VIDEO GAMES QUOTES IV

quotations about video games

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Games are perfect artmaking tools, because like art, they already abstract the real world and can provide new perspectives on it. They're also a window into both current and nostalgic pop culture, since they have grown up alongside our current generation. It's an ever-evolving medium.

KENT SHEELY

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For every "scientific" study out there that says playing violent video games makes people violent, there are just as many that have found no link. In fact, there's an argument to be made that playing violent games might reduce real violent tendencies. Have you ever heard a school counselor tell children to punch pillows instead of other people to release their pent-up aggression? I'll bet there are plenty of people who use violent video games as a digital punching bag.

JAKE MAGEE

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I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Tags: Haruki Murakami

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Video games and militarism have an old history. Games of all sorts -- video games, board games, and games kids play in the backyard -- have historically been about conflict and warfare. Whether you're playing Chess, which is a simulated battlefield, or a game like Go, an ancient Chinese game that is also a simulated battlefield, or you're playing a board game like Risk or Axis and Allies, you're essentially at war and you're playing out military conflict.

NINA HUNTEMANN

Tags: Nina Huntemann

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Games have been evolving over the years to become more realistic, to blur the line between fantasy and reality and provide the player with a more "authentic" experience. Making the brain question reality, even for a moment, heightens the experience and creates a more immersive environment. But, like abstract paintings, video games don't have to be realistic to be successful in communicating with the viewer/player. Sometimes the details that our minds fill in are more important than what's actually on the screen.

KENT SHEELY

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Video games are to be played, my colleagues know. Their stories often appear to be based on clichés of genre fiction and the most popular titles are designed and made by large teams, for the most part. As formal systems they consist of fairly unpredictable behaviors in response to rules and events within the gameworld. It's hard for literary scholars to understand how they can truly be meaningful, any more than a soccer game is meaningful, I mean apart from what most of them perceive in advance would be superficial semiotic readings of the characters or mythical narrative structures of games--Mario as the Hero with a Thousand Faces, say.

STEVEN E. JONES

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More and more, I'm seeing that games are mining good, old-fashioned human anxieties for their drama, and that's really promising. Games, more and more, are not just about shooting and fighting, and for that reason I'm optimistic and heartened about where the medium is heading, because I think game designers are getting more interested in making games that explore what it means to be alive.

TOM BISSELL

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If we take everything game developers have learned about optimizing human experience and organizing collaborative communities and apply it to real life, I foresee games that make us wake up in the morning and feel thrilled to start our day. I foresee games that reduce our stress at work and dramatically increase our career satisfaction. I foresee games that fix our educational systems. I foresee games that treat depression, obesity, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder. I foresee games that help the elderly feel engaged and socially connected. I foresee games that raise rates of democratic participation. I foresee games that tackle global-scale problems like climate change and poverty. In short, I foresee games that augment our most essential human capabilities--to be happy, resilient, creative--and empower us to change the world in meaningful ways.

JANE MCGONIGAL

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A longstanding dream: Video games will evolve into interactive stories, like the ones that play out fictionally on the Star Trek Holodeck. In this hypothetical future, players could interact with computerized characters as round as those in novels or films, making choices that would influence an ever-evolving plot. It would be like living in a novel, where the player's actions would have as much of an influence on the story as they might in the real world.

IAN BOGOST

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If people are to nurture their souls, they need to feel a sense of control, meaningfulness, even expertise in the face of risk and complexity. They want and need to feel like heroes in their own life stories and to feel that their stories make sense. They need to feel that they matter and that they have mattered in other people's stories. If the body feeds on food, the soul feeds on agency and meaningfulness. I will argue that good video games are, in this sense, food for the soul, particularly appropriate food in modern times. Of course, the hope is that this food will empower the soul to find agency and meaning in other aspects of life.

JAMES PAUL GEE

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The real question is why people lost their ability to see the fun in their daily life and filled their need for fun with video gaming. Video gamers are joy seekers.

PASCALINE LORENTZ

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The most surprising fact in my research on video gaming is the lack of trust of parents in their children. First, parents don't spend much time with their children who therefore dedicate this time to what they love doing: playing games. As a result, parents demonize video games although they were the one refusing spending time with their offspring. Hopefully, parents do realize that playing games with their children is a wonderful opportunity to share time, to know them better and to pass on values when discussing the games played. Teenagers I interviewed proved how skillful they are in giving meaning to their in-game actions. When you trust people, they do amazing things.

PASCALINE LORENTZ

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