I assume I was not the only kid who genuinely wanted video games to be more than just a niche hobby.  As I would rant excitedly about my latest virtual experience, adults and often other kids would roll their eyes and shake their heads, as if I were trying to engage them in a heated debate over the color arrangements of my sock drawer or how fascinating was today's dryer lint.  Aside from a handful of peers, nobody around me really cared, so video games felt like a lost treasure only a few friends and I could see.  While it was lonely at times, these circumstances formed a gnostic cadre, forging bonds not unlike the secret club-house days of old.  Every Nintendo Power or Game Players held delicious clues of future experiences, and instruction manuals whispered prologues of great adventures that lay ahead.



While I'm not unaware of how this fertile soil also sprouted 'Gamergate,' 'Neckbeard,' and 'Entitled Gamer,' such is not the inherent and natural result of what many of us remember as a sort of golden age of our video gaming.  There was a special innocence, playfulness, and even awe to gaming in those memories.  At least for my friends and I, we simply wanted to share such wonderful experiences with the world at large and wondered why everyone else didn't 'get it.'

It's debatable what elements of video games 'grew up,' but what cannot be denied is how they are no longer an underground, niche hobby.  It has even been said that interactive entertainment is so ubiquitous that the term 'gamer' is obsolete.  Video games are everywhere, no longer requiring a console or even computer to play.  Forget radio telescopes, this is how we get intelligent life to discover us:


Where I once eagerly awaited new screenshots in gaming magazines every month, now entire playthroughs of games are sometimes watchable even before official release, and sites such as Gamefaqs and IGN spill every secret sooner than a strategy guide can be printed.  For better and worse, it's a different and far removed time from dipping StarTropics's included parchment paper into water for a secret code, or ogling over A Link to the Past's mini-hintbook sealed with a Triforce sticker. 


Naturally, our kids can never grow up in the same world we did.  My boys won't know pre-plug-and-play hardware, grainy RF boxes, or starting without a sign-in, save of course for the retro gaming at our home.  (Don't worry, my little guys started on some Atari 2600 and original Super Mario Bros. before clearing New Super Mario Bros.  We're doing this right.)  The games my kids are growing up with are the stuff I could have only dreamed of when I was their age, and I'm excited about what the future will bring for them.  The fact that they won't experience video games as I did doesn't diminish their time with them.  Whereas I practically had to generate my own gaming entrenchment, research genres that I enjoyed, and pursue financial gain to acquire more that a few starter games, my boys are quite literally surrounded by them. 

And not just at home!  I once had to travel over an hour to find a store that sold games, and now these lucky guys enter more stores that sell video games than don't.  I had to wait until specific hours of the day to use the family television or computer monitor to play; for them, it's as simple as borrowing the phone of someone sitting next to them.  A few years ago during a homiletics class, I once delivered a message based upon Shadow of the Colossus that only drew blank stares, whereas today, ...alright, that would probably still happen, but if I mentioned Call of Duty, Madden, or Sonic the Hedgehog, someone would have to look up from Candy Crush Saga or an Angry Birds stage to pay attention.


What's particularly fascinating to me is how the pervasiveness of video games has altered each personality in a different way.  It's not just that more people are playing more games, more often; it's how gaming, like television and music, has become so integrated into modern life in general.

Our eight-year-old son, for example, loves puzzles and problem solving.  He likes Brain Age, Monopoly, Words with Friends, and digital versions of Hangman and Checkers.  There's some Resogun and Smash Bros. mixed in, but his preference is notable, and more often than not he spends his allotted 'game time' on something that keeps his mind occupied.  His six-year-old brother's bedroom is literally covered with dozens upon dozens of hand-drawn pictures from his various Mario adventures.  Even with limited screen time, they've adapted gaming into their lives in a positive way.

And then there's our four-year-old.  Almost from the beginning it was obvious that our youngest had difficulties, and after much testing he was diagnosed as autistic.  While evidently intelligent, he struggles to learn in the same way as most kids, as he sees and interprets input in a completely different way.  For those with autism such as our son, many things in the real world do not make sense and are frustrating and disregarded.  Being enveloped in extreme sensory overload means it's difficult to parse out useful information and react, much less learn, from the surrounding environment.  And here's where video game ubiquity has truly connected in a positive way; educational systems that once cost thousands of dollars and required specific hardware can now be streamlined into an tablet or even cell phone.  Touch or few-button interfaces allow simplistic commands to be entered into games designed to help development for minds that do not fit into the general education mold.

Video games use an interface such as a  controller, mouse and keyboard, or modern touchscreen for interaction.  Most of us have grown up with them and the abstract nature of using a peripheral to engage in a virtual world is second nature for us.  For someone struggling with sensory input, engaging in a more limited set of interactions make it easier to focus, and the additional interface requirement provides an extra degree of separation from that interaction that can help overcome the intimidation of the sensory overload. 


Now granted, our little guy is still a bit young for that and doesn't play with games much (and we're still trying to find a tablet that will survive more than a few days' abuse.)  But the advancements in the last few years for using video games as educational tools is one of the most powerful and practical displays of their potential.  Far from the early effort 'edutainment' titles that were often neither very educational nor much for entertaining (although spending a Saturday night in speedrunning competitions for the NES Sesame games is a blast) the newer wave of games designed to teach kids do a much better job of using alternative techniques to enhance their early development.  The advances in software catering to autistic youth has been particularly robust and, wonderfully, often very productive.

When I was my kids' ages, my parents would have laughed at the idea that playing a game could help childhood development.  Now after practicing on his DS, my oldest can win a Monopoly game against his parents, he learned to play chess from a phone, and he practices math problems made to look like the inside of an onscreen cartoon robot.  My middle child has drawn countless landscapes and hundreds of his favorite characters, as well as designing and writing his own mini storybooks of Mario's continuing adventures.  When his friends visit, instead of being labeled as a nerdy outsider, they have an exciting convergence point of creativity as they chat endlessly over these imagined alternate universes.  And as our youngest grows, there will be more options of interactive games that help teach him where traditional methods often fail to connect.

All of this is due in a large part to the fact that video games are now so ubiquitous, they're no longer special; they're just an everyday part of modern life, like movies, music, cars, the internet, and sliced bread.  Like any technology, they can be used for good or ill.  I have to admit, whenever a game company brags about how many billions of hours have been spent on a particular game, I get a little heart-sad thinking about how many other things that time could have accomplished.  Then again, if enough of that game time was spent in learning, stretching the imagination, connecting to a mind with a different operating system, powering me through my stationary bike workout, helping my wife wind down from a rough day at work with some co-op, or just hanging out with friends on a Friday night, I know it's a few billion hours well spent.

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