Blog Response Week 11

There is no definite answer for this question. Too many variables come into play. From family life to social life, every person is different and perceives reality in a different way. This has a definite impact on how they will react to different video game stimuli.

Some people need that violent release to calm down, while some people would respond better to games like flight simulators. Because it all is a matter of how the person responds to separate situations, no definite answer to the question can arise.

People play games for different reasons. I know that for myself, when I’ve been at school for too long or have been thinking about an assignment too much I like to take some time and play some games. My genre of choice is the uber-violent shooter (Call of Duty, Halo). These games allow me to relieve stress that I might otherwise unleash on someone in reality by way of snapping at them or making snarky comments.

Pilots spend a majority of their time learning how to fly planes in flight simulators, so training by way of video games is pretty popular. I don’t see this trend changing at all because going through simulations over and over again allow the user to screw up over and over, with little to no cost. It would be difficult to find people who wanted to pilot Air Force jets if they just said, “read this manual and fly.” This failure for free is something that has a reoccurring theme in most of video games. We get restart and resets, more lives, access to the same situation again and again.