“Games have amounted to nearly 75 billion U.S. dollars in 2015 and are expected to grow to 90 billion by 2020” (Statista).

In his essay, “Just One More Game,” Sam Anderson invites us into his view on what games are doing to society, and what he predicts may happen in our future. You can relate with Anderson and understand his beliefs regarding games. Gaming is depleting people of time and ravaging minds that would otherwise be focused on something productive. Throughout Anderson’s essay he refers to all games as stupid games. Almost instantly you can gain his perspective as a love-hate relationship for games in general. Video games are reshaping our society, becoming a “new drug” of sorts. This in contrast to the book Reality is Broken where Jane McGonigal shows the possible positive benefits from video games on our society from the psychological perspective. This contrast is made abundantly clear when the author creates the dichotomy of the dystopia versus the utopia with respect to games. It is this author’s opinion that both McGonigal and Anderson are correct in their assumptions that games are good and bad. I promote the idea of Yin and Yang, that there should be an equilibrium with respect to games.

Anderson believes games are similar to brainwashing, according to paragraph 11 where he states, “They’re less an activity in our day then a blank space in our day, less a pursuit than a distraction from other pursuits.” Games exist to distract ourselves and waste time not dealing with reality. Obviously, companies care about making money, not about the brain cells they’re destroying or precious time they’re wasting. Anderson also states how non-gaming companies advertise popular games to attract customers. For example, he stated how the game Angry Birds (in paragraph eight) has been downloaded more than seven-hundred million times. How it “Inspired a disturbingly robust merchandising empire: films, t-shirts, novelty slippers, even plans for Angry Birds “Activity parks featuring play equipment for kids.”

The purpose of video games is to be an active participant in a story, much like sitting around the fire telling myths like our ancestors. With companies creating thousands of games that can be played on cellular phones, they’re giving everyone the crutch of owning a hand-held gaming console. These will ultimately rot our brains and waste our time. Andersons’ dislike for games – primarily cellular gaming rather than sophisticated gaming consoles such as: X-Box 360, X-Box One, Nintendo, Sega, Game-Cube, or PlayStation. These games as Anderson observes, are “built accordingly, around long narratives (quests, wars, the rise and fall of civilizations) that could be explored comfortably while sitting cross-legged on a living-room carpet.” In other words, those games are more relevant and worthwhile. At the same time predominantly cellular games like: Angry Birds, Tetris, Candy Crush, Fruit Ninja and Pokémon Go are fruitless endeavors.

Jane McGonigal, American game designer and author believes that games are good for society. She is convinced that if the mechanics of games were used with everyday li humanity would be much healthier and overall more superior. As McGonigal notes, “We might even use these approaches to help solve real world problems like obesity, education and government abuse.” Although this is a great idea, I do not believe this would fully solve any real-world problems such as obesity. The main criticism is that there is no mechanism explained by the author Anderson in his contrast of the viewpoints. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the assumptions of McGonigal, one can see the positive benefit on society. The mechanism of gaming as a benefit to society can be very helpful, but if people do not want to change, then people will not change.

Companies finding ways to sell and get people addicted to games is called gamification. A technology firm named Gartner predicts, “A gamified service for consumer-goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon” (Anderson). Anderson believes the future holds a much darker outcome for gaming where companies will be able to “inject” their messages into people through video games, having behavioral psychologists helping to fine tune the advertisement projections to make profit from peoples’ video game addictions. Game designer Frank Lantz doesn’t fear the companies’ possible power over humanity. As he states “The type of game you play is also a part of how you think about yourself as a person. There’s no formula that’s going to solve that equation. It’s impossible, because it’s infinitely deep and wonderful.” Apparently, no matter what companies try to trick us into, they hold no control since they couldn’t possibly target everyone with the same type of advertising through games. They would have to target all games in existence, where the price of advertising would outweigh any benefit towards profit. (Anderson)

I have often pondered what life really means; however, many times I find myself associating and comparing my life to video games. The more sophisticated of the bunch, of course! Except, you cannot completely pause or restart in life. Sid Meier, legendary game designer once defined games as “a series of interesting choices.” Life is but an iterated set of choices that drive us either forwards or backwards depending on outcome. From what I surmise, video games are not all bad and can help define us as individuals. Video games help us cope with life stresses and give us something to relate to with others. However, given what we learned from Anderson about stupid games, and gamification, this author hopes that video games meet some type of equilibrium so that the harm produced is balanced against the benefits. Games are a part of today’s society and will advance as our technology keeps progressing into the future.

Works Cited

Anderson, Sam. “Just One More Game…: Angry Birds, Farmville, and Other Hyperaddictive Stupid Games.” Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Francine Weinberg. The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and Handbook. London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. 105-110.

Statista. Statista.com. May 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/232383/gender-split-of-us-computer-and-video-gamers/. 4 November 2018.