With the development of powerful mobile devices, entertainment industry has leaped forward with numerous video games. DFC intelligence has estimated a growth of gaming industry world over to the tune of $60.4 billion, a figure that spans console, PC, portable, and online games, from boxed products and subscription fees. Whereas according to Paul Heydon, the total market capitalization of all public game companies stands between $100 billion to $105 billion.
Such high growth of game industry is financed by advertisements. Due to steep competition in advertising, the companies devise means to make the games more aggressive and addictive to attract more customers. As such, a majority of these games are based on war tactics and are full of episodes of destruction, bomb blasts, shooting, rash driving, violence and deaths of personnel. Action movies of superman, spiderman, star wars and like make use of such scenes on large scale.
To site a recent example, now a days, there is a popular game of angry birds being played by net users, where the birds try to destroy the towers and castles where the pigs stay. Player is taken through various stages and reward points as he succeeds in destroying the towers. What is the lesson that gets transmitted. Destroy and Win. Instead, why not have a game of building peace towers with a lesson that build with patience against all odds to succeed with no destructive motives.
Playing such games might be helping in developing quick response, decision making and action synchronization, but they have far reaching negative impacts, which must be attended to seriously. First, such games are addictive, consume time and lead to inaction. More serious impact is the desensitization of player towards violence and destruction. Unfortunately the majority of players of such games come from young generation. Their mindset gets changed and they start feeling that justice and success can be achieved only through destruction and violence. Increase in incidences of social unrest becoming violent may be tracked back to such war mongering games.
The impact of such games on children may be termed as disastrous. Young children are very innocent, sensitive and possessive in nature. They fall pray to such attractive action games easily. They can't comprehend the destructive power of weapons, pain of injuries inflicted in fighting and damage in destruction. They also do not realize that there is vast difference between virtual scenes and actual life. This may lead to unforeseen accidents, violent clashes and loss of property or even innocent lives, just due to ignorance of children.
In developed countries, the toys and books for preschool children are designed carefully by taking all precautions to protect them from physical damage or harm their feeling. However, for elder children, this concept is totally neglected leading to harmful consequences and sporadic violent episodes. In fact, there should be a rating system to grade the entertainment products like games based on their positive & negative impacts and educational value.
We can change this situation, if we publicly voice our displeasure over violent games, stop their purchase and demand their replacement with high quality innovative educational games. Fortunately common man or the consumer has now many forums available on the net to express their views and game companies also would respond positively, as they are interested in the consumer of product they wish to sell and not the game.
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