When Will Video Games Be "Good"

 As soon as I saw the red book on Mr. Tangen’s bookshelf titled “Everything Bad Is Good For You” I knew that that was the book that I wanted to read. “Bad” and “Good” are very broad terms, which everyone has different definitions for them. What may seem good to some may seem bad to others. So I guess that I grabbed this book because I was intrigued of what “good” and “bad” topics were going to be spoken about. What was it that Steven Johnson considered to be “good” and “bad”. All my life I have lived by the rules and values that my family has taught me, so I wanted to explore how these bad things that my parents taught me could be seen as good things.

As I started reading the first pages of the book I was immediately hooked. I have read books that have some controversial ideas, but this one is one that critiques a common stereotype of my generation. The common commentary towards my generation is that “the mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards” (6), meaning that each time we are getting dumber. But what Steven Johnson has to say about this is that it is the complete opposite, “the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less.” (9) For example, video games work as a “cognitive workout” (14) because children are being exposed to reality. People from older generations normally critique my generation to be the victims of “dropping our cultural senses” to only be thinking about violence and sex, but what Steven argues is that these are parts of reality in which we all must be aware. Not only the good things about life should be aired on TV, it should be life as a whole, which is what is being done, which will actually make us ready for reality.

My favourite part about what Johnsons says, is when he writes about how “old fashioned ways” are always seen as the best. Grandmothers, and parents normally suggest a kid to go and read a book instead of playing video games for three hours, that’s how its with my brother. But I had never asked myself why was it that they said this? It just came up to me as an obvious recommendation because I have heard it my entire life. But as Johnson says, just because reading has been on our world longer than video games, doesn’t mean that its better. I love it when he makes up the scenario that video games came before reading, and that older generations would be criticizing reading instead of video games. I guess that video games, TV, and the social networks are criticized because they are things that are undiscovered and that people have to get used to. People don’t like change. I wonder what will be in the future that will make video games seem good and the new creation bad?