Screening of Gamer Revolution (CBC documentary, 2007)

Pros & Cons of playing videogames for individuals & societies

According to the film, playing videogames has both possitive and negatve influences for individuals and societies. About the pros, people can become famous and popular just by playing videogames. Players can entertain themselves and even treat their hobby as a job. Also, people can get great satisfactions by playing videogames. For example, in the world of online sex games, everyone could be a sexual super-hero. Besides, I remember that a boy who suffering from certain kind of illness in the screening, get power and overcome the illness bravely through a game called "Mission". About the pros for the societies, the U.S. army can use videogames to train new recruits and to simulate real-life battle situations in preparation for combat. It is really interesting and convenient. Also, playing videogames can be a kind of cultural reference since computer nerds in Korea are symblos for the 21st century.

On the other hand, it is negative for people to spend much more time and money in the virtual world. Some research shows that tens of millions of people spend more time in the incredible world of online games than they are in the real life. And gamers in Norway spend hundreds of millions of dollars on virtual items, such as clothing, furniture and estate. For the societies, some people may intend to use games as a tool for arousing citizens' negative emotion. For example, a developer in Syria creates a popular shooter game intended to incite the rage of the young men of the Middle East.

Videogames can encourage aggressive values & anti-social action in real world

According to the film, there are many games related to the problem of encouraging aggressive values and an-ti-social action in real world, such as "First person shooter" and "Postel". These games just like killing machines because they invite and allow players killing enemies or innocent people in virtual world. Also, the games accompany with rock musics behind that is an influencial impulse driving people to kill. According to the experiment done by experts, when people play violent videogames, their brain systems have unusual activities and it is an evidence to proof that digital games can definitely increase aggressive emotion. Moreover, there is an real case to justify the experiment results. A guy shot eight people and five of them being shot in the head. The reason is that when we playing shoot games, we always see and shoot people's head, so we can see that the action of the guy is influenced by the violent videogames very deeply.

I agree that violent videogames can generate aggressive values and anti-social actions based on the example and experiment above. Also, people are easy to moved by visual images and sound effect, especailly children and teenagers. Just like watching movies, we will cry or keep in an unhappy emotion after watching a sad movies; we will maintain in a scared emotion after watching a horror film and so on. It shows that we are easy to be effected by the visual representation and sound when we are passitive to recieve the message, let alone we becoming the active controller in the game world?

The government should have the right to ban certain games

The trend that more and more videogames in the market advocating the massages of violent and sex will certainly creates negative effect for children's development and destroies proper attitudes in the world. It is responsible and neccessary for the government to protect the moral values of the society. Related officials should set up censorship to control the content and ideas of videogames, those with too much violent or sexual messages should be banned. Apart from the law, of course, the education system is also important for providing correct values.

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Own case study

I like playing Cooking Mama because my mother does not allow me to cook in real life, so I would like to cook through the virtual world. About the game, there are many types of food with different standards for players to cook, such as fried rice, steak, soup and so on. Players can try every steps of the process, including cutting the ingredients, stiring the sauce and controling the cooking time. When I cook the food successfully with high score, I feel great satisfactions, just like finishing real dishes in real life.

Although I am in favour of the game, on the other hand it may has some dangerous problems for particular people, especially those without enough cooking knowledge or practice in real life. For example, children with higher score in the game may think that they are qaulified to cook in daily life, then they just cook without their parents' permission that can leads to a serious accident.