Walking Paper

The Economist had a great article last week titled Not bound by anything that attempts to answer the question, “Now that books are being digitised, how will people read?”

One of the author’s central ideas is that books are migrating online and ceasing to be books. Take for example wikipedia. He also writes,

Many fantasy fans, for example, have already put aside books and logged on to “virtual worlds” such as “World of Warcraft”, in which muscular heroes and heroines get together to slay dragons and such like. Science fiction may go the same way, and is arguably already being created by “residents” of online worlds such as Second Life.

What makes this claim somewhat more interesting in that it is tempered with the statement that

Most stories, however, will never find a better medium than the paper-bound novel. That is because readers immersed in a storyline want above all not to be interrupted, and all online media teem with distractions (even a hyperlink is an interruption).

I don’t think all fantasy readers have set down print books though I’m sure some have. However, many people are certainly getting the same (or greater) satisfaction from games in addition to reading books. With sales of the Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 approaching 8 million units (and let’s not forget the 8.5 million World of Warcraft players), it is safe to say that more people are either replacing or supplementing their reading with gaming.

The article isn’t just about gaming. There’s an interesting bit about recapturing the oral nature of poetry though podcasting, and getting haiku text messages. Both of these things, by the way, are services that any library could offer at no real cost…

Yeah, I know, paper is an amazing technology, and books are really useful. They’ll be gone some day though. We’ll all likely be worm food when that day comes, but it’ll happen nonetheless. Now the world is one step closer.

Spending hours reading the papers may be an ideal pastime on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

But what if your newspaper updated itself during the day? What if the pictures moved and the interviews could be listened to?

In Belgium, this is coming true – at least for a three-month trial period. The Antwerp-based daily De Tijd will soon become the world’s first newspaper to publish a digital version on so-called ‘electronic paper’.

Those lucky Belgians will now get to eat great waffles and have eInk newspapers! Here’s the full article: Belgian newspaper to become first ‘paperless’ daily. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there’s going to be a revolution and newspapers are going to stop their presses soon. I’m just saying that this is a step in the evolutionary process.

One of my favorite essays about paper is The Social Life of Paper by (a way pre-Blink) Malcolm Gladwell. If you missed it in 2002, give it a read. There is even a great bit about Melvil Dewey in the article.

Rochelle’s daughter contacted me about a paper she was writing. I got interviewed for it, and in the process, I got her to agree to let me publish it here! Actually, she was excited to get it on the web. We’re all so busy writing about kids and games, I figured it would be nice to get a perspective from an actual teenager. Her essay turned out great, especially for a 9th grader!

Video Games Are Good For You by “Juniorette”

Video games are widely known as an excellent source of entertainment, and are, according to some, better than watching TV because of their interactivity. What a lot of people don’t know is that they can be good for those who play them, and are easy to obtain and keep, since most games and systems can be kept together in one area. They come at low cost, usually under thirty dollars.

There are several genres of video games. RPGs, or role-playing games, often include the task of completing quests. The characters in the game are your party, or your team, and there are frequently three to eight in a game, though only some of them may be able to fight at a time, and players have to balance their teams to use all their skills effectively. MMORPGs (Massively-multiplayer online RPG) are online RPGs where people all over the world create custom characters and interact with other people in the game world, joining together to form their own parties and complete quests. In racing games, up to four players, depending on what game, race against each other on different tracks. There are the classic games that are like NASCAR, and there are others that use characters from classic video games of other genres, like in Mario Kart Double Dash. Fighting games are exactly that. There are some that even have their own small plot lines, where the goal is to defeat the strongest character and win the prize. In strategy games, the player controls a wide range of characters that they act as tactician for and direct around a map to defeat an enemy or accomplish a mission. In sports games, the player controls a favorite basketball or football team that they lead to the championship, or a single character, such as in golf or skating games. There are genres to entertain nearly everyone who wants to play a game.

