Computer games and zombie kids

Brain drain or gain?
by Nick van der Leek

The video gaming industry is huge. It rakes in millions, and if you don’t believe me, spend time with a teenager, or younger, who has a computer, or has access to one. Today, gaming is by no means the exclusive preserve of the young. In Korea last year, a 28-year old man died of exhaustion after playing the Starcraft game non-stop for over 50 hours.

I’m not sure if the fault lies with people as much as the fact that computer games are just so spectacular. They have come a long way since Pac Man and Space Invaders. To chip away a mere snowflake off this iceberg cool, and iceberg sized genre, here are a couple of games that have, once upon a pastime, kept me burning the midnightoil:

Need for Speed Underground
Counterstrike
Tomb Raider III
Lord of the Rings – Return of the King
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

Many gamers will laugh at that list, because of course, in the meantime, even more remarkable technology has been developed, and even more amazing games are recruiting droves of pajama clad warriors, moonlighting as soldiers, fighters and first class drivers. But don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!
In the classroom, and in the workplace it’s likely that heavy computer (including video) game use may slow brain development. A Japanese scientist has found that computer games only stimulate vision and movement sensitive parts of the brain. But there are other important areas that need to be stimulated, such as parts of the frontal lobe associated with emotion, impulse control, learning and memory. Activities other than gaming, including studying, socialising and sports, promote activity in the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe.

Having taught for several years in Korea, I can confirm that computer games do retard the young child’s ability to control their impulses, to remember information that has been recited over and over, and seems to prevent healthy emotional development. Although both boys and girls play games, their preferences differ, and boys tend to play for a lot longer. Young children are often blessed with memories like sponges, and the capacity to absorbe volumes of information. But gaming interferes with this process, because the brain becomes absorbed in certain processes, leaving it exhausted for real time functioning. Lack of rest and sleep is one of the main symptoms of heavy gaming.

While I lived in Korea I was invited to play Counterstrike, and in my third year, I became a casualty of war. After a few days I too started playing with a vengeance. Once, I remember, going into a PC room at 8pm on one occasion, and emerged the next morning at 9am. Counterstrike is a particularly addictive game for men, because it allows as much as 20 or 30 individual players on a team (either terrorists or counter –terrorists). These players can be seated in the same room, or anywhere else on the planet. The game allows the players to interact over a LAN – a local area network, which is either a broadband or highspeed ADSL connection. LAN gaming is especially popular in China, America, Korea and some parts of Europe, but it is growing very quickly in popularity.

The point of Counterstrike is for terrorists to arm and plant a bomb in a designated area within a certain amount of time, while being backed up by a team. Meanwhile, the counterterrorists are charged with killing their opponents, or disarming the bomb before it detonates, or both. Add to that extremely realistic combat scenarios, including characters that maintain unique ID’s from game to game, can wear certain uniforms (in combination this means gaming individuals become recognisable identities in a virtual world, and able to develop reputations for being lethal or weak), can use various weapons (each with unique discharge noise, and mobility) that need to be reloaded, and enemies that are more difficult to kill when they are wearing a certain kind of armor. The sounds are also electrifying. If you get shot, you groan and spill blood. There are various weapons to choose from, and the best players are able to kill using a knife and stealth.

It is easy to imagine that American soldiers in Iraq practice combat techniques, or otherwise play this game to keep their reflexes and tactics sharp for actual combat..

Counterstrike is an impressive game for many reasons. Players are even able to communicate by voice various messages, such as “fire in the hull” or “follow me”. When a player kills a string of enemies, a loud, Godlike voice procliams: “KILLING SPREE” or “ULTRAKILL.”
These sounds playback when the gamer is sleeping, or away from the console, inviting another round.

To demonstrate just how gaming can dumb you down, allow me to offer a personal example. In Need for Speed, you simply race other cars around an urban route, but you have to be careful to avoid road hazards, and you have to avoid colliding into oncoming traffic, or being taken out by fellow speedsters. Once, I spent an entire night simply trying to win one of these events, and finally did, at 6am. After an hours sleep I met the guys and went off to do a triathlon on the East Coast. I ended up crashing, that is, running out of energy, and walking on the run, simply because I had forgotten to eat enough in the hours leading up to the race. I’ve done triathlons for more than 10 years, so this was a cardinal error, and one I would never have made if my mental energies had not been drained away by excessive playing.

The answer then, is not that gaming is bad. In limited quanities it may have a positive effect on reflexes and strategic thinking, even problem solving. But it should come as no surprise that once you get involved in gaming, it becomes increasingly difficult to develop impulse control, and a stable emotional equilibrium. In short, once you start, you can’t stop. This is because the games stimulate basic aggressive or defensive postures and tendencies, and playing encourages constant virtual self-preservation. These are basic instincts. It’s not difficult to imagine how young children can have their development retarded, especially the emotional aspect, by being barbarded with real not-real stimuli, so that they become too heavily concerned with their lives in a game and unable to function adequately after Game Over.