All these articles on video games the past couple weeks have really made me nostalgic for my gamer days.  Not necessarily as a desire to return to those self-conscious teenage years, but rather to reassess the productivity of all those hours I spent “playing around.”  While my problem-solving abilities were definitely tested, I can’t claim to have learned anything else of historical value from games such as Tomb Raider or Resident Evil.  What if more educational games were available on the market?  Would I have even chosen to play them?  I think I definitely would have so long as they provided a world worth exploring.

As Gee notes, it is precisely this ability to live in an alternate world that first gravitated me towards games.  We have all imagined at some point what it would be like to live as a sports hero, historical figure, mythological creature does.  While many games today are easily equated with escapist literature, we could easily create some historical environments almost as interesting as the mythological worlds provided in games today.

Take for example the countless American westerners made in the middle part of the 20th Century.  These films based their plots on character morals and motivations that I’m not sure existed during the late 1800’s American frontier.  Yet these films still have quite a following as they portrayed contemporary perspectives on historical events.  Thus they comfort the viewer and reinforce the current moral paradigm.  However, people also enjoy the unknown and the foreign.  We like entering dangerous worlds so long as we know that nothing can actually happen to us.  Look at HBO’s recent series Deadwood as an example that takes the “Wild West” that many have come to understand through westerners and attempts to approach it historically.  The viewer’s current moral compass is irrelevant to the characters living in Deadwood.  It is now up to the viewer to make sense of this new world, and as a byproduct creates intense interest as we try to find something familiar.  So as we can see there can be real audiences for games based on historically accurate environments

We gravitate towards the unknown, and video games give us the ability to live in fantasy/historical worlds unharmed.  We simply need to take our own knowledge about a specific historical period or event and apply the same principles.  Despite what we may hear at times, most people enjoy history.  However we should clarify that by history they really mean personal memories.  The great thing about video games is that we can help create historical memories, which in turn are easier to remember.  I must admit I still remember the day I defeated Mike Tyson in his Punch Out game.  The celebration I threw might disturb some people as excessive given the actual achievement, but that is the power video games can have.  Rather than ignore or fight this trend we should embrace it.

It may appear sleazy or manipulative, but the video game’s ability to appeal to the individual’s vanity is what makes them so successful.  Can we really argue that in some fashion each of our pursuits in our respective academic fields isn’t selfish either?  Why not embrace this reality and use it to teach something meaningful.