Video Games

You I think that the games in themselves are probably not harmful. They may be helpful in some ways such as making the players of the more alert or improving their visual acuteness or even may help in the formation of groups of friends people who gather together to play an arcade or to play at home.

However, I think that they're harmful in the sense that they crowd out other possibly richer uses of leisure time. That is, the time and energy and money spent in the video arcade might, in my point of view, be much better spent in a variety of other ways. For example, in quietly doing things by oneself such as reading, writing, having a fantasy life, introspecting, taking a close look at oneself, planning one's future, day dreaming. All these are very valuable activities and very necessary for the development of a well-rounded human personality. I guess you could make a case that such an engrossing activity blocks out moments of reflection and doesn't allow the player to be aware of what else is happening. But on the other hand, we've talked about the need for immersion experiences where people really are involved in something with a tremendous sense of death and participation.

And certainly video games will do that. If the person is involved in getting this kind of psychic satisfaction from participation, it would seem to me that if there are other things that he does besides just playing video games, then that moment of the peak experience, the flow experience that involvement is not necessarily a bad experience. It may be very beneficial, very good. The problem would be if you stayed on this high for an indefinite period of time, it did not have other kinds of activity which would encourage and allow reflection, exploration, etc. You've just heard Dr. Robert Wilson, UNC Chapel Hill professor in the Department of Sociology, and Dr. Douglas Sessions, UNC Chapel Hill Dean in the Recreation Curriculum. They expressed two very different opinions on the value of video games. I'm Samuel Henderson.

Electronic leisure was a topic of a recent symposium at UNC Chapel Hill. Will he or more from some of the participants about video games and other uses of microcomputers and video discs? Now Dr. Sessions. The player certainly is bombarded by a large number of sensory inputs. That may be one of the attractions living in the world in which show we're constantly being bombarded by a variety of sensory inputs. It is a contemporary activity. It is using the technology of today as a means of play. Does that mean that this kind of recreation, this kind of recreational activity makes sense for where we are as a culture? Yes, I think it's a reflection of where we are as a culture. I think also it's kind of a preparatory thing for living with a machine. I think the kids who play video games are beginning to feel very comfortable with the machine and they'll use the microcomputer for other kinds of activity beside play. I think in a sense this generation of young people who are playing the video games, the microcomputer, will be as comfortable with that as

the generation of students who are in college today are comfortable with the telephone. They have no hesitancy in using it. I can remember my grandmother being somewhat frightened by the phone. She didn't like to use the telephone very much. It was not a part of her youth. My young, the young people I deal with, the phone is there. Why not use it? I think the children who are playing video games are going to have the same feeling about the microcomputer. It's going to be a part of their everyday experience and they're going to use it. I think that's a preparatory kind of thing as well as a reflection of where we are with our culture and the high technology. Do you think that the apprehensions that are arising around the video games are similar to apprehensions when anything new and different comes along? Yes, I reminded of the music man, the Broadway show, the music man, where pool was being introduced to the kids in River City and how the parents were threatened by the pool. And by their kids spending so much time playing pool. In many ways, some parents are frightened by their kids playing video games of the arcade.

I would imagine that the arcade will are fed, that they will not be with us in such large numbers with such large participation for any of the real length of time. I think the video games being played in the microcomputers at home will be with us for quite a long while. But I think the arcades are part of the fat aspect of the video market. I don't think we should condemn the machine or the game for that environment. What we should do is try to clean up that environment or create alternative environments that are more conducive for the more positive benefits in place machines and have the games in those environments. For example, in Orange County, the Park and Recreation Department has several machines that they have in their recreation centers and they monitor them very carefully to do not allow children to play those machines during school hours. The kids come in play and enjoy and there is a very positive feeling on the part of the community about those machines as opposed to some arcades where the environment is not as conducive to the control and supervision of the kids.

I believe that at one point earlier you said that play is a time of escape that has sort of a reality of its own. What is that? Well I think when we play any game we are aware that what happens in that game is only related to that game. To make a 30 foot shot and say it counts three points has no meaning except in the game of basketball. So there's a reality that in that game that three point play has meaning but what is the three point play outside of basketball it has no meaning. So I think when the kids are playing the video game they know that that Frogger or Pac-Man has only meaning in that experience that devouring a gum drop is really not devouring a gum drop is a part of the game. And I think all games by their very nature had that kind of reality that special escape that set of dynamics which is unique to that experience. And that's probably very healthy for an adult to be able to leave some of the pressures of the world and go into that special reality of call play.

I find for myself when we play some of the video games that I find it very relaxing to break from what I've been doing to have that moment of diversionary escape but I realize that that is diversionary that is a game. And what are the components of games and what how do video games compare with what games traditionally have been? Any good game is made up of four elements it has to have rules you have to know the rules you're playing by and that's that special reality you know. Secondly it has to have rules that is players in this case the machine is user opponent and the machine is going to execute its role you have to execute your role as the as the other opponent. A good game requires strategy you've got to be able to figure out a way of winning and that depends upon your problem solving skills and your development of your physical skills to relate to that particular conflict.

