Even when girls like games, they don’t… what?
Popping in for a moment’s respite before plunging back into the fray to share this gem:
James Madison University’s student paper runs a “battle of the sexes” opinion piece about videogames. Hold on there, kids, I know what you’re thinking: “The media is saturated with opinion pieces from women about how awesome videogames are, and opinion pieces from men about how much videogames suck, do we really need to read another one?” Well, this might knock you over, but this audacious bit of opinion reporting has flipped that trope and the man is writing in favor of videogames, and the woman is writing agin’ it! Quel Shock!
I have a hard time telling if this is a serious article or not. The paper itself does not appear to be a parody paper. But when Sean Youngberg writes “Sonic isn’t alone. “Mario Kart” taught us that you can’t always trust the person driving next to you; “NFL Blitz” taught the harsh reality that rules are not always going to be followed” it’s obviously not stone-faced intellectual sincerity.
In all seriousness, what struck me about this article was that they couldn’t even get someone who didn’t like videogames to write the contradicting opinion. Anna Young, the “videogames are not valuable” writer, admits that she actually likes playing videogames and writes first off:
I would be a hypocrite if I said that playing video games is an unintelligent and pointless misuse of time. I enjoy my fair share of “Super Smash Brothers,” and occasionally get down on some “Gears of War” game-play.
This just cracks me up. Don’t get me wrong: I know what it’s like to work on a student paper and being told to deliver an opinion piece about topic X before Tuesday, but damn, people. If you’re going to have a point/counterpoint style column, you should check to make sure that you have opinions a little more diverse than “X is awesome!” and “X is fun!”
OK, to pick nits: the point of the pair of opinions was to argue whether or not videogames were valuable and worthwhile. In that case, we shouldn’t be judging Ms. Young on whether or not she actually likes them. For making his case, Mr. Youngberg fails pretty spectacularly (unless you would believe that college was an isolating hell where young men full of testosterone have no other outlets to bond than becoming space-marines-in-arms). However, Ms. Young’s very admission that the relaxing qualities of videogames are in fact important and necessary sort of proves her opponent’s point. So there isn’t much of an argument, unless you want to argue against common sense: that enjoyable activities in moderation and not to the detrement of your responsibilities and wellbeing are bad.
At any rate, it’s good that they’re moving the goalposts a bit. It’s nice to see the point of moderation placed somewhere between “playing games once in a while to relieve stress” and “playing games all the time” instead of “playing games only for educational purposes” and “games are evil and will turn you into a serial killer.”
October 12th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Whoever wrote that at James Madison must have a brain as thick as a brick.
October 12th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Hrm. I didn’t think the article sounded that bad from your description. Then I actually read it.
I mean, there’s the germ of an interesting idea here. I think there’s a debate to be had over how and to what extent video games are beneficial to us. I have often joked that, despite the vaunted improvements to hand-eye coordination that playing video games ostensibly grants, I continue to have terrible handwriting and can’t catch a ball to save my life. The only hand-eye coordination improvements I’ve seen are to the specific subset of hand-eye coordination that allows one to play video games well. So I think it’s possible to take a principled position that “Yes, I play games for enjoyment, but I don’t fool myself into thinking that it’s providing any great improvement to myself as a human being.”
And, if we’re having a debate on the beneficial qualities of video gaming, I’d rather see the debate waged between people who play games. I’d find the argument for video games not being beneficial much more persuasive coming from somebody who plays video games than from somebody who says “Well, I played a video game once, for 20 minutes, and I didn’t get it. I think video games are stupid and pointless.”
That said: This article is dumb. The gendered spin given to it is both pointless and counterproductive. Youngberg’s side is characterized by a lot of simplistic arguments based on lessons derived from video game narratives. Young’s counterpoint holds out the promise of an interesting discussion that balances her personal enjoyment of games against her larger sense that they aren’t worthwhile. Then she throws it all out the window by dropping into strawman-bashing. Both sides are entirely fact-free, unless you count Young’s hand-waving reference to “any research done on video games.” Which I don’t.
At the same time, I can’t say it’s notably worse than most editorials done in my college paper. It gets large demerits for forcing a tired and sexist Battle of the Sexes format on the discussion, but at least it’s not an article about the process of writing an article.