The Dumbest Generation

[bjorn_skurj]

The last person I made out with is still pretty young.

[bobbob1313]

have you learned how to cook food yet? Oh and what are you doing for work this summer?

 

I can cook pretty well. All the Good Eats I watch has given me some great tips, though I've never actually made any of his recipes.

 

And I'm starting work at a movie theatre tomorrow night. It's not much pay, but I'll also be doing the newspaper again so it'll be nice to have one job that requires no thought.

[jenbobblehead]

I can cook pretty well. All the Good Eats I watch has given me some great tips, though I've never actually made any of his recipes.

 

And I'm starting work at a movie theatre tomorrow night. It's not much pay, but I'll also be doing the newspaper again so it'll be nice to have one job that requires no thought.

yay! i love movies.

[OOO]

I'm no good, but I might not count as young anymore.

[Golden Smoghead]

The last person I made out with is still pretty young.

[Analogman]

Trust no one under 30 - I always say. (Joke)

 

Although - other than talking to some people on here - I don't think I really know anyone that is not near my age or older.

[bobbob1313]

I'm pretty sure there are people on here who think mine is the dumbest generation because of my membership.

[bjorn_skurj]

Hey, not that young. :eatme

[Wilco Worshipper]

 

Mwahaha...

[jenbobblehead]

I'm pretty sure there are people on here who think mine is the dumbest generation because of my membership.

I honestly cannot imagine how anyone would think that you are dumb. Really. I'm being serious.

 

PS Yeti is back to his usual weight. Please let Eleanor know. I know she's been worried.

[bobbob1313]

I honestly cannot imagine how anyone would think that you are dumb. Really. I'm being serious.

 

PS Yeti is back to his usual weight. Please let Eleanor know. I know she's been worried.

 

I'm so glad Yeti's back to being healthy!

 

Eleanor was the laziest I've ever seen her today. She was just lying on her side and back all day in the living room watching me watch TV. It was cute.

[jenbobblehead]

she was probably worrying about whether you were rotting your brain with the idiot box.

[bobbob1313]

I meant to say "Reading Moby Dick and doing a crossword puzzle."

[jenbobblehead]

I meant to say "Reading Moby Dick and doing a crossword puzzle."

i just laffed OL!!!!11!

 

srsly.

[Duck-Billed Catechist]

No. We are more like to have served in the military / serve our country in some way

What are you basing that statement on?

 

Also: If it's fun, it's bad? No. Most good books are in some way fun. I wouldn't wish Edith Wharton on anyone. There's nothing wrong with video games in moderation, the problem is with constant bombardment of the senses. I also disagree that video games are the "most active form" of entertainment. They're are obvious counter-examples (playing an instrument, writing, etc.), but reading is plenty active, but in a different way.

 

Here is one reason why video games are often not taken seriously as art (though I'm sure some are and the potential is there) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=89631345

[TCP]

There's nothing wrong with video games in moderation, the problem is with constant bombardment of the senses. I also disagree that video games are the "most active form" of entertainment. They're are obvious counter-examples (playing an instrument, writing, etc.), but reading is plenty active, but in a different way.

Moderation, yes, UNLESS it's The Legend of Zelda.

I play guitar, bass, banjo, steel guitar, keyboards, and more and would never say playing any of those are "entertainment". Listening to someone play, yes, but not playing yourself.

[bobbob1313]

There are still people in America who do not take video games seriously. These are the same people who question the relevance of hip-hop and assume newspapers will still exist in twenty-five years. It's hard to find an irrefutably accurate statistic for the economic value of the video-game industry, but the best estimates seem to be around $28 billion. As such, I'm not going to waste any space trying to convince people that gaming is important. If you're reading this column, I'm just going to assume that you believe video games in 2006 are the cultural equivalent of rock music in 1967, because that's (more or less) reality.

 

Okay!

 

So we all agree that video games are this consequential force, right? And we all assume that these games have meaning, and that they reflect the worldviews and sensibilities of their audience, right? And anyone who has played modern video games (or has even just been in the same room with someone who was playing) has undoubtedly noticed that games like Grand Theft Auto and Bad Day LA are visually transfixing, because the images are often beautiful and the movements of the characters are weird and hyperreal. Everyone seems to agree that all of these notions are true. Which prompts me to ask the following question: Why are there no video-game critics?

 

I realize that many people write video-game reviews and that there are entire magazines and myriad Web sites devoted to this subject. But what these people are writing is not really criticism. Almost without exception, it's consumer advice; it tells you what old game a new game resembles, and what the playing experience entails, and whether the game will be commercially successful. It's expository information. As far as I can tell, there is no major critic who specializes in explaining what playing a given game feels like, nor is anyone analyzing what specific games mean in any context outside the game itself. There is no Pauline Kael of video-game writing. There is no Lester Bangs of video-game writing. And I'm starting to suspect there will never be that kind of authoritative critical voice within the world of video games, which is interesting for a lot of reasons.

 

This is not a simple mystery to solve. It's hard enough to figure out why something does exist, but it's even harder to figure out why something doesn't exist. As an entry point, I contacted Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, one of the only mainstream books that comes remotely close to the kind of gaming criticism I just described. Johnson mostly attributes the void to mechanics. "Games can't be analyzed using the aesthetic tools we've developed to evaluate narrative art forms like books or films," he explained via e-mail. "Video games generally have narratives and some kind of character development, but--almost without exception--these are the least interesting things about them. Gamers don't play because they're drawn into the story line; they play because there's something intoxicating about the mix of exploring an environment and solving problems. The stories are an afterthought."

