Blog 5

Chapter 9 of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, a book by Tom Bissell, does not appear to answer any “so what?” or “who cares?” question. I suppose because the passage assigned was just an excerpt from a book, which could explain why this section is lacking both of the questions. The title suggests that video games matter, and has the implication that they have a good purpose but the excerpt would suggest otherwise. It starts out with the author explaining how used to write in the morning, jogged in the afternoon and read, more so how he was functional. This changes when he a friend tells him to play a video game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. All he does is play video games after this and even ends up doing the drug coke with a friend while playing it. Lost in all of this however, is the sense of freedom, and “liberation” one gets from playing an open world video game, where you are in control of the game, can go where you want and in this case, do whatever you want to do for the most part. Bissell never hints why the ability to do what you want makes video games matter, unless he is meaning they matter because they are bad, he does provide ample examples of why they are bad. I would suggest to Bissell, if his point of this passage was to answer the “so what?” or “who cares?” questions, definitively say why they matter, and use his examples to help prove his claim. He provides negatives of video games, so he would need to prove why they matter.