“It’s pointless” “Turn the volume down” “Do something useful”

It might not be!

These phrases are the most common things I hear from my parents or adults while I game. I usually just turn the volume down if they ask me to do that, but I can’t agree with them when they say it’s pointless.

About 50 MILLION Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide. So, about 1% of humanity owns an Xbox 360. That’s not much, but can you make 1% of the world buy a pointless device which isn’t even cheap? I think not. Are people that stupid that they spend their time and money by playing pointless games on that pointless device? You can’t say “pointless” or “useless” about things you haven’t even tried yourself.

Many people say that games are confusing and therefore they have no point and are useless. Hmm… Let me think. A movie was released last year which was very popular because it was confusing…..What was it? Oh right, INCEPTION. People loved it, it wasn’t even that good in my opinion, but people were going crazy. People went to the cinemas, paid for their tickets and that’s why they had to watch the whole movie from the beginning till the end. The same thing is with some games, you just need to follow the storyline, think about it, watch the ending before you make a conclusion, and at some point you realize – “I really liked it”.

Okay, I keep saying that games are not pointless. Let me tell you my 3 main points why I think games are not pointless:

1) You learn something. Every game tries to tell us a story. Many of them are based on real things and even historical events or persons. Thanks to the Civilization series I knew Otto von Bismarck way before others my aged knew. While playing games you remember things more faster.

2) Different periods of time. You also get to know different customs and how things were in the past. In Mafia 2 they show us a pretty good picture of America in the 1940s and 50s. A lot of games are based on WWI and WWII. Also we get to know the medieval times. Or maybe what will future bring us. Games make it possible to relive these periods.

3) Reflexes, thinking and consequences. The point is, we train our reflexes by playing for example ANY FPS game. Games make us think. There is even a genre for games that need thinking – puzzle games. And don’t think that other games need no thinking. Oh yes they do. You constantly need to think. Many of us think that games show us that killing people or driving your car straight to the wall are okay and by doing so you have to face no consequences. WRONG. You know that your wreck your car and might get seriously injured when you make a car accident. Killing people is wrong and games don’t make us kill other people. If kids really think that it’s okay, then their parents should have a serious chat with them.

So think before you say games are pointless. Try them yourself. Play a game from start to finish. Prejudice sucks and it has no place in gaming world. What would have happened if everybody thought that Red Dead Redemption was just a boring game where you ride horses and shoot people. And believe me, I know some people who thought just like that.

That’s it!