Games, Games, Games…

 

 

 

“Playing games with agreed upon rules helps children learn to live by rules, establish the delicate balance between competition and cooperation, between fair play and justice and exploitation and abuse of these for personal gain. It helps them learn to manage the warmth of winning and the hurt of losing; it helps them to believe that there will be another chance to win the next time.”

-James P. Comer (20th century), U.S. psychiatrist and author. School Power, ch. 10 (1980).

 

“Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer’s imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to.”

-Sherry Turkle, U.S. psychologist, sociologist. Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, ch. 2, Simon & Schuster (1984).

 

“In 1600 the specialization of games and pastimes did not extend beyond infancy; after the age of three or four it decreased and disappeared. From then on the child played the same games as the adult, either with other children or with adults. . . . Conversely, adults used to play games which today only children play.”

-Philippe Ariés (20th century), French historian. Centuries of Childhood, pt. 1, ch. 4 (1962).

 

“Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.”

-William Burroughs (b. 1914), U.S. author. “The Hundred Year Plan,” The Adding Machine (1985).

 

“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”

-Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. Republican politician, president.
           Statement, August 8, 1983. quoted in “Temptation of Pride,” Reagan’s Reign of Error, eds. Mark Green and Gail MacColl (1987).

 

“So you wish to conquer in the Olympic games, my friend? And I too, by the Gods, and a fine thing it would be! But first mark the conditions and the consequences, and then set to work. You will have to put yourself under discipline; to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or no, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and from wine at your will; in a word, to give yourself over to the trainer as to a physician. Then in the conflict itself you are likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, or to be severely thrashed, and, after all these things, to be defeated.”

-Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135), Greek stoic philosopher. Encheiridion, no. 29b,