Gaming, Good or Evil

The gaming community has been around for many years now, from pong all the way up to the Xbox 360 Kinect. Everyone has always had mixed emotions on gaming and it is either a terrible thing that ruins people or just a hobby that people do to get through a couple hours and have some enjoyment. Recently, there have been many talks of violent video games causing younger people that play them to become corrupt and violent. So, this has been the main focus of video games in the past year. They are simply evil and turn loving individuals into cruel human beings.

Well, I have been playing video games for about all my life and I would like to give you a different approach on how video games interact with people and what that do. I'll start with a simple web browser flash game. This is the most basic of games. A flash game is a simple game that people create that has no real in depth story or game, just something to pass the time. Most of these flash games can be beneficial to humans. First, there are many flash games that are either typing games, memory match, word puzzles, or even tetris. These flash games greatly help the human keep their mind sharp and make them able to quickly think and respond to actions in the game. Keeping your brain active is great when growing up and it is also enjoying for people to play simple games like this to get them thinking.

Now, I would like to talk about console gaming and its genres. Console gaming has gotten relativity big since they first released and is continuing to grow in the market. There are many times of games from shooters to RPG and from Action games to Adventure games. These games also range from little kids all the way to mature games that are for the adults. I'll start with RPG first to discuss what they are about. RPG stands for Role Playing Game. Some RPG are Fable, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Quest. RPG's are suppose to be long in depth story games that provide you with hours of game play and a great story. These games usually have puzzles in them that you have to figure out in order to move on in the game and even some games like Mass Effect have you communicating with a lot of NPC (non playing characters) and you have to engage them and try to become their friend so that they aid you later in the game. These RPG's remind me of a woman's romance novels. They are very long and in depth which is tied along with a great story that gets you hooked. But, from the video game side you just get a visual of the story instead of using your imagination.

Next, Ill talk about FPS games which are First Person Shooters. I play a lot of these games in my spare time since this is one of my favorite genres. These games are often filled gore and shooting and killing, which is a main reason why people think gaming turns people corrupt. Honestly, from my point of view that's not what it does. I have been playing FPS games for many years now and I have not been corrupted nor have I turned into and angry individual. As for me, I separate my gaming life from reality and that is what most gamers do. There are in fact times when i have gotten angry at a video game and I know many others have too and we just turn our consoles off. At that moment we go on about with our lives and forget about the silly game and we will eventually come back to it. Now for a good side of gaming I feel that my reflex's have increased and even seeing things have increased significantly. What I mean by this is when you play a FPS you are running around trying to shoot people so your fingers and thumbs are always moving and you are glued to the screen to try and notice any sudden movement that shouldn't be there. It is funny how things work. During winter time and I first sit down to play a shooter game and my hands are cold i start off bad. But, once I start to get warmed up and my fingers get warmer I am able to do better and my shots are more accurate.

Finally, what I want to leave you with is a huge genre. The MMORPG which stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. These games are World of Warcraft and Everquest just to name a few. Now for these games people make it their lives. They spend hours and days on these games which I agree isnt health because you do need breaks and food. But, the bigger picture is they are accomplishing something more. I have played a few MMORPG's in my life and I found myself doing the same thing. I was always working closely with a large group of people trying to accomplish a huge and unforgiving task that almost felt impossible to do. This is what happens everyday in those types of games. People join up and work together to complete something that is impossible to do without a friend. So, in a sense its almost like reality. They are living their lives through a video game, but they still learn valuable techniques like working together in a group to accomplish huge tasks.So, yes, people are spending hours and even days on this video games, but they are actually learning some valuable skills in the meantime. I'm not saying they are good or evil, I just wanted to inform everyone on some things that many of the non gamers never knew.