Games and Imagination

[ThePoodonkis]

This came to me the other day:
Is gaming reducing children's needs for imagination?
Most (if not all) of us remember playing soldier, house, and just plain using our imagination to make whatever world or story we wanted.
Nowadays, I see less of it. I've noticed more kids are playing video games to substitute pretend playing with friends.
Play soccer? Nah, let's just play FIFA 2009 instead
Pretend Soldier? No thanks, we have Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3.
What about house then? OK, I'll just put The Sims in the CD tray.
I remember playing with my Star Wars action figures in the sandbox with lots of my fellow young folk, and it seems children don't need to do that anymore. They just need to watch a world and get a story made for them, instead of them making their own story that is completely theirs.

So I ask: Do you think kids today need imagination when they can just play a game? And if so, is it a good thing?

 

[alloneword]

Its not just the games though, because I was a child who was raised with a NES controller in my hand. The difference is that I was not raised in a bubble.

Nowadays children are discouraged from any activity that may cause wounds or illness... so basically everything we used to do as kids. Now this is not everywhere, but its becoming more prominent.

 

[ThePoodonkis]

Its not just the games though, because I was a child who was raised with a NES controller in my hand. The difference is that I was not raised in a bubble.

Nowadays children are discouraged from any activity that may cause wounds or illness... so basically everything we used to do as kids. Now this is not everywhere, but its becoming more prominent.

Screwing around outside and getting hurt isn't exactly expanding that mental bubble though.

What, you never had a snowball or dirt-clump fight?

 

[Gitsnik]

Screwing around outside and getting hurt isn't exactly expanding that mental bubble though.

No but it is teaching life skills that are invaluable later on. I'm 21 and I'm seeing a generation of "kids" my age moving through the work force. Don't get me wrong I'm arrogant as hell, but I at least earn my money - these kids are expecting to be on 6 figures and having life handed to them. They complain about doing "shit kicker" work.

If you want to really think about it, look at the "awesome" achievements in computers in the past, say, twenty years. What do we really have? One or two advancements in graphics processing, maybe some new features in our CPU's. Everything else is just refinements (Ethernet to Wireless, CD's to BluRay Disks).

Correlation is not causation but in a world where everyone is stuck inside playing video games, and where you are expected to conform in the work place (no eccentricity) we seem to have stifled a lot of our creative juices.

My $0.02 AU

 

[ThePoodonkis]

I have had plenty, but they haven't exactly enriched my imagination or intelligence in any way.

I'm not saying that it enriched it, but you used it to come up with the idea that you could throw snow at people and have fun. Now, it's just "Its too cold to go outside, I'll just play Virtual Snowballer 5 instead."

 

[Gitsnik]

This thread isn't about life skills though.

And if you think the vast majority of technological achievements are merely refinements, then you haven't seen much of technology.

Imagination is a crucial life skill to doing more than just the same thing all day. Certainly it is necessary to go and do your job or to maintain relationships, but if we were all drones where would the excitement be. The difference between those who really do well for themselves and the rest of the human race is exactly this: imagination.

And without getting too far into the proverbial dick waving contest: I've seen too much technology to give much of a crap about any of it. Feel free to point me at any major new inventions in the past twenty years. Things that were as revolutionary as SQL or spreadsheets.

 

[N-Sef]

I don't think it will inhibit a child's imagination at all, I still see children play outside of their homes recreating some sort of epic battle as only seen from the inside of their own heads, while it makes no sense to the person watching it the kid is having a ball of a time.

Imagination is always a good thing, it lets the kid explore different avenues of thought that one simply can't be taught. This is best expressed through different art mediums, be it painting, playing an instrument or writing a story. This is why I hate seeing subjects like Art or Music being axed from Primary Schools (Music was axed from my school for a good 4 years before it came back in my final year) in favour of another science subject. While I do think science, math etc are important, I also think that growth in other areas where kids get to let their imaginations run wild are also as important in Primary Schools.

