14 DAY TRIAL // Besides the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein successfully intuited a natural social law: the level of intelligence on this planet is a constant, but our population continues to grow. Maybe the statement is so obvious that we can actually interpret it like an axiom (a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be self-evident). Until now, there is no evidence that he was wrong.
Let's take a small trip back in time and see how the world of gaming looked ten years ago and analyze several games to see why people are getting dumber and why gaming is helping them in that regard. Don't get upset, I'm not saying kids today are stupid or culturally dead inside; I'm just trying to shake this veil of ignorance and maybe make it obvious to at least a couple of people. And just to make this clear: the interesting games were on PC 10-15 years ago. Some may argue that it is not fair and that there wasn't much competition, but it's my personal opinion that console games are partially responsible for the low levels of raw intelligence to be found in today's kids and they are going to exert a bigger influence in the future. I will elaborate on this later on, but for now, here are some examples:
The second and the third Tomb Raider in the series were great titles (even if the pixilated heroine had small panties) and forced people to think constructively in order to get to the next level. I remember that some levels were really hard and had to be restarted many times. I'm not going to compare a game featuring Lara Croft with the Myst series, but today's games, including the latest from Tomb Raider are way too simple and often try to attract through sex appeal rather by puzzles.
We can also observe a simple game like Resident Evil or, better yet, the second version. The latest Resident Evil is a simple zombie massacre satisfier with manga like heroes and idiotic voice-overs. It used to be an amazing difficult game. You had to find the stone to unlock the statue in order to get the key that fitted into a lock that would lead to another area with no apparent exit. It was terribly frustrating back then, but now I think fondly of those moments.
Another great game was the first Half-Life, a title that tried something completely unusual, even for those times: the main character didn't even have a single line and there was no way to see him (in single player, that is). Your part in the story was played by your IMAGINATION and throughout the entire game, players were practically forced to come up with all sorts of scenarios in order to put all the pieces together. Now we have a machine gun and you get pushed through corridors or simple paths on a so called "open world". Get in the room, kill everything standing and move on to the next one.
1996 saw the release of Command and Conquer: Red Alert, one of the most famous RTSs ever made. The game had such a great impact that ten years later, people all over the world were still playing it. It may not have been a serious competitor for chess but it forced kids to develop analytical thinking and strategic values. Electronic Arts launched a new version but it failed to raise the same interest. Strategies today are either very simple so anyone can feel like the small king of his domain or aimed at hardcore niche (which, surprisingly enough, is comprised of old gamers - and by old I'm referring to people that were at most in high school in 1996-97).
Games are not getting any better as we might expect, but people are getting dumber (and by dumb I mean that lampposts would win in spelling competitions). Dumb may be too tough. Games today are no longer intellectually challenging and, I'm sure, most people have noticed that more and more potential buyers are attracted by graphics, rather than gameplay. People today want action from the first moment they sit down and they are no longer in the mood to invest time and energy into a consuming game. The problem is that publishers are quite aware of this phenomenon and are developing less challenging games that will suit the market. You see, they are the smart people that were playing 10-15 years ago.
The argument that console games are a factor in today's problems with kids is quite simple to make and there is no better way than a personal example. The first time I got my eyes on a computer, I was hooked. I was glued to the monitor (and monitors back then were going at 800*600 at best with a 50-60hz refresh rate, which gave me terrible headaches); I didn't eat, sleep or go to school in time. I was playing all the time, at home, in Internet caf?s (later on), wherever I could get my hands on games. And it went like this for a long time. After a while, this consuming desire started to fade and I slowly began to realize that a lot can be done with a personal computer and over the years I managed to transform a gaming platform into a workstation (that was also capable of running the latest games). Now please give me an answer: after playing on a console, what's left for a kid to do? You think he'll get tired of playing and move on to the PC? I think not or at least not to discover other amazing uses of the personal computer. The future is quite grim and I'm told to say I'm happy to be part of a generation that will manage to keep its circumvolutions and still make a living from gaming and other PC related activities.