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Are video games bad? Are they a negative force in society?
Until Eve Peyser began playing video games with her boyfriend, that’s what she thought:
When I reached my early college years and began to fancy myself an intellectual type, I adopted the familiar cerebral framework about why video games are bad: They’re culturally worthless and — while not the source of mass shootings, as conservatives argue — a drain on young men’s brains, maybe even their humanity, hobbling their ability to form real bonds.
But after she actually got the hang of how to play, she writes in her recent Op-Ed, she began to see video games in a completely different light:
It took a couple of months to crack me, but my view began to change with the first game my boyfriend persuaded me to play, Earth Defense Force: You get to be soldiers fighting aliens that look like massive bugs, horrific creatures dead set on total world invasion. They sprayed fatal toxins at us as we tried to kill as many of them as possible with guns and explosives.
Initially, I was terrible at it, hopelessly smashing the gazillion buttons on the controller. But for the first time, I was playing a video game with somebody who loved me, who wanted to teach me how it all worked. All so we could have more fun together. And we did.
My boyfriend’s gaming never actually put a strain on our relationship, but when I started playing with him, it went from being one of his boy hobbies I could never possibly understand to an experience we could share, something that highlighted why we worked so well together.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
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Are you a gamer? What do you like about playing video games?
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If you’re not a gamer, why not?
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Ms. Peyser used to think that video games were a “drain on young men’s brains” that hobbled “their ability to form real bonds.” What do you think? Do video games get in the way of forming real relationships? Or can they actually strengthen relationships and promote social interactions, like they did for Ms. Peyser? Have you ever had an experience where video games brought you closer to someone — or got in the way of a relationship?
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By the end of her Op-Ed, Ms. Peyser argues that video games are “more stimulating than bingeing Netflix?” Do you agree? Are they “a whole new type of media” that even more of us should be exploring together?
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Does gaming still have “a long way to go in connecting to women,” as Ms. Peyser writes? Ms. Peyser acknowledges the “problematic gender dynamics” in many video games, such as in Grand Theft Auto, but she was able to get past them simply because playing the game was so exciting. What’s your experience?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
