One of the things that is used as a stick with which to beat the gamer is the idea that gaming is a “fantasy world“. Some people do believe that the player sitting with a controller in his or her hands has reverted to a child like state in which they cannot tell the difference between digitized figures on a screen and real people. And while the best games do have an element of immersion to them, it is completely inaccurate to suggest that gamers have difficulty […]

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The rise of sport simulations on video game consoles started a few decades ago, but the advances that the medium has made since then are quite something to behold. There was a time when whatever sport you enjoyed, playing it on a video game would be somehow unsatisfying. Unless your chosen sport was golf, it was incredibly hard to make players and conditions anywhere close to lifelike. Once you discovered a way to hoodwink the computer player’s defense, you could rack up as many goals, touchdowns or […]

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The popularity of video games has changed in ways more subtle than many of us ever give credit for. Yes, it has become a growth industry due in no small part to the way it has offered people what they want. Cerebral games are now more cerebral, violent games more violent, and games featuring hedgehogs now have all the more hedgehogs in them. However, there is also another difference which has become all the more telling since the 1990s. Early in that decade, to play a really […]

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A clever comedian once said that the idea that video games influence human behavior is a ludicrous one, pointing out that if the games we played in the 80s had influenced what we did then, people would have been running around in darkened rooms with flashing lights, swallowing pills as they went. He may have had a point. Certainly, what he said has a point behind it in another way. Specifically, computer games have changed incredibly over the years from the days of PacMan – when they […]

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The vast majority of us will have to accept that the triumphs we dreamed of as kids will probably be beyond us in the end. Not because of failings on our part, but simply because of simple statistical fact. How many people play football professionally? How many will pilot a plane in a war zone? How many will build a new nation and run it along egalitarian principles? As a percentage of those who dream of these things, a pretty select group. Life gets in the way. […]

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The popularity of video gaming has been a comfortable source for many news stories over the years. They are something to blame if something goes wrong in a high school, for teenage obesity, and even in some places for the lowering in quality of outdoor sports. A poor supply of players in skill positions? It’s because they were playing the game on a screen rather than on a patch of turf somewhere, honing their skills. Is it valid reasoning? Almost certainly not. Does it provide a handy […]

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