To recap, Greenfield's argument is based on the idea that if you are playing video games, there's no time to "[learn] specific facts and [work] out how those facts relate to each other" - to think, essentially - because games are all about the process of playing them, and nothing to do with the content - narrative, themes, emotions, and so on. Furthermore, "[this] emphasis on process in isolation becomes addictive and profoundly mind-changing."
I've already argued that contrary to Greenfield's belief, modern games are as concerned with their content as novels, plays or films are. I would further like to take issue with the idea that the process of playing a computer game is divorced from meaning, and does not require you to think.
Greenfield seems to look at video gamers and see empty minds. It's an easy mistake to make: watch someone sitting in front of a PlayStation, hitting buttons seemingly at random, entranced and silent as a blur of bright colours washes over the screen, and you might well presume that this is a mind that is completely switched off. A lot of non-gamers believe this to be the case. Yet someone reading a novel doesn't demonstrate their thought process: they may sit on their own, silent for hours, and rather than meeting with criticism, they would be lauded for improving their mind.
Why is it universally accepted that active thought is required to read a book, but not to play a computer game? I'd suggest ignorance, mixed with arrogance. Critics of games don't try playing them, because they've already decided that games are without value. But playing games is hard. It involves problem-solving, planning, and lateral thinking. Steven Johnson (in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You) describes how playing through one of the popular Legend of Zelda games involves keeping track of dozens of long and short term goals at any given time. Players need to learn to understand the game world, which in modern games - such as Bioshock, and even the reviled Grand Theft Auto - is often made up of many independent artificial intelligences, all interacting according to their own agendas to produce a complex and unpredictable game system. 'Shoot-em-ups' come in for the most criticism, yet where a non-gamer sees violence and sensory overload, a gamer sees strategies, tactics, routes of attack and points of weakness. Throughout the frenetic action and desperate button-mashing they are constantly thinking on these things, updating their mental model of the battle for every second that they play. Otherwise, they simply wouldn't be able to.
Furthermore, by cleanly separating process and content, and identifying content as the 'important' part, Greenfield demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of computer games.
It's true that the content of a novel is what makes it unique and worthwhile - even if the process of reading keeps our minds active, it's primarily just the way that we 'get at' the content. This is (almost always) the case in literature, music, cinema, theatre... but computer games are an interactive medium, and the same rule does not apply. The value of a computer games lies in both content and process.
This is a common mistake amongst non-gamers. Roger Ebert, the famous movie critic, has said that it's impossible for a game to be 'art', because interactivity demands the loss of authorial control ("Would Romeo and Juliet have been better with a different ending?") But game designers author the player's interactivity, carefully and deliberately, to fit with the story they've created. Your ability to influence that story doesn't undermine the author's intentions - it's something the author has granted you, in order to deepen your experience.
To sum up, Greenfield misrepresents computer games in three ways: she claims that computer games are devoid of the kind of content you would find in a novel, when that content is clearly present; she implies that the process of playing a game does not require active thought in the way that reading a novel does, when it is clear to any gamer that it does; and finally, she fails to recognise that while the authorial intent of a novelist is contained entirely within the content of their novel, in a game, both process and content are authored, and crucial to the story.
So while computer games may provide the dopamine-producing 'thrill of achievement' that Greenfield is worried about, her theory requires that this thrill is divorced from meaning - I would suggest that in the medium of computer games, this is not the case.
As to her argument as a whole, it seems to me that there are some fairly prominent question marks hanging over it. Even if computer games were all process and no content - ultimately bringing about a world in which “individuality could be obliterated" - wouldn't it have happened by now? 38.2% of the UK population is an active computer gamer. There's no attempt made - in the interview, at least - to account for this, or to actually demonstrate how the minds of today's youths are disintegrating, apart from a casual and borderline offensive link to the murder of Sophie Lancaster. Needless to say, the gamers I know have not lost their individuality, or their ability to tell right from wrong. And what about sports? The thrill of achievement in sport is intense - and repeated frequently throughout a sportsman's career - yet it is done for its own sake, with no real meaning behind it. So why are all athletes not amoral, identity-free monsters?
Susan Greenfield is one of the country's foremost scientists, and an expert in her field - but a scientist investigates. Personally, I'd suggest she investigate a little further before declaring that the very basis of our humanity could be made extinct by computer games. She's written a book (as yet unreleased) which discusses this phenomenon - yet, if I read the interview correctly, she doesn't actually intend to apply for funding to investigate it. This, in case you need reminding, is the phenomenon which could potentially bring about the end of mankind in its current form. Even the interviewer is surprised by this, noting that: "given the development of her pessimistic views about the impact of IT on the young, it is surprising that she has left the sociopolitical consequences unexplored." I agree. It is surprising, it is sensationalist, and it is disappointing.
I agree, it is disappointing. A black mark and a "could do better" for the Baroness, then.
Posted by: JudyRobertson | Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 09:05 AM