Thursday, April 30, 2020

You are wasting our time in front of those comput Essays

You are wasting our time in front of those computers, throwing away our life as we are not getting anything back. As I reach for the power button of my laptop, I always remember this statement from my parents. This belief, Time is precious, it need not to be spent on something that is so wasteful like video games, always seems to have place that is very special place in my parents eyes and the image of me turning on a laptop represents as the threat to them. Soon, I start to raise questions about the reasons behind these negative attitudes towards gaming. What I found, is rather nerve wracking. Because of their long complicated history associated with traditional class barriers and problems arising in our society, video games have become a stereotype in a way that is unconsciously accepted by people in every culture, including my parents. To this day, gamers are still placed at the bottom of the ladder being the worthless ones, receiving labels that falsely describe who they are. However, as our society moves forward, video games haven proven to be outweighed any criticisms out there. With new p lay styles being adopted over the years, video games have taught individual players the benefits of dealing with frustration and anxiety in adaptive ways, equipped them with sharper minds and creativity, motivated them to work for a better goal, while at the same time, led an industry that significantly impacted our economy in a positive way. Games were originally created with a purpose for a world in which any players could be free to become what he/she wants through individual effort. They were unlike any real world situations as in here, success was measured purely on mental talent. As expected, this new type of entertainment rapidly gained popularity all over the world. The poor class, the underrepresented people, succeeding at video game received admiration which was not easily obtainable outside of the gaming world (Meadows). For those who felt like they are left out from the community, stuck where they were because of social barriers, video games allowed them to unite under one domain as they strived to be more than their reality allowed. Utilizing this unique characteristic of video games, arcades were created to embrace this cracking of social status, making gaming more accessible for anyone. A local arcade could attract a diverse range of people, in age and race. As an 18-years-old gamer girl was quoted in an interview with Newsweek at a local arcade: Look at all these people togetherblacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, this is probably the one place in Boston where there are not hassles about race. However, this emerging diversity soon faced the suspicious eyes of the public as arcades got more and more popular in the media. (Langway) As many outsiders saw, arcades or video games in general were mediums attracting a complex mix of people, threating the traditional barriers. It was followed then by a series of years when the public tried to blame a specific group of people. Soon, these framing youth caused by these conservative thoughts would grow into a widely accepted stereotype that discriminated against game rs. Gary M. Grobman, a vice president from the Special Projects, White Hat Communications defines a stereotype as a generalization about a group of people within a larger community. We resort to stereotype when we cannot see the whole picture of problems in our society (Grobman). We then allow ourselves to blame gamers all that are wrong. What is involved in the stereotype of gamer? What gender do you think gamers would be? What place will they usually stay? And lastly, how do they look? If you instantly think of an overweight teen male who spends most of his life in one room, soullessly looking at the computer or TV screen, then you are falling into the classic video game stereotype because this imaginary logo doesnt apply to all of the gamers out there. My parents always yell at me for how stupid I am sitting in front of the computer and blame video games for the cause of my low scores at school. They even compare me to my brother who doesnt have the hobby of playing