Video Games: I Hate Loving Them :: Essays Papers

Video Games: I Hate Loving Them I love video games. I love them, and I have no idea why. I will never forget the first time I played the original Nintendo Entertainment System as a child. I was quite young, and I had accompanied my mother and sisters to visit my mother’s family in Ohio. Their town was quite small, and being used to the constant distraction of the city, I found the whole situation to be rather void of entertainment. This was until I was invited to the neighbor’s house, where lived a young boy about my age. I was led to his room, where I discovered something that appeared to be quite magical. Sitting on the edge of his bed, a few feet from a television he sat, holding a controller. Understand that at this point in my life I was certainly no stranger to video games; they were typically black and white and usually entailed navigating a little square man through swarms of little square foes and ultimately to a some sort of goal, which was usually also square. This game I witnesse d was nothing like that. I watched the boy control a little man as he battled fierce walking mushrooms and flying turtles in a quest to save a princess. We played for hours upon hours until it was time for me to leave, at which point the controller had to be nearly ripped from my hands. That day was the beginning of an addiction which not only myself but the majority of America’s youth would soon embrace: electronic gaming. Video games have come a very long way since their inception. Gone are the days of squares battling squares. Modern video games entail remarkably realistic players in three dimensional environments which are sometimes so vast that the players can literally get lost. Today’s games require years of development, and as many gamers will argue, are more fun than ever. Perhaps, however, they’re a little too fun. Electronic gaming has become so vastly popular that in the year 2000, eighty-four percent of overall teens played electronic games regularly (Walsh). As video games become more and more main stream, they have become the topic of much criticism. While some argue that there are some positive effects of electronic gaming, overall, video games are far more detrimental than beneficial; they offer little or no good to those who play, and are a colossal waste of time.