Here’s a quote from an absolutely hapless manager at Electronic Arts in regards to Germany becoming a cultural backwater because the Germans are not embracing Video Game Consoles:
Gerhard Florin, European manager of the world's biggest games software publisher, Electronic Arts, said a battle still had to be fought against the perception that computer games made young people stupid.
"I'm often asked when I'm abroad, in connection with our industry: 'What is wrong with the Germans?"' he said in a keynote speech at the fair's opening.
Florin said plain ignorance about the industry was often to blame, and called for a public education campaign, warning that Germany could otherwise find itself in a cultural backwater.
"Germany was definitely a cultural leader in the age of pictures and books in the 19th century -- but already in the 20th century of films, TV or music this wasn't true any more."
"Germany shouldn't allow itself another century of cultural silence," he said, adding that the computer-games industry was already bigger than the film industry and was set to overtake videos, too.
Interesting concept. So now video games are the height of culture? Man, are these people out to lunch. Check out this line:
Electronic Arts' Florin was diplomatic. "It's not bad to read books but it's just as good to play games."
This guy might have done well to read a book or two, to understand the moronic logic pouring out of him…
There’s no doubt that Video games have a huge cultural impact – and much of it very negative. Between the violence of so many games and the moronic behavior of sitting in front of a box for hours on end trying to win at make believe, wanna be real scenarios there’s not much redeeming value in games. It’s pure entertainment for the dumbed down masses. Like watching TV, or movies and other ‘big’ entertainment has become, but video games are maybe even more insidious because they can become so addictive.
There’s lots of potential in video games as having a positive social impact but that’s not likely to be realized because – just like in most other forms of entertainment – the money is on the cheap thrills and the ‘dangerous’ illegal aspect of make belief. How many times can you really get away with blowing up people in real life after all… well some people try once. I have no doubt that a lot of our anti-social, aggressive social behavior especially in American society is driven by the passive and constant violence in the media as well as our entertainment avenues including video games.
But it’s interesting that especially in our technological circles so many people are entranced by games and will spend much of their precious free time at playing games and sitting in front of yet another square box after basically doing that all day for their work.
Get outside, pick up a book, or go have drink at the pub with your friends. Anything to get away from the square box for a while…