Opinion Post 1:
The inspiration for this assignment comes from a few
different angles, but namely evolved from my personal love of video games. Since they were introduced, video games have
been a hot button topic among educators and parents trying to decide whether or
not video games helped, harmed or were neutral when it came to a child’s
development. While I personally agree
that too much time sitting around in front of any screen is not in the best
interest of a growing child, I hardly think that it is fair to completely
dismiss video games as negative for children.
So many games require different types of skills to operate, whether it
is as simple as word, color or shape association, or as complex as reading
extended story narratives and developing critical thinking skills.
In
completing this project I foresee running into two major hurdles. The first is the lack of good games for
younger children, ones worth purchasing and playing. Unfortunately young kids often get the short
end if the stick when it comes to video games, as developers often do not give
them the credit they deserve on many levels.
Usually kid’s games are terrible, hard to control and not every fun to
play but developers assume kids will not know the difference. A movie character will be slapped on the
front and it is assumed a kid will want it. While this assumption is correct,
this leaves a librarian attempting to develop a collection in a rough
spot. Purchase the game a kid wants
because of a movie tie in, knowing it is crummy, or attempt to find a good game
that the kid may not know about but could end up enjoying much more in the long
run. One of the goals of this blog is
to help librarians not only sift the gems out of the garbage, but also be able
to provide librarians with a superior option over the usual movie licensed
flop.
The
second difficulty in making this blog work is going to be finding hard evidence
to suggest that having a video game collection in a library is a good idea.
While many libraries do have video games available to their patrons, it is
often seen like having dvds available, “a necessary evil.” In the case of video games this is even more
so, as movies have been recognized as a form of art in today’s society while
video games still reside in the purely for entertainment realm. I intend on trying to make a case for video
games becoming an important and thriving part of a collection, not there just
because they need to have a token presence.
Finding reliable information to help me make this statement may be a bit
hard to find.
However,
I anticipate this being not only a great assignment, but a useful tool I will
continue to work on as time passes. I
was just recently put in charge of collection development for fiction, dvds and
video games in the children’s department at my library
and I am very excited to make this blog a tool to help spread my experiences
developing a successful video gaming collection at my library for the kids to
enjoy.
Opinion Post 2:
After searching for sources I was
very surprised to find that there are many proponents of using video games to
promote child development. While there
is still apprehension for certain types of video games, namely violent ones,
there was actually a lot more information people had to offer supporting video
games. This is a far cry from just ten
years ago, when video games of all sorts were demonized and blamed for
everything from school shootings to childhood obesity. Adults have begun to realize that with proper
supervision, just like every other activity for children, video games can be an
effective and healthy tool. This gives
me a lot of hope moving forward, as patrons and librarians will be looking for help
deciding what games are appropriate for their children to be playing.
We
talked in class recently about how extended amounts of screen viewing time can
lead to a myriad of health problems, namely obesity. While this is a problem, I hardly find it to
be a truly convincing argument specifically against video games. How often do you see a child “actively”
reading a book? Like any other form of entertainment for a child, the parents
must be willing to take an active role in the child’s participation to ensure a
healthy balance. When properly monitored video games can help a child develop
in a myriad of ways, a lot of which I didn’t actively
recognize until I began to do the background research for this project.
One
of the major ways that video games promote growth is through heavy reading
often required in some games. This
benefit is especially important for libraries, for obvious reasons. Depending on the genre of game and the age of
the audience it is targeted at, there are many games that could even be
considered interactive books. While this
is mostly found in the RPG genre, even adventure and action games often require
the player to read a mission objective or text to follow the storyline of the
game. This gives kids not only an incentive
to further their reading skills, but actively requires them to do so in order
to fully enjoy the game.
Another
aspect about video games that I love is how they promote teamwork and
sportsmanship between players. This is
something that greatly affected me as a teen growing up, as nearly all the
video games I played were with the assistance of my brothers. Often games will have a multiplayer component
that either fosters competition between players or requires co-operation
between players to successfully complete a level or objective. In either instance, this helps develop social
skills kids will be utilizing for the rest of their lives, in the workplace or
social environments.
There
were many other reasons why video games are beneficial to kids, from learning
resource management to acquiring technology skills that are becoming more a
part of our world and will only continue to do so as we move forward. However, this is all tempered by the fact
that kids need to be monitored when it comes to using video games. Having the right type of collection in your
library and educating parents on how to let their kids use video games is just
as important as having them available in a library collection.
Opinion Post 3:
After finding a bunch of sources
to corroborate my reasons for the usefulness of a video game guide blog, I
thought the easy part was about to begin.
The best part of the blog would be that I would get to try out a bunch
of games to see if they would be a good addition to the library’s collection or
not. Unfortunately, this ended up being
a little harder than I had anticipated.
While
I have an extensive pool of knowledge to pull from when it comes to video
games, I quickly realized that I do not own or have not played a lot of the
games that would be considered for a children’s department collection. In order to properly assess these games I
would need to eb able to get my hands on them and unfortunately for the most
part the only way to do that would be to purchase them. While this still makes a useful tool for
other librarians, I do not want it to end up being at the cost of my own
department’s budget. There are a few
ways to get around this in the long run.
The first would be to utilize the collections of other libraries in my
area and play test their games to see if I would recommend that other libraries
make them a part of their collection as well.
While this would be a free way to test lots of different games, I would
be limited by whatever other libraries decided to purchase for their
collections. This would render my resource nearly useless to neighboring
libraries, as most games I would highlight on the blog they would have already
purchased. Another option would be to
see if I could subscribe to a game rental service like Gamefly. How these companies run is that the user pays
a monthly subscription fee and in return is able to request that games be sent
to them through the mail. The user
requests specific games online and has the game sent to them by the
company. The gamer is able to keep the
game as long as they like and once they send the game back are able to request
a new one. While this would cost me
money, the price is minimal and the service would allow me to playtest every
single game I wanted to review and recommend without having to make a
purchase. In the long run I think that
this would end up being my best bet and the most productive way of making the
blog a useful tool.
That
is going to make up the nuts and bolts of the website but there is a lot more
stuff I intend to add that I think will add to the resource. Writing shorts on preview buzz for a game,
and maybe expanding into board or card games is another direction I would be
able to go if the original intent seems to be going well.
No comments:
Post a Comment