Video Games

     The first time I got acquainted with video games was at the age of 8-9 when parents presented us, me and my brother, with Sony Playstation –series of video game consoles. That was really awesome! We were playing day and night. Each of us was impatiently waiting for our turn to play our favorite games.

    One of my favorite action games was “Xena: The Warrior Princess”, based on the worldwide known  TV series with the same name, which I also watched. The second game, I “got a crush” on was the worldwide known, “the old good Italiano man”-“Mario”.

     These were the best moments of my life, whenever I took remote control and started my fascinating adventure to the amazing world of games.

   Later on when the world stepped into the era of new tools and my parents purchased computer for us, I did not return to my childhood, though there was the time when I could not resist myself and fell into the long-forgotten “Mario” and “Xena” worlds. With the purchase of computer my interests changed; things that caught my attention as games did at one time were listening to music, reading the books, watching online movies, chatting with the friends and what’s more important computer became an educational tool which let me search the websites I was highly interested in, which in their turn helped me to learn, to acquire and entertain myself.

   As far as I have mentioned I did not return to the video games any more, except the ones that developed my critical thinking, analytical skills, i.e intellectual games, like crosswords, memory games and so on. The person who has grown up, but is still playing games is my brother and his friends. He is an avid player. He plays lots of games, starting from WARFACE to SIMS, basically action games. When I say, you are growing up and you are still playing all of these games like a child, he answers: “You don’t get how useful the games are. Games, in spite of category, are intended to promote collaboration and cooperation with other players, provides them with cross-cultural interaction, because while playing, for example, during WARFACE, you are playing with players of different nationalities. You learn how to work together. You have to think quickly and make a decision and decide the strategy you are going to use.”

  “The games like SIMS place one in more real settings, where the players can design, experiment and, finally, create his/ her own world”.

    The main opportunity of the games is that after failing any level, the player has a way to start the game over and over again. Sometimes it gets boring, but “falling and rising again” every time leads the player to new solutions and thoughts towards this or that trick of the game.

    However, being as positive as they are computer games carry negative side. The same games, like WARFACE make players completely addicted to the virtual world. The robots who have a special aim, the players shoot and kill their enemies and they get pleasure of it. I suppose this turns young players into emotionally severe and cruel people who yearn for blood, killings and who are so happy, when they say: ”I killed them all. I won.” The children become aggressive and violent, and fearful towards the real world, which can lead to the bad consequences, like suicide, murder, getting crazy and so on. This happens when children forget the verge between the reality and fantasy.

    From the medical point of view, prolonged computer game use may lead to health problems which can be irreversible, for example the risk of dry eyes which happens as a result of rare blinking and petrification of the whole body as a result of not moving frequently. That’s why parents are the very people who should limit their children’s access to the computer games; if they want their children grow up emotionally and physically healthy people.

    Thus, from the educational point of view, computer games carry powerful mission for developing critical and analytical skills, creativity; promoting collaboration and cooperation, cross-cultural interaction; ability to think quickly and make an appropriate decision towards this or that move; ability to improve visual thinking and many other skills. However, these skills carry not only learning purpose, but also shape life skills that in their turn make our children the very representatives of the Digital Age.

    In my turn, I am really grateful that we touched upon this topic. For a while it took me back to the sweet childhood, where everything was as simple as a game at least in my case. This is the golden memory that awakens the soul, leaving it yearning every time.