Video Games

Video games are, like movies, an entertaining way of being in a completely different life. The interactive storylines are one way to lure in people into looking at and becoming interested in a video game. They strive to get people interested in them, so they will become addicted to the game and other games like it. Because of factors such as entertainment value, people of all ages are affected by video games socially and financially.

Entertainment value is simply defined as how entertaining a game would be to the person playing the game. Many video games try to have a main character in a very serious, and interesting, situation, leading to an exciting adventure of some sort. The storyline of the majority of video games attempts to be somewhat realistic or believable, but it overall it isn’t that realistic. Yet, it still adds to the overall entertainment of the game, and the more someone can do within the game itself, it will be more exciting and lure in more people. Many people look for, in games, a good story that leads to several exciting event happening in succession one after another, events that would never happen to you in real life make a game that much more interesting.

Throughout the life of the video game, there have been cases where video games seem to be the cause of aggression in teenagers. On March 6, 2005, in an article on CBS News it was mentioned that “a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to go on a rampage and kill three men, two of them police officers.” (Ed Bradley, CBS News) In another case study, they observed one person playing a non-violent video game and the other person playing a violent video game. After observing their brain scans, they noticed that “[t]eens that played the violent game showed increased activity in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal.” (Kristin Kalning, MSNBC) Since there are many other cases like this, the bigger gaming companies have been making more educational and family-oriented games, so as to create games that are less aggressive or violent. However, many of the games still are extremely violent, so that those who are not addicted to the video games have an interesting game to play. The hope is to create an interesting game as a fun, interactive form of entertainment, and not take it literally and follow the graphic displays of violence in them.

A large amount of teenagers, and recently younger kids, have found video games so fun and entertaining they have become addicted to them and have become exceedingly lazy. Spending too much time playing video games can easy lead to teenagers creating bad habits such as becoming obsessive, less social, and knowing far less about issues going on in the real world; there laziness causes them to want to just stay in all day and play games. This phenomenon possibly leads to becoming overweight, because they simply do not want to do anything else. However, through all of these negative effects there are positive effects of playing video games.

Some of these positive effects are improved hand-eye coordination, and quick reflexes; they can pick these skills up from playing fast-paced, intense game. The constant repetition of an action or sequence of actions in a video game helps people pick up these various skills more effectively. Along with that, several games have lessons and real life issues in them. Examples of these would be: money management, and hierarchies such as monarchy, patriarchy, and matriarchy. Money management in most games is similar to real life in that, if you spend too much money on an item that “looks cool” and are careless with your money, then you will be in trouble soon. Even with that though, most kids don’t realize this lesson and still have poor money management in the real world. The hierarchies are simply shown through the stereotypical bad guy trying to achieve monarchy, or a woman trying to prove her dominance over men. This shows that