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Professor Blair
UWRT 1102-021
Oct 16th 2014
How to define Video games
With the development of society and technology, there are a lot of people who think the video
games are harmful for people. However, in this slanted article, the author wrote this opinion
about positive effects of the video game.
The main point of this article is that video game actually can make people less violent, it
could be used for good purposes as well as bad. And the author think television could be
considered as main reason to make people become violent, rather than video games. The purpose
of this article is to change the peoples mind, change their attitudes to video game. So the author
uses some fallacies include Red Herring, Misleading Historical Analogies, Stacked Evidence and
Bandwagon Appeal to show that video game could be a new medium for entertainment, and the
positive effects of video game are more than negative.
In paragraph 3, the author mentions about Socrates, he talks about skepticism and trace back
to thousand years ago when Socrates objected to written texts. Because Socrates insists that
writing destroys memory and weakens the mind (Ong, 2002). According to Nicholas Carr,
Socrates was right. Once people had acquired the means to write and read their thoughts and
the thoughts of others, they relied less upon the contents of their own memories (Janet, 2013).
To prove video games are positively good, the whole article was stacked evidence. For
example, he said "The resulting outcry (mostly from Democratic politicians playing to the
center) caused
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the game's rating in America to be changed from "mature", which means you have to be 17 to
buy it, to adults only, which means you have to be 18, but also means that big retailers such as
Wal-Mart will not stock it." I have to say that not every product sells out from Walmart, and
anyone can buy the games through variety ways such as Craigslist, eBay and many online
sales channel. So this phase really proves nothing in the reality. Another stacked evidence fallacy
also shown in paragraph 6. If the worry is about a generally excessive use of screen-based
entertainment, critics should surely concern themselves about television rather than games.
(Defending, par. 6). However, millions of people view violence in television programming... It is
entertainment or news. That's it! The viewers do not consider for a moment enacting what they
see. The same is true with playing video games. They are solely for recreation (Stanton E.
Samenow, 2012). He said that American teenagers spend time in television more than in video
game, so he infers people became violent because of television. This does not follow the
evidence, and he does not have enough evidence to make this conclusion. He also said Games
require players to construct hypotheses, solve problems, develop strategies, learn the rules of the
in-game world through trial and error (Defending, par. 8), and since games are educational
tools, they can help people to control high-tech device. These evidences represent only one side
of an issue that clearly has two sides and gives a distorted impression of the issue, because the
violence, sex and eyesight failure are never mentioned. According to research, theres an online
article reported On April 20, 1999, two seniors walked into their Colorado high school carrying
assault rifles, and they opened fire. They shot dozens of people, killing 12 students and one
teacher, and the nation was floored. School shootings had happened before, but this was a new
scope of carnage, and in the ensuing search for answers it came out the shooters had spent a lot
of time playing violent video
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games (Layton, 2014). Obviously, violent video game does make people violent, the author
cannot deny about this.
And another paragraph And rock and roll was thought to encourage violence, promiscuity
and satanism; but today even grannies buy Coldplay albums. Its Bandwagon Appeal; the
argument is that since everyone is doing a particular thing. The author says the Rock and Roll
was through to encourage violence, just like the video games was through to evil, Rock and Roll
is a kind of music culture in my mind. Once misunderstood to be simple and aggressive culture,
though, Rock and Roll is based on culture, the time will let people to accept it, and its not video
games. Like a website (Lauren C, Williams) to describe that, the video games attack woman
womans position and image. In the most of video games, women do appear in it, theyre
frequently over-sexualized, and being beaten, kicked, stomped on, or shot simply for shock
value. Rock and Roll never do this.
Finally the video games is controversial problem, we cannot say it is absolute good or bad.
(Jesse 2014) In terms of the article, the author extreme talks about the good side of the video
games, which I think the reality does not support his article to say video games is good. Based
on my thought, I understand whatever this author talks about in the article. But through on his
writing, it does not talk me out of the fact and some of his writing techniques misleading the
readers whom are not mature enough to distinguish the fact or the theory of the irresponsible
initiator.
WorksCited
Lauren C. Williams (2014) Posted. Feminists Want The Male Video Game Culture To Die
Link: http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/09/18/3568970/aei-feminist-gaming/
Ong, Walter J.. (2002). Orality and Literacy. Routledge. Retrieved 27 September 2013.
Stanton E. Samenow,. Watching Violence in the Media Does Not Cause Crime, February 24,
2012. Psychologytoday.com.1999.Web.
Wood, Nancy. Essentials of Argument. Upper Saddle River: Pearson / Prentice Hall, 2006.
Print.