Some parents might think that watching TV is a better way to spend your time than playing Halo 2 (a popular first-person shooter MMORPG). Aaron Schmidt, reference librarian at Thomas Ford Memorial Library in Western Springs, IL, had this to say on the subject:

“I think games are much more interesting than TV. TV is a ONE WAY operation going from the TV to the viewer. Games are a TWO WAY operation, back and forth, where the viewer can change the world and story. Games let people be creative and interact with their world whereas TV tells people what to think.” (Schmidt 2005)

TV also typically costs more than a video game. With the game there is only one payment (unless it’s a subscription to an online game), but you need to pay continuously to use your TV. Books are an excellent source of entertainment as well that parents might choose over games or TV. Schmidt had this to say about books vs. video games:

“I think books are great, and I think video games are great. Many people don’t realize it, but there can be just as much reading in video games as in books.”

Schmidt also said that the reason some libraries, including his, is that kids like video games, librarians like kids in the library, and therefore, they have video games.

Many people think that video games are the cause of more violent, aggressive behavior in kids and teens. “I’m convinced that violent video games do contribute to adolescents’ becoming more violent, having more hostile feelings, and [experiencing] more desensitization,” Joanne Cantor, recently retired University of Wisconsin professor said. “I think the kids distinguish pretty clearly between the cartoonish nature of a video game and reality,” John Beck, author of a book about video games, said. “I grew up with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd shooting at each other’s heads all the time.” (Anonymous 1.)

Games can be good tools for learning and developing one’s mind. Some wonder how learning in school can be more like a game by using some of the learning principals found in games, such as interaction (simulations of how the student could apply the problem to real life, perhaps), creativity (customizing what the problem is about), being pleasantly frustrating (the student might want to solve the problem because it interests them more), or performance before competence (showing that the student can do something at all before doing it well) (Gee 2-4).

Video game programming and design are now college majors. EA (Electronic Arts) Games, the no.1 video game maker in America, was hiring people from college who had no experience in game design and the wrong art and computer training. “For 20 years, students came out of school and they had to kind of unlearn what they had learned in computer science…the stuff they had learned in art was inappropriate…we had to do a lot of training internally,” Bing Gordon, the Gordon, the company’s chief creative officer, said. The gaming industry was starving for talent. This changed when video game design, programming, and script writing programs were introduced into colleges (Schiesel).

A good game is an interactive structure that requires players to struggle towards a goal. Without interaction, it’s just a puzzle. In some RPGs (role-playing games), players have to figure out a puzzle with clues they get by interacting with NPCs (non-playable characters), or by physically doing the puzzle on the map or in the form of riddles.

Without a goal, the end result of the player’s actions, there’s no point in playing. In many RPG games, the players have several goals over the course of the game that they have to complete before they can win. Without a struggle, the game’s just boring. It’s not fun to walk right through to the end of a game without having to accomplish goals or fight any monsters. Some ways to create struggle to make a game interesting include puzzles, such as riddles, sliding puzzles, and mazes; obstacles, like bosses (a strong enemy character the player has to fight at the end of a level) and the normal monsters found everywhere; and violence in the form of fighting, or a character being attacked in a cutscene (a sequence in a video game that the player has no control over, and is used to advance the plot and portray dialogue) (Costikyan).

Games are wonderful sources of entertainment that come in all kinds of forms. They provide a unique, interactive, and complex activity, at low cost and zero risk. Their design, script writing, and programming are becoming college majors. Games are even better than TV in some ways.

Bibliography:
Anonymous. Illinois Governor Says Some Video Games Are Too Violent for Teens. Current Events. February 18, 2005. One page.

Costikyan, Greg. The Problem of Video Game Violence is Exaggerated. Games Don’t Kill People—Do They? June 21, 1999. 8 pages.

Deutsch, David. Playing Video Games Benefits Children. Video Games: Harmfully Addictive or a Unique Educational Environment? 23 November 2005. 5 pages.

Gee, James Paul. Good Video Games and Good Learning. Phi Kappa Phi Forum. Summer 2005. 5 pages.

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