Video Games: Mass Entertainment Lucas Ammons
Dr. Jenkinsen
English fundamentals
13 November 2006

In this paper I plan to prove the following: that designing video games can be a rewarding Job, video games do not cause violence, Video games can improve your hand eye coordination, and video games can be educational.

Ever wonder how many people it takes to create a single video game? In the early days of gaming when computers were large and their processing power was not even near that of today’s computers, a single person could make a game. Then as now, many parents thought their kids were wasting their time playing Defender and Asteroids at the mall, they didn’t realize that in twenty years, some of their kids would be working at video game giants like Bungie, Ubisoft, LucasArts.

In 2004, the gaming industry brought in 9.9 billion dollars in retail sales, 0.9 billion more than the movie industry. There is even talk of making the playing of video games an Olympic Sport. That is not a bad idea, there are already competitive video game tournaments were the winner receives 100,000 dollars in cash.

Playing video games can improve a person’s hand-eye coordination by forcing them to memorize buttons on the controller or keyboard rather quickly. For instance your playing Halo 2 and you’ve just jacked (stole) a banshee (a alien spacecraft,) at your twelve o’clock low someone fires a rocket at you from a shoulder launcher. It screams toward your banshee, in the heat of the moment you accidentally press the “B” button on your Xbox controller, which ejects you from your banshee instead of the “A” button and use the left joystick of your controller to perform a roll.

The consequences of this could be minor: you eject from your banshee while near the ground which may or may not kill you. The other ways you can die are very dire: A rocket gets crammed up your exhaust pipe. Result; death by explosion or by bailing out at a high altitude. Your banshee is all ready looking like a “flying junk heap” from taking damage all ready, and someone throws a plasma grenade, which sticks to your banshee. Before it explodes you do a kamikaze into their Ghost (an alien anti-grav motorcycle.) There are many other ways to die in Halo 2 multiplayer; however they are basic ways to die.

Many people think that violent video games cause many teens and or kids to commit acts of violence. They think that just because the psychos that committed the Columbine shooting played games like DOOM and Resident Evil, does not mean video games where the sole cause of this tragedy.

The shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planned to carry out the shooting on April 20, the birthday of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Both shooters had watched movies such as, The Basketball Diaries, created a web site that they made DOOM mods on. Bullying by other students at Columbine may also contribute to the feelings anger and malice expressed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold on their AOL website, the website has since been removed from AOL’s servers.

All video games now days are rated by the ESRB. The ratings are E: Everyone, T: Teen: M: Mature, and AO: Adult Only. It was not the game developers fault for creating a game with blood and gore, distributing it to retailers, it was not the fault of the parents or kid for buying a game has content that is graphic, if the kid can handle the content. It is not the fault of kid’s parents if the kid was not receiving love and compassion. The kid may not be reachable emotionally because they have a “hole” inside them from issues their dealing with, that may or may not be family related.

Video Games can be quite educational; a computer game by the name of Star Wars: Droidworks teaches kids about scientific principles such as, gravity, mass, weight etc. Video games like Organ Trail, Call of Duty (historical actuary is required) can teach a person about history.

Video Games are one most, if the not the richest industries in world. Video games are becoming more and more popular every year with events like E3, a video game expo held every year. Since Xbox Live (an internet connection for Xbox, enables online gaming on a global scale) was released in November 15, 2002. When that happened, just within the first two months approximately 250,000 people had paid the required fifty dollars a year to subscribe to Xbox Live, by July 2004 that number had jumped to one million subscribers, and 2 million in 2005. A headset costs sixty dollars, and allows for person to communicate over Xbox Live. The headset plugs into ports on the Xbox Controller. The Columbine was horrible true, but video games played only a small part in the actions of the shooters.

Video Games can be quite educational, Star Wars: DroidWorks, The Organ Trail, and many more games fit this category. Many Colleges such as DeVry and Westwood College Online offer entire curriculums or courses in game design.

So remember when your parents say to put down that console controller, or get off the computer, tell them you are studying for a degree in game design.