How to Respond to the Video Game Crisis

There's no question: we are facing a crisis. A number of men are shirking their responsibilities, finding fulfillment in trivial things, and abandoning crucial spiritual and academic pursuits. That's the alarming and accurate claim of a recent article about video games' damaging effect on young men. It's the latest in a long string of articles that examine and decry this medium. But this article goes even further than most by associating video games with pornography as twin threats to young men.

I've played a lot of video games in my lifetime. When I was a boy my dad bought an Atari 2600---the one you could use to play Pong and that E.T. game everyone hated. I played video games until my college (and seminary) years, when I gave them up for my studies. When seminary was over, I started playing them again, more interested this time in how they might function as art. Seeing video games as art was, at least for me, a new concept, but today critics, players, art museums, and artists alike agree games can be studied this way. Since then, I've written about gaming for a number of ministry-oriented and mainstream outlets.

So far I have never struggled with addiction to video games, and I can't speak to the psychological research and theorizing. Instead, I simply wish to provide in this article some clarity and nuance for a subject too often considered in an alarmist context, especially within the church. Video games are a comparatively new medium, and as such they are the object of much skepticism and intrigue. Those who do not play games often view the medium as a waste of time at best and a corrupting influence at worst. Meanwhile, video game proponents---permanently on the defensive---make excuses for bad art and actual corrupting influences. We Christians must be truthful about these things, but neither side right now is telling the whole story.    Continue at Rich Clark