Sick and tired of all this negative criticism of video games and the claims they negatively affect those who play them? So was Teace Snyder, who not only wrote a book in defence of gaming, but got his mother in on the whole deal.
Snyder’s mother, 65 year-old Jayne Gackenbach, admits she has worried (and still does) about the time her her son spends on gaming and how it affects him, even though Snyder is 27. A psychology professor and researcher, however, she’s learned that there’s a lot of positives to gaming that we don’t often hear about.
In their new book, Play Reality, the duo balance out misinformation and fear mongering that they say leads to “gamer shame,” causing gamers to feel ashamed for spending time playing video games.
“Half of the argument right now is based on misinformation, so a lot of the book has to go directly to teach people what is fact and what they’ve been misled to believe, unfortunately,” Snyder told the Edmonton Journal. “What’s going on right now isn’t anomalous, it’s quite typical. What we have is a new form of media that people don’t understand (like TV before it), so they jump on the bandwagon, denouncing it the worst thing in the world and it’s going to ruin the next generation.”
“How television changed the world, that’s kind of what we’re seeing now in the wake of the Internet and video games, the same kind of monumental, mind-blowing, unfathomable directional shift.”
Some examples of the positives of video games given by the book include using video games as therapy for burn victims in order to distract them from their pain, as well as gamification, which uses gaming principles for things such as fundraisers and even fitness.
Gackenbach acknowledges that there is some truth behind the misinformation, however. “The brain thinks it’s real so you get firing in the amygdala (the part of the brain involved in emotion and decision-making). That’s all true, but you get brain changes no matter what you do.”
“The point is, does that then generalize to ‘I’m going to kill my classmates?’ It did obviously in Columbine, but not for the other one million people who play Doom.”
The self published Play Reality sells for $10 and is available at the official website.
