Is Playing Video Games a “Waste of Time?”
I thought the article, “Is Playing Video Games A “Waste of time?” very interesting. I actually never thought that when people were playing games “they are learning new literacy”. Literacy is the ability to read and write. But, the article describes how literacy should be thought of more broadly. “First, language is not the only important communicational system. Images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, artifacts, and many other visual symbols are significant, more so today than ever.” I know this is very true, but when I immediately think of literacy I only think of print. However, I know there are many different meanings of literacy because of the college course Literacy in Today’s World. But, we actually never touched base on video games being a part of the term.
The quotation that makes me believe that playing video games may not be a waste of time is, “Because literacy requires more than being able to “decode” (words or images for instance) and because it requires people to be able to participate in—or at least understand—certain sorts of social practices, we need to focus on not just “codes” or “representations” (like language, equations, images, and so forth) but the domains in which these codes or representations are used as well.” I do understand the definition does work for video games in the semiotic domain. But in the sense of wasting time in a video game, it does take up a lot of time because the games are addicting. But to make parents feel better about their children playing video games all the time, this is a good view to look at their game.
