RavenHeart,On 2006-01-26 21:30, RavenHeart wrote:
The issue, I think, is not about the quality of the medium, but the distribution.
I think storytellers could have said something similar about books way back when: "You are losing the direct connection of presence by trying to convey a tale through text," they might have said.
Did we do the wrong thing when we made the shift to books, threw our elders into convalescent homes, and just read what they wrote instead? We certainly are learning something, I hope.
Good point about the 'new' medium of books appearing in a time when knowledge was almost exclusively exchanged by sitting at an elder's feet or becoming an apprentice of a profession. Sure, books became the dominant medium in expressing knowledge, but not before the literacy level in each culture reached a certain level.
However I do see a great difference between the two situations, one where books replace the elders/teachers/community and the other where an INTERACTIVE game replaces something that was originally a 'RECEPTIVE EXPERIENCE'. Books provided an other type of receptive experience, computers and electronic games on the other hand provide interaction. As a mater of fact, the ability to constantly interact and change the possible outcome is precisely the highest appeal of these games.
If you tell me a story, I'll sit at your feet and allow your mind to take my mind to an other place an other time an other reality. If I play a game I act and re-act. Perhaps its not too far fetched from a non-psychologist to claim that something entirely different happening in our mind when we passively listen as opposed to when we constantly on alert and ready to react.
What if these games could be designed to encourage 'receptivity'? Would they still sell enough to make a profit ????
Evinnra