And finally a good game is one in which you know when the game is over it's either because you have achieved one six games in case of tennis while your opponent is only one four or you know that you have the larger number of points when you count your points and bridge then your opponent. There's a point in which you have completed the games of termination point and you know that's the end of the game and what the results have been. Video games are very much that way you you better problem solve and have your strategy of play are you're going to be zapped immediately because the machine is going to execute its role and you've got to you've got to respond to that and you know when the games over it tells you the sounds the site tell you the games over. Video games though are high volume activity I mean you have site sound feel possibly when smell who knows is there anything having to do with the number of stimuli coming in at one time that it is harmful. I think so I've heard it argued that the multiple stimulation of the games is in fact desirable because it brings out full capacities of the person or exercises all senses as you suggest and there may be something in that argument but I don't think much.

Dr Robert Wilson UNC Chapel Hill sociology department. From my point of view the reverse is more likely to be the case in that I think this represents a kind of bombardment of the senses a species of overstimulation which is likely as I was saying just a few minutes ago to crowd out the opportunity for quiet or more meditative kinds of activity. I think this is possibly the case and I admit that we do have to live in a very fast paced world and we all are confronted with a variety of situations where we must respond quickly must be alert. On the other hand I think the value of this kind of training or experience is outweighed by the replacement as I was suggesting earlier more valuable kinds of activities.

Is there no intrinsic value just of playing a video game in itself? I don't think there's very much except in the sense that anything that's a momentary amusement or distraction may be helpful in the sense that we all need to relax and we can't work hard all the time or be concerned with serious matters all the time. All of us need some trivial distractions during the course of the day or week to be sure. But I think that essentially video games as I know them to date are essentially content less have little of substance to offer. Simply a kind of sensory distraction which may be as I say entertaining for the moment but which I think are likely to have little lasting value for the individual or for the society. Someone once described the poet as a person who having nothing to do finds something to do.

The yet the trouble with the video game player is that he or she has already found something to do and that's something is is frightfully insignificant. I've heard video games called trivial. What is it about how do they stack up themselves in terms of a mental activity? To the devotee that the game is certainly not a trivial experience because to be successful you have to problem solve. You've got to figure out what's going to happen and this comes from playing and from observation and it's not just a diversionary experience in which when you get through you haven't learned something. The kids who play these games are learning to problem solve. They are learning to be sensitive to change. Dr. Douglas Sessions, UNC Chapel Hill Recreation Curriculum. They have to be successful at it. Of course they are developing very skillful use of their fingers and manual dexterity is there and good eye and hand coordination.

But I would call it trivial if it means that it doesn't require one to have to use their intellectual resources in order to succeed. In fact it requires you to be very much aware of what's going on and how to cope with it to problem solve to use your mind. Is there any study or are there any research efforts going on now to see what the effects are over time of someone? I know especially younger people adolescents are getting very heavily involved with this but it is very annoying. It was anyone looking at them and maybe monitoring over a long time to see if there are any differences. My knowledge, although I heard one of the other speakers at the symposium say that some of the game manufacturers themselves, Atari and others, have begun some small scale research. I think it's probably too early though to have any conclusive results or evidence. Dr. Wilson's area of concentration in sociology is art and literature. He can't see much teaching value from playing video games.

Dr. Sessam's explains the value of play itself as a teacher and how even video games can help in teaching. I think we learn the world through play. I think kids very much test out roles when a child plays grown up when they put on their parents clothes, wear their shoes and play daddy or play mama. They're testing out roles when they play store. They're testing out roles and a lot of fantasy play is role testing. It's seeing how comfortable you're with that. In games we do more than playing out roles. We also get some understanding about the consequences of decisions. You make a mistake and you lose the game. You make an era and there are certain consequences. I think that games very much help us to learn the order of things. We learn something about the way society works, the way organizations function, particularly with playing team games. I can see video games as giving you immediate feedback. You know when you made a mistake. It tells you and you learn about consequence.

I think that's a part of the play process. To the player he's not really concerned about what the game is except that it's fun, that it's pleasurable. But the hidden agenda of all games is that the player does have a chance to test out roles and does have a chance to learn how to relate. Dr. Sessions believes video games are here to stay even if a video game arcade is not. It seems we may have reached saturation and some arcades are trading video games for pinball machines. Video games at home may offer the advantage of entertainment and education. Dr. John Piacca, Acting Director of the Center for Educational Research and Evaluation at Research Triangle Institute. In terms of talking about a video game, I would like to separate that into two areas. One, you have your video game that allows you to do little more than to play the game, their packaged games.

The other is the use of a micro computer on which you can play your video game. But when you go into the micro computer, you're talking about adding a lot of other educational software that the student can use in addition to just playing a game on it. But one aside with regard to video games, the military itself is very interested in the potential for educating through games. For example, putting games in their day rooms outside the barracks that GIs could sit down and play a lot of the Star Wars-type games. Which could have educational carryover in the sense of teaching marksmanship and in this type of thing, artillery shooting on aircraft or shooting tanks. The problem with this particular folks research with the military is that they're having trouble getting industry to seriously listen to them with regard to developing games specifically for educational purposes. Since the big money right now is in the entertainment games.

