believe me. But when we played the same games I always beat them. Their excuse was they didn't know the game. My reply was to point out that knowing the game had to do with memory and pattern recognition. I got told to shut up.
Since then, numerous studies have been done proving all those things and more can be gained or improved upon by playing video games. I have seen first hand, through my son, about the memory, pattern recognition and problem solving. He is three years old and his favorite game in the world is Lego Marvel Super Heroes. He knows the names of over a hundred of the characters and can correctly pronounce about ninety of them. He knows what symbols on the screen represent the need for what type of hero, remembers who has what powers, who flies and who doesn't. And if there is some mechanism that he has seen work in an area before he knows what needs to be done every time he gets back to that area.
Plus, video games have been used as rehabilitative tools for people with a wide variety of mental and physical disabilities. Is there the potential for great evil in our world due to video games? Yes, but the same could be true of any tool. The evil comes not from the tool itself but from how and when it is used. It would be more accurate to say bad parenting is the bane of modern society.
Don't know what I am talking about? Perhaps you don't have a child above the age of ten in your house. Or maybe you don't own a gaming console. As the name implies most of the series is about grand theft, either of or committed with cars and that's the lighter side of the game. Then there's the possibility of hooking up with prostitutes, having your way with them and then beating the tar out of them to get your money back. Although there is a main story line, the general idea is to commit as many crimes as you can possibly get away with all whilst avoiding or taking out the police.
Video games are certainly making a splash in a big way. Many of them such as the GTA series, are outselling every other form of media out there, including books, television, music and even blockbuster movies.
A lot of these games explore and even glorify the bad things that we do to one another. There are quite a few different gaming franchises where the entire purpose of the game is to murder a bunch of other guys before they murder you. Except instead of murder its called warfare. Semantics.
Are these games ruining the moral fiber of our country? I don't think so. I think it is the parents that allow their children to play these games that are damaging our country. And the problem isn't even the fact that they let them play the games. The problem is that they let the video games do the parenting, instead of teaching their kids between right and wrong.
Many young kids and teenagers today have such a screwed up moral compass because the only moral lessons they have received is murder, maim or mess up the other guy, before he can do it to you. Video games are just tools. While primarily designed solely for entertainment purposes, if there is no other source of teaching, they will teach the morals and ideas that are within them.
If however, we, as parents, teach our children right from wrong, how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, and that we want to be the good guys and then don't let our kids play the games that have all of those potential "bad" lessons until they have shown through their way of being that they are on the "right" path, then any game, no matter how violent or morally questionable goes back to simply being a way of blowing off steam. It becomes just a fun thing to imagine, but something we would never do in real life.
When I was a kid, I used to tell my parents that video games had a large range of potential positive effects, things like, improving my memory, teaching pattern recognition, improved creative problem solving and increased hand to eye coordination. They, of course didn't believe me. But when we played the same games I always beat them. Their excuse was they didn't know the game. My reply was to point out that knowing the game had to do with memory and pattern recognition. I got told to shut up.
Since then, numerous studies have been done proving all those things and more can be gained or improved upon by playing video games. I have seen first hand, through my son, about the memory, pattern recognition and problem solving. He is three years old and his favorite game in the world is Lego Marvel Super Heroes. He knows the names of over a hundred of the characters and can correctly pronounce about ninety of them. He knows what symbols on the screen represent the need for what type of hero, remembers who has what powers, who flies and who doesn't. And if there is some mechanism that he has seen work in an area before he knows what needs to be done every time he gets back to that area.
Plus, video games have been used as rehabilitative tools for people with a wide variety of mental and physical disabilities. Is there the potential for great evil in our world due to video games? Yes, but the same could be true of any tool. The evil comes not from the tool itself but from how and when it is used. It would be more accurate to say bad parenting is the bane of modern society.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Mind blowing statistic
Holy f*****g s**t !!! Pardon my french, but I just read a statistic,
in an article online, that pretty much blew my mind. I mean at first I
thought something was wrong with my eyesight and that I had perhaps
misread the statistic. After a second and then a third much slower
reading I realized that I had not made a mistake.
But I still did not believe my eyes. So I did some cross referencing and fact checking. And as it turns out the thing in question is actually true
.
