video games in college curricula

I remember watching my brother play Grand Theft Auto for hours as a kid. I never understood what was happening, or why, I just liked to drive the car, but to him finishing the game was of the utmost importance. He would call to me from his room, “Come watch me beat this level!”. I, the devoted sister, would sit on his bed and watch him, if only for a couple of minutes, filling in the “oohs” and “aahs” when necessary. Then, I did not think about how much time my brother actually devoted to his games, how much money my parents spent on them, or how his game play would affect his moods. Video games should not be added to college curricula because students need to be shown that there is a world outside of digital media. They need an escape from time consuming, costly and addicting activity they spend most of their free time.
The first vice of video games is that to get anywhere you have to put in a lot of time. Time you could spend doing something else, something more productive. Game players are willing to spend forty hours to six months to complete the whole game or one hour completing a list of twenty plus menial tasks; like filling a water jug or getting a letter. In his book, Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson suggests that “what draws you in is an elemental form of desire: the desire to see the next thing” (Johnson 37). The account of how construction worker, Tom Stella bought a new house in the internet game Ultima Online attests to this theory. Stella spent over six months gaining clientele, smithing, and gaining skill levels all to buy a new house. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal in the real world, buying houses take time and money, Stella did all this online. He would come home after working a full day ...

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...eason to add gaming to classes, not exclude it, but in an environment where students are constantly bombarded with media, they need a place that they can get a break. By adding video games to curricula, we are adding to America’s addictions to ever present stimulation. No college student would be caught dead without their laptops or smart phones, all equipped with the latest games or apps. Using old fashioned books instead of digital media shows students that not all entertainment/information is on the internet or in games. While gaming can teach the people who play them skills that some say they would not be eager to learn, there is a time and place for such content and classrooms are not it.

Works Cited

Johnson, Steven. "Games." Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is
Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead, 2005. 17-62. Print.