... or so says Yoshiyuki Tomino. And he ought to know, since he's spent a lot of years creating them.
At the 2009 CESA Developers Conference, Tomino, the creator of the much-beloved mecha franchise, ... took advantage of the opportunity to deliver a keynote to game developers, reportedly to provoke them and try to make them reconsider gaming's future ...
"I think that video games are evil," Tomino told those in attendance. "[Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity! Let's say we have about three billion people on this planet wasting their time, bringing no productivity at all. Add 10 billion more people, and what would happen to our planet? Video games are assisting the death of our planet!" ...
This "games are evil" thing will certainly dishearten my resident teenager, who has been sitting in his bedroom for hours on end doing evil. (And has the gaming thumbs to prove it.)
But of course, this evilness paradigm can be easily extended to comic books, movies, cartoons, and doodling mindlessly in a notebook with lined paper. (I mean, land sakes alive! How productive are all those things?)
We really should be out there, every last one of us, harvesting crops, performing brain surgery, and manufacturing the Cars of the Future.
Everything else is just burning daylight.
Posts
9 comments:
Nice of a guy who's got "f-you" money to say this.
It's called: "Pulling up the ladder and securing the hatch after you're safely aboard the Mother Ship."
I could list all the socio-economic and educational benefits of video games, but I'm too busy playing Halo right now
[Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity!
Same could be said about the internet. Same could be said about hundreds of things.
Video games wouldn't be so popular unless there were a social pressure to engage in them. Humanity is becoming more and more boxed in by growing populations. Technology facilitates production and distribution of decreasing amounts of resources. A bi-product of this evolution is that that we no longer know how to independently feed, cloth, and shelter ourselves. Tech even makes it possible for us to engage in warfare without being physically present for it. Unmanned drones are the ultimate video game, albeit where the stakes are real.
So what are individuals supposed to do with all those natural instincts that formed over hundred of thousands of years of evolution? For one, they play fantasy role-playing games on the internet, what else? Whether or not its evil is besides the point.
But yes, one of the only ways one can reset the clock on this paradox and actually make a difference, in some small way, is to personally pick up a hoe and use a few of those skills you forgot you had. In the real world rather than in a virtual one. We are all just animals, not gods, remember?
Yoshiyuki Tomino is evil.
Heck, I think I'm evil....
I would argue that 90% of what modern humans engage in today's society could be qualified as "evil" according to this guy's logic.
I still think video games are better than the boobtoob. At least video games are interactive.
I learned English from video games. Wouldn't that be deemed a positive and/or a productive byproduct?
the yakuza have been known to have some deals with Konami, actually.
still doesnt mean videogames are evil.
Post a Comment