As Cool Fool's father, who sometimes plays the heavy, it seems appropriate to sign this note as ...
-- David Deutsch
http://eve.physics.ox.ac.uk/Personal/deutsch/David.html
The editorial as I submitted it:
As the popularity of video games increases, a chorus of disapproval has been building up among parents and pundits. Video games are accused of being mindless and anti-social, and of monopolising children's time and energy to the exclusion of more worthy activities. They are compared with drug addiction and obsessive mental disorders.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Such pejorative language reveals more about the people using it than about the video game phenomenon. For what evidence is it based on? Considered dispassionately, the evidence amounts to the simple fact that children like playing video games; and the inference is, if they like it, it must be bad for them!
But in fact it is extremely good for them. For at root, what is a video game? It is an alternative, autonomous little universe, with its own distinctive inhabitants and landscapes, and governed by its own rules. In order to attain the game's objective, the player has to explore this universe, armed only with his wits and limited resources. He has to discover the rules, to understand their intricate and remote consequences, to harness them in ever more complex ways, to achieve their inherent beneficial outcomes and to avoid their ever-present potential for disaster.
In short, a video game player is doing and learning science.
That doesn't mean that he is learning quantum mechanics. The video game universe is artificial. But playing the game requires the true methods of science and technology. They are the methods of trial and error, of step-by-step discovery, of hypothesis formation and bold experiment, of deductive thinking, intuition and inspiration, and of the application of theory to solve unexpected problems in new situations.
Thus video games provide a unique learning environment: an interesting, complex, autonomous entity that is accessible interactively at low cost and zero risk. Learning the skills of interacting with, understanding and controlling such an entity is fundamental not only to science and technology but to all art, all creativity, and life in general.
In the past, society has been able to get by with only a tiny proportion of its population capable of scientific or creative thinking. But the non-creative niche is steadily shrinking, as an ever larger proportion of the economy becomes knowledge-based. Our formal educational system is notoriously unable to keep up with this change. Video games are a timely and deceptively powerful addition to society's educational resources. In this role they are virtually irreplaceable. Those who seek to prevent or discourage their use have sadly missed the point. Those who denigrate them are attacking nothing less than the growth of the scientific spirit among the young.
Prof. Deutsch, we are honored that you noticed our little corner of the universe. I must disagree however with your statement that "Learning the skills of interacting with, understanding and controlling such an entity is fundamental not only to science and technology but to all art, all creativity, and life in general." I speak not as a concerned parent but rather as a fellow scientist and video game addict myself who spends countless hours every day formerly playing and currently helping to maintain a game web site and newsgroup, in this case the Mac Internet tank game Bolo.
Video games are first and foremost escape. Those of us who play or work on its support do so precisely to avoid real life, or rather to pursue a different reality, one in which we don't have to deal with our homeworks, dissertations, grant deadlines, spouses, or general ugly countenances. It is true that a minority of players achieve an impressive command of the game whereby they create strategies and tactics which are inherently awesome, and indirectly may make these players better scientists or artists or whatever. I would aver that this only happens to a very select few, however, who are already predisposed to learn from almost anything they do, even if it's just painting houses or walking through the woods. They are already inquisitive and intelligent before they ever basked themselves in the warm glow of the CRT, and the video game merely provides one very avenue for their minds to grow and explore.
For the rank and file teenage game addict, however, the video game is usually little more than a training of reflexes accompanied with a rush of adrenalin. These kids aren't out there playing chess or even Bolo, which at least does involve creative strategy and tactics. Many modern video games (especially the really popular ones) involve little more than being faster on the trigger than evil alien monsters. The exploring of the game's "reality" involves brute force unthinking memorization of patterns passed down from other players, or taking advantage of unrealistic shortcuts via cheat codes. The player often does not learn patience or the virtues of trial and error essential to the scientific method. The player seldom respects or understands the effort and talent that went into designing and marketing the game. The player frequently forsakes regular human interaction in his or her pursuit of game interaction where all conflicts can be resolved with the pull of a trigger.
I say all this with a certain degree of frustration, because the average new players to our little game of Bolo seem to grow increasingly belligerent and irreverent while becoming less creative, adventurous, and intelligent. Many of us older players devote a lot of time to fostering what we consider to be a healthier, more positive role of video games, but often I wonder if this effort is wasted on the Duke Nukem 3D generation. Of course there are a minority of games such as Bolo which are not only entertaining but have limited valid, educational value. In general, however, video games today do not teach the wondrous abstract things your editorial preaches. They do suck up invaluable time and energy, delay work, flunk kids out of school, and perhaps most damning of all, dull the desire to achieve and excel. There are ample examples of all these vicious side-effects wreaking havoc among the Bolo community (including myself), and these dangers are amplified one hundred fold among the other, more popular video games out there.
Returning to the statement by Mr. Sidles which started this whole discussion, I think it is dangerous (particularly for a scientist of your renown) to even imply that video games are of equal or greater importance than doing one's homework. Bolo and other games are entertainment (and maybe a little more), but games should never be construed as worthy of replacing reality and hard work.