Mel’s Ten Questions about Video Gaming

There is no doubt that video gaming is taking over our world, and creating many more. Some of them are virtual, some of them semi-virtual, and who knows? We may be living in several real-but-virtual quasiworlds with simultaneous meshing in the years to come.

I am now listening to a group of students in Bilbao, Spain, talking in their TED Circle about the future of video gaming. I am writing this while I listen to them. Now I’m embedding the video we have all just watched. I’m having fun. Isn’t this almost a game in itself?

Herman Narula talks about all the advantages but as usual I’m worried about the consequences. So I’ll ask a few questions.

-Aren’t videogames a collosal waste of time?

-Is there any social culpability? Is it just about making money?

-Why aren’t all the positive attributes of games put to better use in the education sphere?

-Will people escape from the real world with all its problems into virtual worlds?

-Will people escape from their own challenges instead of tackling them head on?

-Do videogames create more equality or more inequality?

-What is the danger to young people?

-What is the danger to families?

-I play a game which is almost 100 years old (Scrabble). Will people be playing current games in 100 years?

-Don’t video games cause young people to be reactive instead of proactive?