Videogame Virtue

In extension to a previous post (Importance of Video Games in Learning and Literacy), here is an article on the virtue of video gaming.

In this article it is also mentionned that many games make you think about the nature of the medium. We use computer games to exercise and enhance our information processing capabilities. They help us understand how to manage our perceptual and cognitive resources in what digital community builder Linda Stone characterizes as an age of continuous partial attention. There is a growing tendency for people to move through life, scanning their environments for signals, and shifting their attention from one problem to another. This process has definite downsides—we never give ourselves over fully to any one interaction. For older generation, this process feels highly stressful and socially disruptive. But for young men and women in their late teens or early twenties, it has become second nature.

Some have characterized the younger generation as having limited attention spans. But these young people have also developed new competencies at rapidly processing information, forming new connections between separate spheres of knowledge, and filtering a complex field to discern those elements that demand immediate attention. Researchers at the University of Rochester found that kids who regularly play intense video games show better perceptual and cognitive skills than those who do not. These multitasking skills will be most developed in those who have had access to games from an early age. Our sons and daughters will be the natives of the new media environment; others will be immigrants.

However, the skills derived from playing video games expand human creative capacity and broaden access to knowledge should not come at the expense of older forms of literacy.