So that particular thrust of research hasn't been carried on. But then going back to the second focus, which is the use of the micro computer on which you can play your game, but on which you could put a lot of instructional packages with this area, there is a lot of potential. The big problem today is in the amount of software that is available for using the micro computer. The software that is available is often available for a specific type of computer. So you have a standardization problem. For example, this recently the Commodore people, the maker of the Vic Commodore micro computer, are offering a package where they have some 646 programs, educational programs, that have been put together largely by students up in Canada in the summer. And they're offering this package of programs for approximately $250. And if you bring your own disk in, they'll copy the monthly or disk for a much smaller price.

Now these include the programs in computer science, English, French, history, math, science, and technology, those types of things. So the software is available to plug into your micros at home. The basic problem is though a lot of the software is not that well developed. It's been said that the technology, the hardware, the computer hardware is now within its fifth or sixth generation, whereas the software is only its first or its most second generation. So we just have a long way to go to develop software that is very instructional and it is also highly motivated. The one insight into that problem is the fact that Consumer Reports has recently noted that they're going to come up with now a separate publication that will start evaluating the various types of software available on the market, much the same way that they evaluate other products for consumers. So this should go a long way toward improving the quality and variety of software is available.

How much would a good micro system and a good software backup system hit you for nowadays? Well, you can certainly buy a real good micro system for about $2,000. That would include a decent printer. And that would include the keyboard, the printer, your television or cathode radio tube. The software for the system can vary anywhere from $25 to $250 a package. But again, referring back to my reference to the package that Vic Commodore is putting on for $250, you can get some 600 different kinds of packages. The point to be made there is, as with all technology, the cost of this equipment is dropping rapidly. And within a few years, I would expect it to go down considerably. You can now buy cheap computers for $300, $400, $500 that can do a lot.

Video discs have recently entered the market and have some appealing features. A disc can be tracked by a laser beam so there's no needle and fingerprints or no problem. They produce quality sight and sound and have two audio tracks, making say, bilingual instruction possible. The disc also has tremendous storage capability. One side of a disc, and the disc is about the size of the old 98 RPM records, holds 30 minutes of continuous framing or 54,000 individual frames. Now that means you could take 54,000 pages, actually taking a picture of each page of a book or books and put them on the disc and be able to call up, read any particular page on your TV screen and high quality reproduction. Just to give you an example of what that size means, one side of a video disc could hold the equivalent of 540 slide trays that you use for your picture slides. The other problem with the video disc right now is that it's expensive to cut the master disc. It costs $2,000, $2,500 to cut the first disc. After you've cut the first disc, you can press several others at something like $10 to $15 a piece.

And before cutting your first disc, of course, you have to make sure you have all the high quality pictures and have everything in order to generally produce a computer tape or a video tape. And once you have the video tape, the way you like it, you didn't cut that into a disc. I believe when you were making the presentation at the symposium, you mentioned you might give yourself golf lessons or tennis lessons or whatever, paint a scenario of how that would work. Well, for example, with a video disc, let's suppose you had a, you purchased a video disc that had a series of golf lessons on it. And you had it hooked up to your TV set or you could hook it up to your TV set into your micro. You come home after a bad day on a golf course and you sit down to your micro and you call up to your video disc on golf. And the screen may ask you, well, how did it go today? And you just might type in a lousy. My drives were bad. Well, then a little menu might come up on the board.

Well, what do you want to look at? How did your drives go? Were you hooking? Were you slicing or whatever? And you would punch in a key to bring that up. And then that would bring up the video disportion that would relate to the particular problem you were having. And you might envision a little cartoon showing the drive going different ways and the TV coming back and asking you or your screen coming back and asking you, is this what your drive looked like? And you say, yes, that's about what I was doing. Well, then you could come up on your TV screen. You would get video disc instruction showing the kinds of things that might cause that problem. You would have the facility to back it up, repeat it. The facility to focus in close range at the hands or the knees or whatever might be causing the problem. So you've got a personalized instruction mode there. With your video disc player, you could learn tennis, dance, chemistry, engineering or anything else that will be aided by having a quality pitch available. You could even repair your car.

A video disc recorder system today costs about $2,000. Standardizing software also needs addressing here. Costs for microcomputers are coming down. Payakko points out, 30% of all schools in America today have microcomputers and manufacturers are donating some machines. About 25,000 homes in America are also equipped with microcomputers. But there is a problem in public schools. I don't feel as much a problem of economics and the cost of the micro as it is in finding ways to effectively integrate the microcomputer into the instructional program at schools. It's going back to the software problem, the ability of our teachers and other personnel to develop the software and to effectively integrate this software into an educational system. There is a related problem in that you're going to find the more fluent homes are those homes that are going to have the micros. And perhaps the homes of the children who most need supplementary education are going to be those homes that can't afford to have the micros.

So you may have a separation there of the haves and have nots with respect to providing home-based microlecronic education. With microals in many homes and schools, a computer-literate generation is on the way. Many adults may have to use microcomputers to re-educate themselves as the workplace changes. Though video games may not be your cup of tea, video discs, microcomputers and the like seem to be the passport to the 21st century. For WUNC, I'm Famigil Henderson.