Now to back up and present some setup. In the music industry it is uncommon but not unheard of for an artist to sell a million records. When this happens they say the artist has "gone platinum" . A great many musicians, given a few years have gone double or even triple platinum. A select few have even sold as many as a hundred million records during a lifetime of outstanding achievement, constantly touring and recording.
At an average cost to the consumer of $10 per album, after selling 100 million albums a recording artist can be said to have made a billion dollars selling records. Accomplishing this generally requires an entire generation, decades of work.
One might say, but what about movies, they often make hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time don't they? Well like musicians, the good ones do, but again it often takes a long time to rack up a billion dollars in movie sales. Many movies never make this much money. There are of course a couple of notable exceptions. Avatar made a billion dollars in 17 days. Avengers did it in 19.
What about video games? I am sure you are thinking, yeah right that crap my kid/brother/boyfriend plays can't make that much money can it? Believe it or not, it's not that uncommon for a popular game to sell say two or three million copies when it first releases and ten million copies total during its "lifetime". At say fifty bucks a pop that's like 500 million dollars. But still that might take as much as five or ten years to happen.
The newest offering from Rockstar Games is Grand Theft Auto V. In it's first three days it made one billion dollars in sales. No, that is not a misprint or a typo. Billion with a b. That means roughly twenty million copies sold within 72 hours of its release.
There are twenty million people in Australia. Now imagine every single man woman and child going out to the store and picking up a copy of the same game within three days of one another.
There are a little over 6 billion people on the planet. That means that one third of one percent or around one in every three hundred people on planet Earth bought a copy of GTA V within 72 hours of its release.
By the time the holiday season is over in a few months, it will surely have made even more money. The game reportedly is going to have online play and the option for tons of micro-transactions to let one use real money to buy everything from cosmetic gear to weapons, cars and other accessories.
A few online first person shooters already make hundreds of millions of dollars a year this way. As long as they are reasonable about pricing and are not obviously being too greedy, there is no reason to believe GTA V will not do the same.
Music and movies used to be where it was at as far as entertainment. But it seems neither one can really hold a candle to video games anymore.
But I still did not believe my eyes. So I did some cross referencing and fact checking. And as it turns out the thing in question is actually true
.
Now to back up and present some setup. In the music industry it is uncommon but not unheard of for an artist to sell a million records. When this happens they say the artist has "gone platinum" . A great many musicians, given a few years have gone double or even triple platinum. A select few have even sold as many as a hundred million records during a lifetime of outstanding achievement, constantly touring and recording.
At an average cost to the consumer of $10 per album, after selling 100 million albums a recording artist can be said to have made a billion dollars selling records. Accomplishing this generally requires an entire generation, decades of work.
One might say, but what about movies, they often make hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time don't they? Well like musicians, the good ones do, but again it often takes a long time to rack up a billion dollars in movie sales. Many movies never make this much money. There are of course a couple of notable exceptions. Avatar made a billion dollars in 17 days. Avengers did it in 19.
What about video games? I am sure you are thinking, yeah right that crap my kid/brother/boyfriend plays can't make that much money can it? Believe it or not, it's not that uncommon for a popular game to sell say two or three million copies when it first releases and ten million copies total during its "lifetime". At say fifty bucks a pop that's like 500 million dollars. But still that might take as much as five or ten years to happen.
The newest offering from Rockstar Games is Grand Theft Auto V. In it's first three days it made one billion dollars in sales. No, that is not a misprint or a typo. Billion with a b. That means roughly twenty million copies sold within 72 hours of its release.
There are twenty million people in Australia. Now imagine every single man woman and child going out to the store and picking up a copy of the same game within three days of one another.
There are a little over 6 billion people on the planet. That means that one third of one percent or around one in every three hundred people on planet Earth bought a copy of GTA V within 72 hours of its release.
By the time the holiday season is over in a few months, it will surely have made even more money. The game reportedly is going to have online play and the option for tons of micro-transactions to let one use real money to buy everything from cosmetic gear to weapons, cars and other accessories.
A few online first person shooters already make hundreds of millions of dollars a year this way. As long as they are reasonable about pricing and are not obviously being too greedy, there is no reason to believe GTA V will not do the same.
Music and movies used to be where it was at as far as entertainment. But it seems neither one can really hold a candle to video games anymore.
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