 

This is all completely true. However, I don't think it explains why video-game criticism doesn't exist. When someone reviews Moby Dick or Kramer vs. Kramer, they don't spend most of their time explaining the details of the plot (or at least they don't if they're interesting). The meaning of most art is usually found within abstractions. So the problem is not that video games don't have interesting narratives; the problem is that it's hard to decide what it is about video games that is interesting. "[We] need to talk about games in a way that is appropriate to the medium," says Johnson. "In some cases, they're closer to architecture."

 

Here again, Johnson is right. But there's one (rather obvious) difference between architecture and video games: Architecture is static. I live in a building that has fourteen floors, and that's always true. I can't manipulate the floor plan of my apartment or the number of bricks in the wall. What makes video-game criticism complex is that the action is almost never static. Unlike a film director or a recording artist, the game designer forfeits all autonomy over his creation--he can't dictate the emotions or motives of the characters. Every player invents the future.

 

Look at it this way: Near the end of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara asks Rhett Butler what she's supposed to do with the rest of her life, and he says that (frankly) he doesn't give a damn. Now, the meaning of those lines can be interpreted in many ways. However, what if that dialogue happened only sometimes? What if this scene played out differently for every person who watched Gone with the Wind? What if Rhett occasionally changed his mind, walked back into the house, and said, "Just kidding, baby"? What if Scarlett suddenly murdered Rhett for acting too cavalier? What if the conversation were sometimes interrupted by a bear attack? And what if all these alternative realities were dictated by the audience itself? If Gone with the Wind ended differently every time it was experienced, it would change the way critics viewed its message. The question would not be "What does this mean?" The question would be "What could this mean?"

 

That, I think, is where video-game criticism should be going: toward the significance of potentiality. Video games provide an opportunity to write about the cultural consequence of free will, a concept that has as much to do with the audience as it does with the art form. However, I can't see how such an evolution could happen, mostly because there's no one to develop into these "potentiality critics." Video-game criticism can't evolve because video-game criticism can't get started.

 

"It's weird that Entertainment Weekly doesn't have a video-game column, and that TheNew York Times only writes about gaming sporadically," says Henry Jenkins, a professor of comparative media at MIT and the author of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. "Aesthetic criticism exists in this industry, but only as arguments among gaming scholars and game creators. And the gaming industry suffers because of that. There is a very conservative element to gaming because absolutely everything is built around consumerism. Game designers are asking themselves questions about how a game should look and what it should do, but not about what the game is supposed to mean."

 

And that, ultimately, is why the absence of video-game criticism is a problem. If nobody ever thinks about these games in a manner that's human and metaphorical and contextual, they'll all become strictly commodities, and then they'll all become boring. They'll only be games. And since we've already agreed that video games are the new rock music, we'd be facing a rather depressing scenario: This generation's single most meaningful artistic idiom will be--ultimately--meaningless.

 

There is a void, but there is still time to fill it. Somebody needs to become the first significant Xbox critic, stat. If nothing else, I'm sure he'll get rich.

[Good Old Neon]

Did you read my post?

 

You said twins having shared traits despite separate upbringings is evidence that in many cases, Nature trumps Nurture. I didn't say anything other than that example only proves that Nature trumps Nurture in that specific case. You can't use that case to judge the entirety of humanity.

 

Calm down.

 

I took issue with your use of

[Good Old Neon]

what about the large % of children who develop autism coming from parents who are engineers and other professions, like folks who are considered uber intelligent?

 

it's got nothing to do with distaste, i just find it another sweeping, sensational quote not completely grounded in actuality. some truth? maybe. THE truth? hardly.

 

Autism is a heritable neurological/genetic disorder that in some cases may in fact be caused by an immune system response to a virus

[Good Old Neon]

My belief (which is supported by science) is that we are a complex interaction of our genes and the environment. Both are integral to who we are. Even many medical disorders that have genetic predispositions can be modified by the environment, so it makes sense that something with a less direct genetic component such as behavior can be modified by the environment. If you don't believe that, then you must not be a proponent of learning.

 

 

I agree with you entirely, though I suspect I consider genes to play a greater role in determining who we are than environment. I see no reason why it need be a 50/50 split.

[EL the Famous]

i've got no problem w/ video games, as long as it's coupled w/ copious amounts of interaction w/ real live people and actual physical activity. personally, i find today's video games completely overwhelming and, like someone said earlier, almost too realistic to the point where you don't get the added benefit of augmenting it w/ your imagination.

 

it also may have to do w/ the fact that i can barely sit down long enough to watch a 2 hour movie w/out getting fidgety and start thinking about what i'm going to do afterwards. i blame MTV. and advertsing agencies. and the government.

[John Smith]

What are you basing that statement on?

 

From what I have beeen told/read about Millenials, they do serve more whether it is the military or peace corps/americorps etc... Also they have more respect for older people than the couple of generatiosn before them. I found this to be highly unusual, but they think older people are cool. Don't know why though.

[bobbob1313]

I took issue with your use of

[Good Old Neon]

You can make inferences based on that case, but the case doesn't prove anything other than what it is.

 

Which is, based on a large sample, twins separated at birth exhibit similar traits, personalities, good and/or bad behavior, etc regardless of upbringing.

 

I

[bobbob1313]

Which is, based on a large sample, twins separated at birth exhibit similar traits, personalities, good and/or bad behavior, etc regardless of upbringing.

 

I