Friday - January 28, 2005:

WNYC ran a segment yesterday on the difficulty twenty-somethings are having at finding their way. They blamed a variety of factors, including video games. Thinking back, I'm not sure why I stopped playing them. I think it is for the same reason I've cut back on my TV and movie watching. I don't find any of it to be creative in any large sense. Sure, in small ways, playing video games is very creative but it's all in relation to such a small outcome, beating the game. I don't blame the games for problems in society. Quite the opposite, I think  video games and comics and movies... can inspire creativity. The Professor proposed that at the heart of the accusations was an all-consuming obsession for having fun. Is this really a problem?

For me, there are a few directions I like to see society moving in. I like to see standards of living improving. I enjoy our world's slow steps towards tollerance and democracy (however staggered and irresponsible they can seem at times). I understand that improvements in productivity enable the world to move in these directions, but I also see another benefit to productivity improvements, particularly in the wealthier countries, the democratization of personal creativity. Some segment of people would like to leverage their wealth, not to make more money, but simply to make... And I think they ought to be encouraged to do this, to explore creativity, and I don't think they ought to feel guilty about enjoying any of it. I'm not worried about young adults playing video games if it enables a more ambitious group of young people to use the time for creativity, and for the record, the boys and I have not spent any time at all "ranking" on those video-gamers whose endless hours on the short end of a gamepad make me seem oh so productive, creatively speaking, that is.

-Bob Stevenson