Response 19

The excerpt taken from Everything Good is Bad for You starts off by delving into a discussion about video games and reading. The author, Steven Johnson, states that the reason why video games are not central in our culture is because books have been around so long. Johnson turns it around and asks what would have happened if video games have been around for hundreds of years and reading has become the new fad. Johnson offers a interesting answer in that games engages players to react with all five senses in a vivid three-dimensional world and books on the other hand are linear with just a wall of text on each page. It is not that books are not important. They are and Johnson gives a good argument, however, video games develop mental skills that are just as good as reading books. Johnson then gets into the metal aspect that video games offer and its affects on the mind and why we do play these games. He states that 90% of game play is not fun. Johnson tells us a story about a guy who worked for six months in Ultima just to buy a house he sold to buy a bigger house. Johnson asks us why would we pay a company monthly just to work in a game? Johnson answers by says it is not work if you enjoy it but why would anyone enjoy it? It is because how our brain and reward system is set up. Johnson then gets into a discussion about neuroscientists and how our brain functions and how video games are like the opposite of crack.

I actually own this book and have read parts of it and found it to be a good read. It stimulates the mind in a way that lets you see a different viewpoint on video games and its affect on culture. I found reading about how the brain interprets rewards and other things interesting. I do think that reading is more important than playing video games; however I would like to see video games evolve into something more important. I also think that if video games do evolve to this point, would reading be even necessary to succeed in life. That brings up the question what is success and that I believe are the rewards you get in life. Video games that can properly implement these rewards can make you successful not in life however, with video games becoming more realistic and usable for teaching, at one point in the future, video games will be key to success over reading.