RE: Survey of "Our Generation"

Tom Whore (tomwhore@inetarena.com)
Mon, 10 Aug 1998 17:28:35 -0700 (PDT)


On Mon, 10 Aug 1998, Lisa Lippert (Dusseault) (Exchange) wrote:

> Yow! Will they still find "release of the movie titanic" a defining event
> when they are retirement age? Will they even remember what video games they
> played, let alone consider that worth a whole category?

Dont be knocking the rich and fertil history of the vid games. I think it
is a true hisotrical and cultural aspect of many peoples lives. And with
video games we are not jsust talking about sitting back and Watching or
Listening or Reading passivley and without action. the vids were action
made flesh, they were mind and hand all blurred in between quarter drops
and rest bashes.

Viedos games demanded, they grabbed some of us and shook out that which we
were not willing to offer to trak and feild or sports or school or parents
or freinds. It was determination, persistence and in latter years
remebereance and now, with emulation, a chance to continue onwards with
these expressions of action.

These games were also art, they moved images and spun sounds wove into and
thru the globe a culture bound not by geogrpahy but by shared experience.
For some it was purely for the playing, for others in the legends and
lore, for others in the hacking and discovering; and now still others take
the old stories and reweave them thru emulations tied with new
techonologies to not only bring the past a vibrabant living state, but
to add to it the ability to play across all bounds.

Passive cultures such as movies and books and music can also inspire
cultures to form. It seems that music and books more so than movies.

Before the call goes up of the zombiehood of the gamers, let me point out
that too much book reading, movie watching or music listening without
social interactions is as likely to cause the growth of a dull brain as
anything. Vids in and of themselves are not the blame and bother, but
instead an active method by which a soul and explorer something greather
than its parts.