Part 3 of How should video games and computers be handled in Adventist boarding academies...
In high school I had a collection of programmable calculators. HP-41CV was the holy grail. I had the TI-58 & TI-59, and some sharp and radio shack pocket computers programmable in basic. I developed circuits to interface to them. I learned as much about the electronics as the programming. Recently, out of a sense of nostalgia, I bought an HP-41CV on ebay, and paid more for it today than when it was new. I bought a bunch of accessories, and some books about programming it. I then sat down to try and write a program for it. I didn't get much further than trying to figure out what I'd program for it, (a dice game? A solitaire game of some sort?) than I realized how silly it was, there was no possible commercial use for whatever new skill I'd develop. And even more important, no one else around to share whatever cool thing I might discover. I ended up letting a 7 year old play with it, and after a couple of drops to the floor, the several hundred dollar acquisition is now a paperweight, and all the extra manuals and accessories are sitting in storage. I realized I can do so much more with my ultra mobile PC than I could have ever dreamed of doing with that calculator.
I have played many different video games. Everything from the text adventures ("you are in a dark cave with exits leading to the north and south") to space exploration games, my favorite. I played many of the early Ultima games and loved them. I'm not too much into the first person shooter games, I prefer strategy, and have played practically every Sim and Civilization game. I had friends who were pilots but loved to play MIcrosoft Simulator (which is now an approved way to get additional non-credit flying experience as a student). I don't have much temptation to buy a video game console because I think of the laptops I carry around and how I can usually buy a PC version of the game to use on the hardware I already have.
My favorite video game is probably Sim City 4. I have spent hours building various cities and watching them grow. Sometimes I realize I am depressed or stressed, and am using the game as a form of escape. And the lack of collaboration starts getting to me, usually I break out of it, and get back to writing blog posts that I hope will amuse a few people, or writing some program to mash up web content into some new combination. The lure of playing sim click ("How many visitors did my websites get, and how many click throughs were there to my ads?") keeps me from spending too much time on games. These days I probably only buy two to four video games a year, and maybe spend more than a couple of hours on one or two of them.
Can you guess where my sympathies lie in the debate about video games in our boarding academies?
- Please continue on to Balancing an eight year olds love of legos and his handheld video game