Exploring the life of a Gamer

I don’t know much about the video gaming world, so I felt that I learned a lot from the video David Perry: Are games better than life. I didn’t think that I was going to enjoy this video as much as I actually did. It was very cool to see what games were like when they were first created and played on the first computers called Sinclair. Perry said “you had to use your imagination to play the games”. The graphics were terrible and I can understand that you needed to have a pretty imaginative mind to play games back then. I was also shocked to learn that the average gamer isn’t a child or even a teenager; the average age of gamers is 30 years old. That information totally shocked me. So other shocking information was Perry said that 83% of games don’t have violence in them, this was hard to believe because of all the news you hear about how violent video games are and how children shouldn’t be playing them. Well it turns out not all are violent and more 30 year olds are playing then children! I was really blown away with the video Perry showed about the evolution of gaming graphics from 1973- 2007. I can remember playing some of the games like Duck Hunt and Super Mario. To see the comparison to what the gaming graphics look like now is just incredible! The worlds and characters that are created today are so detailed and so life like. This leads me to Perrys’ two next parts of his presentation. The question ‘If this is now, what will the gaming graphics look like in ten years’ and the life of a video game addict. Like I said previously the worlds and characters are so detailed and so life like it’s incredible. Michael a student that Perry knows created a video to explain what the life of a gamer is like. Michael explains gaming as an alternate existence. He often feels like he is questioning what is real because the games play on the players emotions, their fears, their hopes. Players get emotionally invested in the games and Michael says that because of video games this generation” believes that they can actually fly a plane, snowboard, and even kill a man.” This leads to Michael talking about Video game violence; he says that “real life violence is starting to look more like video game violence.” Instead of vice versa, these interactive games make people believe they can do what they do in the games in real life. They tend to compare the virtual world to the real world and like the virtual world better because it is perfect. Michael’s example was the fact that he has driven thousands of more miles on the TV screen then down an actual rode and “when he is driving and the sun is setting, it’s almost as beautiful as his video game but his virtual world is perfect all of the time, unlike the real world. I just can’t believe how wrapped up in video games people get. Michael says you can learn from the video games, but I believe you have to actually live your life around real places, real people, and real things, not in front of a TV screen playing video games for hours. Of course people are going to want to live life through their characters in the games because video game worlds are perfect, but they aren’t real life.

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