The Games Children Play

#42, May 17, 2000

We launched a counter-offensive, charging into their ranks with swords and mace swinging. The odds were impossible: three of us, tens of thousands of them, each one bristling with barbed armor. But we were armed with the courage and fury of a people defending their homeland against invaders.

We swung, and they fell, their thin green necks swapping like twigs, their purple-crowned heads popping into the battleground air. My son and his friend, both fourth graders, wielded Gilbereth and Sixtysix, each a three foot length of quarter inch hardwood dowel. I carried Gimli, a short piece of metal flex conduit, good for the low blows.

The invaders were Italian Thistle plants, aliens come to conquer the hillside grasslands behind our house. Had I invited these boys to help me curtail the infestation of a noxious, exotic annual compositae, I doubt if they'd have given it ten minutes. But after two hours of battle and ten thousand cloven flower heads (a million potential seeds?!), I had to drag them down from the wet grass.

For me, it was fun work for a real cause. For them, I think, it was pure play. They were inhabiting and being motivated by the imaginary cause, the noble battle. Of course, I was pleased to see them feeling brave and powerful while engaged in a worthy pursuit, hoping they might somehow be absorbing the deeper value of their swordplay.

It's well known that young mammals, including human children, learn by playing, learning things they will need to survive as adults. Throughout the ages, human parents have borne the responsibility to direct this play toward the skills their society required, be it hunting, homemaking, or habitat restoration.

But today's children of our society are playing new games, where the imagination is supplied largely by video and computer game designers. What images and lessons are the children absorbing? Far too much of it is of graphic ultra-violence, a celebration of chain-killing. And I fear where it is leading. With more powerful computers, games will get more realistic. The day may not be far off when, as in the film "The Matrix", the computers can create virtual violence directly inside our head.

Or are we already there, with young human wetware being subtly reprogrammed via their visual and audio ports? Two recently released studies show a direct correlation between playing violent video games and increases in aggressive behavior and school delinquency. True, few of these gamers will graduate to shooting sprees. But how many are being conditioned to passively accept the epidemic of individual and institutional violence that's destroying our society, when they should be fighting it?

Kids want and deserve excitement and inspiration, and will eventually demand more than good old fashioned "let's pretend," however enthusiastically it's supported by the adults in their life. Fine. Computers can provide this in ways that don't have to nurture the nastiest tendencies of human behavior. There are plenty of good action-adventure and role-playing strategy games. Two of my favorites (both for N64) are Zelda, with fantastic graphics and a powerful "hero's journey" theme, and Harvest Moon, which triggered my son's love of gardening. There are the racing games, problem solving games like the classic Myst, and simulation games like the Sim series. And there are lots of battle games, including the Mario/Donkey Kong genre, where the violence is pretty tame.

But somewhere we have to draw the line. If we expect to keep our technology on this planet for more than a few more generations, humanity has to make the idea of killing people as distasteful as the idea of eating them. A game that has you killing humans should engender the same revulsion and outrage as one where you kidnap, rape, and strangle children.

My son was out there again this windy afternoon, alone with Gilbereth. When he came back, rosy cheeked, I asked him why. After some thought, he replied, "I had to do something about those thistles."

Don't we all.