The Impact of Video Games Today

During one of our ride way back home, amidst a traffic jam, we oftentimes catch a sight of children excitedly rushing after classes to get a spot for them to play video games in a nearby video station at school, or eager to go home early to continue playing as long as their parents doesn’t forbid them to. Surprisingly, even adults play video games during their spare times too. So it’s a mixture of children and adults either individually, in pairs or in groups playing and competing video games against each other. What’s with this kind of leisure activity that makes them too much engrossed? It is because video games amuse people of all ages and to the working group, it simply makes them temporarily forget a tiresome day at work.

A video game is basically an electronically played game that involves interaction with a user-interface that produces a visual feedback on a video device. Video games were created by a nuclear physicist named William Higginbotham dating back around 50years ago. It all began when he realized that he wanted change to take place after observing that most science exhibits were unchanging and non-interactive. He wanted to convey that scientific undertakings can be vital to the society by generating a game not just for fun but to bring oneness into them as well. And it cannot be denied that he was successful. The game spread like wildfire! It became known to a lot of people all across the globe to the point of seeing them waiting in line just to get the chance to play the game. Soon, businessmen had their share of fortune.

Along with time, video games evolved from a simple game of playing tennis or ping pong to a much realistic genuinely created work of art of killing monsters, aliens and even humans. It is also notable that many of the games today need parental guidance or a specific age to be allowed to play due to its negative impact on children like its violent content.

Gamers also need to know how to differentiate a video game from reality. It has both positive and negative aspects, and it can either be helpful or not. Helpful in a sense that some games deal with problem solving, logic, following directions and mastery with the use of fine motor and spatial skills being developed. Not helpful, on the other hand, refers to those games that are violent in nature such as those that involve stabbing, shooting and kicking. Though we can never conclude if it’s beneficial to the gamer or not, for as long as they are able to have fun, release tension, do away with boredom or simply just to kill time, then there’s nothing wrong about it. Not unless if people become hooked up, which will eventually lead them to poor social interaction, poor academic performance in children and poor work performance in adults. The important thing is, given the fact that video games tend to influence us, we need to help the younger ones realize that video games cannot take over their time and that there are many important things in life that needs to be done first. And as adults, although video games prompt us to feel a sense of control, we wouldn’t want to confuse ourselves with the reality and take for granted the important things in life. Rather than spending so much time playing video games, why not do other productive things that help others, especially our families? Playing video games is not a crime when simply just done to have fun.