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The Economist comenta los videojuegos y produce un texto muy equilibrado que plantea varios puntos de vista sobre los videojuegos y acaba defendiéndolos. El artículo es una reacción a la última ronda de ataques contra los videojuegos en Estados Unidos. Vale la pena leerlo. Algunas citas:

«It’s just a generational divide,» says Gerhard Florin, the European boss of Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest games publisher. «It’s people not knowing what they are talking about, because they have never played a game, accusing millions of gamers of being zombies or violent.» Digital natives who have played video games since childhood already regard them as a form of entertainment on a par with films and music. Older digital natives now have children of their own and enjoy playing video games with them.

Sobre si los videojuegos incitan a la violencia:

But as Steven Johnson, a cultural critic, points out in a recent book, «Everything Bad Is Good for You», gaming is now so widespread that if it did make people more violent, it ought to be obvious. Instead, he notes, in America violent crime actually fell sharply in the 1990s, just as the use of video and computer games was taking off (see chart 2). Of course, it’s possible that crime would have fallen by even more over the period had America not taken up video games; still, video gaming has clearly not turned America into a more violent place than it was.

What’s more, plenty of games, far from encouraging degeneracy, are morally complex, subtle and, very possibly, improving. Many now explicitly require players to choose whether to be good or evil, and their choices determine how the game they are playing develops.

Sobre lo que se aprende jugando:

Even games with no educational intent require players to learn a great deal. Games are complex, adaptive and force players to make a huge number of decisions. Gamers must construct hypotheses about the in-game world, learn its rules through trial and error, solve problems and puzzles, develop strategies and get help from other players via the internet when they get stuck. The problem-solving mechanic that underlies most games is like the 90% of an iceberg below the waterline-invisible to non-gamers. But look beneath the violent veneer of «Grand Theft Auto», and it is really no different from a swords-and-sorcery game. Instead of stealing a crystal and delivering it to a wizard so that he can cure the princess, say, you may have to intercept a consignment of drugs and deliver it to a gang boss so he can ransom a hostage. It is the pleasure of this problem-solving, not the superficial violence which sometimes accompanies it, that can make gaming such a satisfying experience.

Y concluye:

Like rock and roll in the 1950s, games have been accepted by the young and largely rejected by the old. Once the young are old, and the old are dead, games will be regarded as just another medium and the debate will have moved on. Critics of gaming do not just have the facts against them; they have history against them, too. «Thirty years from now, we’ll be arguing about holograms, or something,» says Mr Williams.

A seguir jugando. Yo ahora estoy con Rachet y Clank (el uno).

(vía The Raw Feed)