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> reading makes you smart The tone of your post suggests you're refuting this wholesale. I think you're wrong, reading books makes you smart(er) at least by ex

> reading makes you smart The tone of your post suggests you're refuting this wholesale. I think you're wrong, reading books makes you smart(er) at least by expanding your vocabulary and widening your understanding of the world by putting in front of you experiences from people that are not exactly like you. You're offering video games as an alternative, but people that invest a lot of time in playing video games as opposed to reading, usually do it with terrible games, where the lesson to learn is that life is expendable, enemies must be stopped at all costs, genocide is valid as long as you're the main character, etc. Games as art form rarely engage people in the same way as mass murder types of games. What are the sales numbers of Disco Elysium vs Call of Duty? And yes, pulp exists in writing too, probably to an even greater extent, but at the same time the peaks are higher and, in my opinion, the benefits, as subjective as they may be, greater.

James_K 2y ago
> where the lesson to learn is that life is expendable, enemies must be stopped at all costs, genocide is valid as long as you're the main character, etc You make an almost credible post but then totally undermine it with this statement. It's rather like saying Looney Tunes is bad because the intended lesson is that you should set your cat on fire.
- mariusor 2y ago
  Maybe you're right, but if you see no connection between the trivialization of violence and murder (that most media, not just games is pushing) and the attitude society has to the same violence I feel like maybe we're living in different worlds. My problem is not that games make kids shoot schools, is with the fact that games in order to "be fun" and have people play them need to follow this recipe in the first place. The violence is probably intellectually understood as "wrong" by the large mass of players, but in my opinion it still desensitizes and erodes normal reactions against it to a level that should not be acceptable.

James_K 2y ago

> where the lesson to learn is that life is expendable, enemies must be stopped at all costs, genocide is valid as long as you're the main character, etc You make an almost credible post but then totally undermine it with this statement. It's rather like saying Looney Tunes is bad because the intended lesson is that you should set your cat on fire.

mariusor 2y ago
Maybe you're right, but if you see no connection between the trivialization of violence and murder (that most media, not just games is pushing) and the attitude society has to the same violence I feel like maybe we're living in different worlds. My problem is not that games make kids shoot schools, is with the fact that games in order to "be fun" and have people play them need to follow this recipe in the first place. The violence is probably intellectually understood as "wrong" by the large mass of players, but in my opinion it still desensitizes and erodes normal reactions against it to a level that should not be acceptable.