I see video games as a tool of learning in the early stages, children learn to problem solve and make logical conclusions without even realizing it because all they see is that they are trying to help Spider-Man defeat the baddies. I know quite a few 7 year olds, and they do go back to drawing and such after playing games. Then again they are usually policed with their game time by their parents, which begs a completely different question.

In short, no I don't think that video games conflict with a childs imagination.

 

[ThePoodonkis]

Snowball fights are a cultural phenomenon and hardly something which requires the imagination to invent.

From what I've been seeing though, that phenomenon is wearing off for another activity that requires almost no imagination.

And how will reading awaken or reawaken the imagination? It's near the same basic principles of games and television.
The maker, in this case the author, has a set plot and story for you to follow. You have no say on what is going on in that. You're not part of it, and that is the thing that children need to do.
They need to make their own story and be part of it. Let only the power of their mind make the epic battles, and how they will end. Not another person tell you how it is going and how it will end.

 

[ThePoodonkis]

It seems to me that writing is more thought provoking than reading is. With reading, you have someone else's thoughts. But when you write, the things written are entirely your own and have your imagination in the lines.
I see where you're coming from though.

On a side note, I prefer reading over everything else any day. It is thought provoking in my opionion, just in case the post was misinterpreted. I just think writers need more thought and imagining to go on.

 

[SimuLord]

Its not just the games though, because I was a child who was raised with a NES controller in my hand. The difference is that I was not raised in a bubble.

Nowadays children are discouraged from any activity that may cause wounds or illness... so basically everything we used to do as kids. Now this is not everywhere, but its becoming more prominent.

Amen to that. Even Generation X remembers playing football outside rather than playing Madden. Tackle football. Without pads. (and I wonder why my knees and ankles suffer from rigor mortis at 31...)

 

[SimuLord]

From what I've been seeing though, that phenomenon is wearing off for another activity that requires almost no imagination.

And how will reading awaken or reawaken the imagination? It's near the same basic principles of games and television.
The maker, in this case the author, has a set plot and story for you to follow. You have no say on what is going on in that. You're not part of it, and that is the thing that children need to do.
They need to make their own story and be part of it. Let only the power of their mind make the epic battles, and how they will end. Not another person tell you how it is going and how it will end.

So what you're pretty much saying is that kids need to play fewer JRPGs and more games like The Sims on those occasions that they play games.

Or maybe not The Sims specifically, but any other game where the world evolves not in the way the developer set the world to evolve but the way the player's interaction with the world causes something like emergent AI to self-generate to react to the player's actions. Stuff like that is essentially the evolution of the dollhouse or the toy soldier or what-have-you.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

How has humanity transmitted its most poignant and thought provoking ideas and philosophies for the majority of modern history?

It wasn't through snowball fights that's for sure.

For the majority of modern history, written word was the only medium. Television and video games are the new medium, and like radio, can still invoke imagination in their own ways.

If you ask me, the reason imagination is diminishing is because anytime a kid acts out or does something abnormal, they're assumed to have ADD or one of many other recently popular mental deficiencies

 

[tobyornottoby]

And how will reading awaken or reawaken the imagination? It's near the same basic principles of games and television.

Except that television is more like fast food handed over to you, and books are more like the ingredients you have to cook your own meal with. Your brains have to string those words together to make a meaningful story out of it, and also have to make up a visualisation of that.

(although games are of course waaaay more active than movies... when it comes to games VS reading I wouldn't know >.>)

 

[SmugFrog]

Growing up in the NES age, I made up a little bit of a story for the game I'm playing. I still sort of do that with some games, really getting into the gameplay and setting up my own scenario in my head. It extends the replay value of a game to me.

I don't think this destroyed my imagination - combined with playing outside - those times I went outside I would relive epic battles and miscellaneous silly things a boy does when playing. I think I drew inspiration from the game stories as a person will do from a good book.

I think sitting and gaming alone... yeah, that probably isn't good to build imagination. Add a healthy dose of legos, playing outside, GI Joes in the sandbox... that sort of stuff. I can't count how many times I set up a "stage" (similar to something like Double Dragon) for my GI JOES, complete with "boss fights".

Am I the only one that did that stuff?