Similarities Between Sam Anderson And Michael Chaubon

Bissel, Tom. “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” ” They Say I Say with Readings. Eds. Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst, Gerald Graff. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 349-362.

Using persuasive writing, Wright begins to influence his audience that game play is a beneficial source of entertainment not a wasteful one. Playing video games increases creatively, self esteem and improve problem solving skills of the players. Video games are becoming test runs that appear or feel close to the real thing. Where you can control everything with added effects like magic or future technology. Games have the potential to exceed almost all other forms of entertainment media. They tell stories, play music, challenge us, allow us to instantly communicate and interact with others. Encourage us to create things, connect us to new communities, and let us play with people across the world. Unlike most other forms of media, games are inherently tangible. According to Wright young children spend their days in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make believe into the real world that they are just beginning to explore and understand. Wright states that games are the result of imagination and that they consist of rules and goals. Generation of teenagers has grown up with different set of games. Teenagers use the scientific method rather than reading the manual first. Games today maybe a person’s only place to express a high-level of creativity and growth. Older generations have a lot of criticisms for games, the games can help a person learn to think on his or her own.

Have you ever heard that too much television can ruin a child’s mind? Malcolm Gladwell proposes in his article, “Brain Candy,” that playing video games or watching television is just as important as reading a book. Gladwell is using rhetorical appeals to prove that in fact, video games are not dumbing down society. Pop culture is helping to improve test scores and knowledge. In “Brain Candy,” Malcolm Gladwell does affectively use rhetorical appeals to convince his audience that pop culture is making our society smarter.

Both Chris McCandless and Adam Shepard endured a rough adventure as they both left home to go on their own journey. Adam Shepard had a different goal than Chris McCandless, He wanted to know if the American Dream was still an achievable goal when you have nothing to start out with. Chris McCandless just wanted to leave home and be as far away from his parents as he could. Adam Shephard’s project left a bigger impact on people rather than Chris McCandless who went on an adventure just to go and do what he wanted which ended up getting him killed.

The writer Gerald Jones, in his narrative essay, article, “Violent Media is good for kids,” recounts his dormant childhood and how it was changed by playing video games. Jones’ purpose is to convey the idea that video games are a game changer in kids’ lives. At a very early age, he was timid, he was not associating and was not recognized by other kids. The writer adopts a sentimental approach to tap into the similar feelings once experienced by adult readers. Jones begins his article by throwing a flash back to his childhood days at age 13, a period which he described as sensitive, fearful, insouciant, nervous and apprehensive being part of the social spectrum of other kids. Jones writes “At age 13 I was alone and afraid”. He identifies to his readers the difficulties of a child lacking confidence to grow into adolescence, and how he found violent video games an essential tool in childhood development.

Before we divulge into the topic of this essay, let me begin by stating that neither the author of the main source, Steven Johnson, nor I intend to devalue books or look down upon them. In his book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, he starts off talking about the importance of books. He says, “We should all encourage our kids to read more, to develop a comfort with and an appetite for reading” (Johnson 21). Reading provides many different benefits, some including “concentration, the ability to make sense of words, to follow narrative threads, to sculpt imagined worlds out of mere sentences on pages” (Johnson 23). As an avid reader myself, I have always had an interest in books.

In her essay, “Teen Literature and Fan Culture” Robin Brenner uses rhetoric questions to influence and persuade writers and librarians, she talks about fan fiction, fan videos and fan art. She believes writers and film makers should be more creative and think of what teens who like. Brenner says, “ Many fans are content with contemplating the “what if” questions in their own imaginations, but with fan fiction, fan videos, and fan art, devotees take the leap from speculation to creation” (402). She feels books and films should be creative and imaginative and not trying to keep the audience in suspense. Teens do not want to try to figure what comes next or try to create their own beginning and ending to make the book or film more interesting

Shouldn’t this generation be required to play Pac-Man, Asteroids, Galaga, Centipede Pit Fall or Frogger before they get to play Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or Halo? The games these days have real life graphics and by some can be considered offensive and too graphic, having an (EC) early childhood to (AO) an adult only rating (Entertainment Software Rating Board). Games went from being a nice hobby to a young kid to the average gamer now being an average age of 34 years old. The popularity of game usage is detrimental to the American society, changing our nation to

“Electronic games are now an everyday part of childhood and adolescence” (Olsen, 2010). Considering children and adolescence are our future, parents need to consider and monitor how these electronic games are affecting their child. There are more studies afloat that report the negative affects of video games over the positive effects until recently. Children and adolescents become addicted to video games easily so it is important to monitor what they are playing and how it is affecting them and their character. A recent study on many boys and girls reported why they are

Thesis Statement: Comic Books are not just enjoyable to read for most but have changed everyday life more than people realize.

In “Everything Bad Is Good For You,” Steven Johnson discusses why and how he believes today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter, rather than dumbing us down. Johnson has his book split into two different parts, focusing mainly on the first part of his book, he talks about the ways people consume media and how it has become more complex and challenging over the years. The title headings for each sub-chapters are - Video Games, Television, Internet, and Movies. Within each subchapter he uses a vast number of examples from each section to support his argument. The biggest part the first chapter is dedicated to video games. Johnston suggests that when video games were first released that people thought they made us dumber and wasted our mind’s skills. He uses the example about how if video games had arrived before books, we would be more hesitant towards books. We would be looking at the negative aspects of book reading and how they are isolating, under-stimulating and do not engage enough. Stating that we use books to test cognitive benefits – attention, memory, focus and following threads, Johnston goes into a detail about how video games uses all these skills and more. He uses examples from Tetris, Pac-Man, SimCity200 and even The Legend of Zelda. Continuing his argument that video games engage us more that any other media our there at the moment, he acknowledges how to reward system and the desire to explore in video games keep us engaged. No other form of

Activision as a video game producing company has a great wealth of resources and knowledge for Wise Web Kids to use in making its video games. This way the kids will be more likely to play the games since they will have been made by a major video game publisher instead of an internet safety organization. The goal of getting kids to pay attention to lessons about fraud, bullying, and even sexting is achieved with Activision’s help as a game developing company and all of its branches that work on game design.

Many video games use visuals to mentally immerse gamers into a virtual world filled with seemingly living, breathing people, animals, or cities. According to Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, game designers for Tale of Tales, video games increasingly develop into a true medium of artistic expression (Lamb). In just forty years, video games transformed from an abuse of the new computer for entertainment purposes into a sophisticated form of popular art. The development of video games recently produced results that arguably equal other similar, representational arts. Video games share many qualities with other forms of art, but they are also artistically significant in their own way. “This seems to be something

Many young children and teenagers have heard their mother’s incessant plead to get away from the screen and to go outside or pick up a book for once instead. The urge to play “just one more level” before starting that homework or doing those chores can be quite distracting. But are video games really as awful as Mom exclaims or as brutal as those TV ads depict? It turns out that video games can have a strong impact on participants’ lives in both positive as well as negative ways.

Since the Early 70’s video games have been giving a bad name. Parents state that video games rot the minds of children and are influencing them do be violent. These accusations are far from the truth. In my research I found that there are many positive effects of gaming. Some of these effects are increased skills, creativity, general knowledge, and also help those in need. Parents can also take proper precautions and look into a game before buying it to see if it meets the criteria discussed in this paper.