Video Games

It seems like I go out of my way to bring trouble on myself. People ask me what I have been doing lately and I say "I've been spending a huge amount of time playing video games." This makes it sound like I am lazy, or loosing my mind, or having a second childhood among many other possibilities, none of which are good. But video games are a serious business.

The video game industry is threatening, if it hasn't already surpassed, other pillars of the entertainment industry such as film and television. People often refer to video games as 'interactive entertainment' to distinguish them from non-interactive entertainment such as television where you just sit there like a slug and do not participate. In a video game you participate in the outcome. This is an emerging phenomenon and is likely to grow in a lot of different directions.

Academics who traditionally study novels and films have begun to study the values, symbolism and messages conveyed by video games. This suggests that those people, at least, see video games as an important emerging cultural phenomenon.

Some researchers are looking at ways in which video game technology can be applied to education. The call it edutainment. Others are looking at how video games can used to persuade people. They call this 'persuasive games'. In fact, the whole area of using video game technology for some thing other than games is called 'serious games' and is a rapidly growing area within the field.

In areas of interest to the Business School specifically, people are looking at video games technology for advertizing, virtual team building, and learning any number of business skills from inventory management to group dynamics.

I have taken on a deeper philosophical analysis of games and the role they play in our lives. If philosophy does not give you a nose bleed you may want to look at my other blog - Perspectives On Video Games. Ask yourself, first, what is a game? Can you come up with a definition that includes all games? Why is it that we play games because we want to while everything else we do because we have to. The simple answer is - because they are fun. But, why are they fun? Wouldn't it be great if both school and work could be as much fun as a video game? They can be and they should be.

At the same time, video games are very diverse. Free Cell, a simple card game, is vastly different from World of Warcraft which includes sophisticated social interactions and an in world economy. Next week I will look at the variety of video game genres and try to sort this all out.