As a kid, my parents bought me video games on two occasions: my birthday and Christmas. The rest of the year I asked them to rent me video games from Blockbuster. Each weekend video games consumed hours of my time. Reading was not at the top of my list of things to do. Now twenty-two and with a job, I shop on Amazon for books, instead of blowing my paycheck on video games; you'd think I would buy as many video games as possible, but I've traded them for something more intimate.
Most books are cheaper, of course. I bought Orson Scott Card's The Shadow of the Hegemon and J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey for twenty dollars. That's three books, six or seven dollars a piece, and put together they take 15-20 hours to finish. When an anticipated video game is released I wait a few months to buy the used version from GameStop. Gamers in blogs and on message boards would have exhausted most of what can be said about the game by the time I get my hands on it. I may not be able to add much to the discussion but at least what they say can help me beat the game. I found out that Dragon Quest IX supports local connection this past week. Forgive me for just now finding out--I've been buried under college work. Besides,not many friends have the game, let alone a DS.
The stories are just as entertaining and engaging as video games. Franny and Zooey is a short novel on Eastern philosophy and how it ruins the relationships two young adults have with friends and family. The book stimulates the intellect and could be passed off as stage play, if Salinger wanted to. The emphasis on dialogue rather than description is like a role-playing game that has more cutscenes than actual playing. "The Laughing Man" in Nine Stories, my favorite short story by Salinger. A group of kids identify themselves with The Laughing Man, the hero of a captivating story told by their baseball coach. When the coach, called The Chief, is shot down by a girl, he suddenly kills off The Laughing Man in the final installment of the story. The kids are stricken with silence.
I have not read The Shadow of the Hegemon yet, but I have read its prequel, Ender's Game.
Ender's Game is a fantastic science fiction novel: six year-old Ender finds himself being recruited by the military to save Earth from an alien race, called Buggers. He and other child prodigies must first train in the Battle School, playing video games, but the games are reminiscent of Tron with more strategy than Risk.
The story kept me more emotionally vested in the characters than Halo or Mass Effect--the drama more intense, more saddening than any other game I've played. From the moment he arrives at the school, Ender is not welcome: the adults are cold and indifferent, his classmates want to beat him to a pulp. You watch Ender struggle to become a Commander, and by the time he succeeds, Ender becomes emotionally detached from his sister and the planet he must save.
Sure, you're not sitting in front of a flat panel HDTV blasting away enemies in Fallout 3, or leveling up your dark mage in World of WarCraft, or playing tennis with your WiiMote, but books can still give the same level of interest and fascination as any visually stimulating video games. And that leads to the question of form. I can't argue that books are better than video games--each medium has its strengths and weaknesses, but what one has that's lacking in the other is of worthy reflection.
A group of my friends regularly play Street Fighter IV and other fighters in my university's cafeteria. One day I saw a couple of them leave for the library, one carrying what looked to be a 19-inch flat panel TV, the other packing his Playstation 3 and a bag of video games. Not much to carry, probably; however, I had J.D. Salinger at my fingertips: a small, easily portable object that could fit in my back pocket. I had my Nintendo DS, too, but, J.D. Salinger hasn't crossed into video games yet. You can curl up in bed with C.S. Lewis or James Clavell. I'm not too keen on curling up with my 360 in bed--it's very mechanical.
Books are at the heart of teaching language arts, the profession I major in. I hope that one day our education system will throw video games into the curriculum: "Reading" goes beyond words: we have to interpret the bright flashes and colors in websites and on television, the subtle messages of advertisements, the different shades of meaning and tone in a text message. Critical thinking just isn't for books anymore.
In any case, I realize now that what I enjoy are not just books; I like words. Video games communicate ideas through animation, sound, camera movements, music, interviews, art concepts, and so on. But if you break down the visual and auditory presentation of games you'll find words as the foundation. Designers have to speak with one another during production meetings; writers send memos to animation directors; tiny scraps of paper have badly scribbled words on them. The meaning is an idea, an image forms in the reader's mind and draws it on paper, and then into the computer for animation, and so the cycle continues.
