Civics/Life and VG

When I think of educational video games, I think “oh my gosh this is going to be so boring! I bet I will fall asleep or something.” But after reading the article The Civic Potential of Video Games, my thoughts were a little changed. Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, and Chris Evans, the authors of this piece opened my eyes to how “low levels of youth civic engagement and by interest in the potential of video game play, an ubiquitous teen experience. . . can impact youth civic outcomes.” The statics they show to us prove that there are more teens going online to get information about politics when they are with the larger number of civic gaming experiences. There are several important topics they touch on such as the role of parents, youth, educators, game designers, and research that will better the games for civics in the future. If these games make the children, or teens more interested and involved with civics, causing them to do more research on them, then the American Democracy, circa 2000 will be pleasantly surprised. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn, the authors of this writing were the ones to inform the readers that “fifty percent of internet users under the age of thirty said the Net had affected their vote.” These authors’s main purpose is to show the reader how important it really is to get information online about civics and who is it that you are really going to vote for.

Alan E. Rycroft has brought something new to the table when he writes in Virtual Public Spheres about how the internet really does inform and keep the younger adults in the loop about political issues. Most people are showing “multitasking behavior that illustrates the ease with which a variety of information and personal connections are available. . at anytime.” They can be text messaging while reading an article about some issue in the world, or talking on the phone while doing whatever else.

Brian Whitworth along with Rob Friedman in The Decline of Academic Performance, tells the reader in an unique way how things need to flow in a certain way to become good. Balance, openness, and community focus are a few that I found to be the most important in their writing. This goes hand in hand with what Why Game Studies Now by Dmitri Williams has to say. Studying games has much to do with “what’s happening outside of games, as it does with what’s happening outside of them.” Things need to change for them to become better, and change is just what we need to see in video games for the younger generation to get more into politics and what is going on in our county.

After all these readings I had to take a break and think to myself. Sure, making video games more informative for the younger people about civics and such sound like a good plan and there are some really interesting ways people would go about doing this, but something still feels weird about it to me. It all depends on how each game is constructed, or put together. People can get away with cheats and all sorts of ways to get around the hard things in a video game, so if a high school student got some kind of assignment from their civics teacher for a video game, there will always be a way for them to get out of some of the challenges the game tosses at them. This would not be an equal playing field for all the other kids in the classroom, and I do not think it is something that should be put into the classroom. Not only are there cheats and such, there are those kids who spend hours a day playing games, so they would have another advantaged from those who do not play. The ones who do not play game might have to go out and spend a ton of money getting the equipment that they need to just to finish their homework. Does this sound right to you? It sure does not sound right to me. If there were just game put out there on the market trying to educate the player on civics, I think there would be a small number of games that would be sold. Who really goes out to get a video game so they can learn more outside of the school that they already have to go to? These games sound like a really good plan to get the younger people to get with the system of civics, but I just do not understand how they would make it in the stores, or in the classrooms. A way I think would make it though would be if the people running for office were to post some sort of game onto their websites. These games should allow the person going onto the page to pick what kind of character they are depending on what kind of person they are. Some things they could choose from are how big their families are, where they live, what sort of income do they have, and so on. Depending on what kind of information they tell the game all changes the direction of the game, and would show them how the person running for office would address all the topics that would be most likely to come in contact with the voter. This game would be super cool to see in the future!