Identifying Skill Issues

Video Games; or, how we can learn to see the world in new ways

“Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock and roll”
– Shigeru Miyamoto the inventor of Mario, Donkey Kong, and The Legend of Zelda

Humans love to play, and we have been creating games to help us play for a very long time. We have found dice at archaeological sites from well before 5000 BC, and the oldest board game we know of comes from an Egyptian burial site dating to 3500 BC. Over the last 50 years, though, a new medium for game play has come to dominate our societies: video games.

In June of 1972, video gaming escaped from the confines of toy projects in research labs and entered the mainstream when Nolan Bushnell created Atari and they put out their first product: pong, the first arcade game. Almost immediately video games became a huge industry. By 1982, the video game market, driven mostly by arcade games, had more revenue than movies. In 2022, video games brought in more than $180 billion globally—more than any other form of entertainment.

Yet this rise of video games has not been without concern.

In the US, there have been repeated waves of worry about video games. Pinball machines, a proto-video game, were termed 'insidious nickel stealers' and banned in NY in 1942. The 1999 Columbine High School shooting produced a moral panic over whether violent video games cause aggression. Today, as video games have become ubiquitous, they have been implicated in anxiety, depression, ADHD and more - especially among kids. 

In China, the worries are even more serious; recently one state news outlet even called them “spiritual opium.”¹, a loaded phrase given Chinese history. Concerns range from worries that video games cause myopia to fears that they will divert attention from more productive work, and even decrease masculinity. As a result, the government has banned gamers under 18 from playing from playing for more than one hour on Fridays, weekends and holidays.

At the same time, video games have been described as a promising platform for skill acquisition, and in particular for teaching kids. Evangelists say that games are perfectly suited for 'brain training', improving cognitive abilities, and teaching new subjects, pointing to gamers such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg for proof that games correlate with genius.

So, what is it? Do video games offer new avenues for skill acquisition and cognitive development, are they merely a fun distraction, or even a risk to our mental health and social order? Given the growing time and money we spend on them, we should probably care very much².

Video games, like all avenues for play, are a powerful way to learn rudimentary skills. Video game environments are also uniquely suited to developing an increasing sense of agency and a flexibility in taking on new roles in the real world. This is especially true for children and for people just starting to develop new faculties. But, they also bring risks: video games can stunt skill development just as easily as start it, and addiction is real and damaging. Nevertheless, we should not fear video games, and instead should treat them with respect and give them their due place in society.

The Prospects of Gamification

"I never said bad games are good for learning" – Jim Gee