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The word is that video games are more than just addicting toys that keep people from being responsible, productive members of society, have them cutting school, see them skipping work (or playing video games AT work), or turn them into violent war-mongers within weeks of playing the latest Doom or Laura Tomb Raider or Black and White or Myst. I watched a show the other night that covered the shootings by two eleven year-olds of students and teachers at a remote grade school in Arkansas, I think it was. (The shootings at schools, by the way, have reportedly occurred only in small towns where guns were not an issue but a tool for sport and subsistence hunting.) The theory of too much influence on the part of video games was included in this hour-long documentary, as were the theories that pointed to music, the parents, and the social construct at large. But the emphasis on video games as culprit was focused on the violent games that reward violence. Not once did any "expert" speak to the middle eastern countries where for centuries they had no video games, didn't have TV, computers, didn't even have electricity, if you will...yet have slaughtered each other in decade- and century-long battles over whose god says whose land it is. I digress. The benefits of video games are addressed. Games that require dexterity, linear thinking, and that make other complex demands on coordination, eyes, and the brain have been considered positive in the staving off of such progressive illnesses as Alzheimer's. Kids today get video games in the classroom, as auxiliary materials, or in learning environments after school that are designed based on the rationale that video games can help with skills such as the following: Memorizing and remembering (intake and recall of information) Inducing and deducing (critical thinking) Recognizing patterns, solving problems, and mapping (organization and reasoning) Video games also contribute to perseverance skills; socialization skills (simulating, as many games do, leadership, rule-following, and hierarchical ordering); motor skills; and assist in assuaging the difficulties and challenges of such disorders as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and helping elevate esteem and increase motivation and drive. So I don't know about you, but as a child of the decade when the first video game appeared, Pong, I never finished playing and went out into the world with the desire to whack someone ups side the head with a ping pong paddle. They say smart people play video games all the time and don't, of course, use the activity as an excuse to kill. In fact, these people don't kill. They are more likely busy competing online or too engrossed in the challenge of reaching their personal best... Muna wa Wanjiru has been researching and reporting on Internet Marketing for years. For more information on Video Games. visit his site at Video Games
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