All The World’s a Game
At some point in our lifetimes, games stopped being “fun.” There was always a serious side to games, but games most often were not life or death combats. I’m sure the Spartans thought differently, but what just happened?
Students are put in direct hand-to-hand combat with math teaching experiments like IXL. Soccer (football) and almost every sport has at least one parent screaming vicariously at the kids as if they were shouting at themselves to do better when they were young. There’s a fine line between pushing or testing someone’s limits or trying to expand them in say a more educational way.
My friends will ask why I’m writing about games, since I never touch them, probably because it would be a life or death situation if I got too wrapped up in one. My family, however, will know exactly what I am talking about.
Games are evil, soul-sucking, time-destroying, amygdalae-rewriting, parental discordance-causing necessary luxuries of modern life. The combination of games with people, especially when multiple persons are involved that bring more global challenges has actually changed the personality of a kid I know really well. And when the trolling personalities a la Lord of the Flies behavior strikes, it’s even worse, because hey, it’s ok when someone laughs at a stupid thing you did in a game. It’s more serious when dozens of people are mocking you.
Ask Ayesha Curry — that involved a game, I think, mostly played between referees, fans, and two very good teams.
And then this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3649871/Ayesha-Curry-mercilessly-trolled-Twitter.html
It’s not those games I’m talking about. Athletes (and their spouses and children), especially professional ones, are not just trained in competition, they have to be media trained, and they have to be coached on what the public is really like. That’s why they get the dollars.
The ubiquity of mobile games and computer games, however, is almost like an addiction. I’m not a fan. These are kids! Yeah, they would have been fighting wars at 11 …and sadly some are …Kids have enough pressures on them. Why do they seemingly want to generate their own stresses? Is it because their lives are so organized that this is the only way to express individuality? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I often wish that there was an FCC-mandated kill switch that would turn all access to games off at a certain hour because as parents it’s too difficult to control. I’m joking about the FCC, but they used to set the policy for what could be aired on TV after certain hours, and it restricted advertisements to a certain number of minutes depending on the television show. Why not? Games are probably not vast wastelands, but they might be worse. They are becoming toxic wastelands.
I don’t like ranting. But these games are not fun anymore.
As You Like It was supposed to be a comedy, and like all great comedies, there are elements of tragedy in it. If All the World’s a Game, then I certainly see more possibilities of ominous things than I do of bright roses and leprechauns.
It’s a new day though, the games have already begun. I’ve got to get my game mode on. I’ve got a “bubble reputation” to uphold.
If all the world’s a game,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
