Silly woman...

two sugars in mine love.

Isn't it a little late for celebrating April Fool's Day?

All my life I've wondered, what strange compulsion draws me to trees, up I climb, down I fall. This has been a bit of an epithany for me.

This was originally brought up ages ago. There's a little more information in her an older Telegraph article and her column in Wired UK this month- which show up the flaws in her arguments about the effect games have on the brain which, entirely nonshockingly, are mostly to do with a lack of knowledge of videogames.

She particuarily cites a lack of narrative in games- that, in her own words(ish), games are a sequence of challenges that need to be overcome to save the princess- the princess is a 'goal' that nobody really empathises with, as opposed to a princess that actually needs saving, that you care about and want to discover more about.

This is flawed for a number of reasons- Greenfield has chosen the story from Super Mario Bros.- a NES game released in 1985- to demonstrate every single videogame, ever. The catch here is that the last videogame story that was that simplistic, that lacking in depth and character development was Super Mario Bros.- a NES game released in 1985, overlooking the much more developed Half Life 2 canon or GTA IV.

Hell, even Gears Of War is an order of magnitude better than SMB.

Secondly, even if, for a second, we assume Greenfield to be right, and that games are only seen as goals and has some detrimental effect or another, this is not something that is exclusive to games- I don't care about the guy stood behind the till in Tesco- dealing with him is merely a 'goal' that I have to achieve in order to get food- likewise, he doesn't care about me- serving me is merely a 'goal' he has to achieve to get paid. Is this really different?

Extending it to media- Greenfield previously citing books as an incredible, exempt-from-criticism artform of amazingness and polar opposite to gaming, a form where readers inherently empathise and want to find out more about the characters- that bored kid sat in a high school English classroom doesn't care about either Romeo or Juliet, he just sees getting to the end of the book as a 'goal' that shuts the teacher up for a bit. Is this really different?

At best, Susan Greenfield is simply misguided and making an innocent error. At worst, she's attacking an easy and popular target to get her name in the papers and sell a few books (or, having seen the way the games industry, Nintendo in particular, treats its detractors in the wake of Change4Life, threatening with outtretched palm), and in the middle, she's an old woman railing against a new world that she doesn't understand and scares her.

To be fair, I'm not a neuroscientist and I'm not in a position to call her out in that field. But the flaws in her connections between her neuroscience and the outside world are very visible for all to see.

@5

I bet the daily mail can take this further still..

"lack of saved princesses blamed on games - Plumbers say not their job"

You just know this is the logical step.
FACT

yes, let's blame everyone but ourselves. Who next will we place the place the blame on. Give me a brake

@6: You forgot "*Illegal immigrant italian* plumbers say not theit job". :D

Yepp, she's right.
I'm an addicted gamer and I become fat the last 10 years passing and yes, I don't learn from mistakes - I do it over and over again.

But if that are the only cost I have to pay for having fun nearly every day with my gaming system (no, I don't mention wich one), that's totally OK!

If given the choice between being a gamer/developer and fat, or being a peer and stupid, I'll just boot up one of my gaming systems and live with a couple of extra pounds thanks.

Because hey, at least I can diet away the fat, she looks like she's stuck with the stupidity for life.

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