January 9, 2007 6:01 PM | Simon Carless
The be-bearded Raph Koster handily points to an extremely interesting Utne Reader cover story on games, written by Chris Suellentrop (who covers games for Slate on occasion, I believe).
The Utne Reader is an somewhat bizarre but neat alt.periodical and Suellentrop's conclusion for his article (reprinted from the even more obscure Wilson Quarterly) is actually an odd but thought-provoking one:
"Whether you find the content of video games inoffensive or grotesque, their structure teaches players that the best course of action is always to accept the system and work to succeed within it... Our video-game brains, trained on success machines, may be undergoing a Mr. Universe workout, one that leaves us stronger but less flexible. So don't worry that video games are teaching us to be killers. Worry instead that they're teaching us to salute."
For his part, Koster notes that the article "...argues that games may be driving gamers to be more conformist — because they teach you to solve the problems presented, not to break out of patterns and truly innovate. As part of the basis for this argument, the author uses my book a fair amount." Koster comments, however: "But I think it’s a mistake to perceive the ordinary daily play of games as being the only way to engage with games."