THE LAST WORD
Why people
need games
By David Pierson
ames are an inseparable part of the human con-
dition.
Walter Cronkite said he was hooked on Space
Invaders .
There was a Bally Fireball pinball game in Jimmy Carter's
house in Plains, Ga.
And then there's the story of Mark Twain, who fell in love
with the game of billiards . What was it he saw in the game?
Billiards offers not only recreation but also an opportunity
to play with pure geometry, he said, to investigate endless
possibilities in abstraction.
Mental recreation? Yes, but it's more than just that .
Games of all kinds-from board games to sports to video
games to pinball-offer people something they need.
Thanks to the democratization of educational possi-
bilities, there are more people today than ever before who
have been trained to use their brains. More people than at
any time in the h.istory of modern civilization! And the
awful truth of the human condition is that, for the most part,
people aren't really encouraged to live up to their
potentials. Instead , they are largely saddled with jobs that
only tax a small part of what they've learned. And that sad
state results in poor employee productivity and a general
feeling of helplessness by a very large segment of the
population. They feel unfulfilled by their occupations .
As a result , there are potentially more games players in
the world than there are moviegoers, or record buyers, or
sports enthusiasts because games and puzzles have a
potential to appeal to everybody. And given the general
feeling of slacking worker productivity and a feeling by the
work force itself that it is not being fulfilled, it 's clear that
pastimes, diversions which serve to help man cope in
today's fast-paced , highly-specialized world , are essential
to society.
That 's why video games are essential to American society .
They are not a fad , a freak, like the Hula Hoop. And any
attempts to classify video games as mere diversions that
offer little more than maybe improved hand-eye
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coordination completely miss the point.
In the July 1, 1982 issue of Play Meter, we compared the
educational values of chess to that of video games. And
something there bears repeating . We wrote : "The ability to
abstract, project, analyze, imagine, and then solve a
problem-all within the confines of a predetermined
logic-contributes to the educational value of chess ... The
same holds true for coin-op ideo games. The challenge
inherent in games-to spot trends, tendencies, and patterns
on the video screen-and to react correctly-creates a
propensity in the player to deal in a problem-solving
.manner in other disciplines, with other systems of logic."
Now we find that educators are actually beginning to
suspect the same thing themselves!
A recent issue of Seventeen magazine reported a study by
Edna Mitchell, chairman of the Education Department of
Mills College in Oakland , Cal. The education specialist
reportedly found that girls who played video games
regularly showed dramatic improvements on tests in spatial
relationships, logical reasoning, and reasoning based on
abstract shapes and forms!
The story, which was reported also by United Press
International, quoted Mitchell as saying, " Girls begin to
develop skills when they repeatedly have to estimate when
to pull a trigger, how to guide a car through a highway
maze , how to shoot an object."
Mitchell was also reported saying the game play study
proved girls have no genetic lack of skill. " They just have
never been encouraged before now to develop and
practice this type of coordination," she said .
If ever there was an argument that need s to be brought
home to the American public about video games, this is it.
All the public has heard up until now is all thevague , totally
unsupported suspicions about anti-game fanatics . ow
maybe after that furor has died down, the real word ca n get
out about the games-that the reason video games have
captured the public's imagination is ... because they've
captured the public's imagination.
_
PLAY METER. September 1. 1982