argue persuade

The online environment can be as educational, stimulating and as useful as watching TV or reading a book

I think that books and online games can be very different, but also there are similarities such as they can both be read/played together with other people. When you play online it keeps you more intimate in the game and in what you’re doing, because it keeps your attention fixed since you are playing with more than one person. But books as well as games can be solitary activities.

People often have judgemental views on computer games, but if you read a book the plots are not as exciting as stories in online games that you and your friends will be playing. However, the narrator in a book such as Scout in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ can be more complex than a game creator because they see things in a subjective perspective.  In a book, though,  you are stuck to the plot line, whereas in a game you can change everything freely, from the character to the environment:  beyond that, there can also be multiple levels and endings. With video games you’re more involved with the character than if you’re reading a book and you identify with the characters so much emotionally that you feel a much wider range of excitement or disappointment when they succeed or fail. 

The online and the off line gaming experience can be very different; the offline can be played with both friends / family. Some parents think that online gaming will keep kids quiet and they will see it as a safe hobby instead of playing outside. But the bad side of online gaming is that it can be very addictive, reeling you in like a stray fish, which can make you play for hours on end. The amount of betting advertisements that are put up on game sites is just astonishing and it can make kids think it’s part of the game and they can end up using their parents’ money thinking it will not take any thing but it will.

With books it is much more different; you can all purchase a book and read together as a group. On the other hand, people say that games do nothing but keep your eyes in a fixed position, leading kids to become obese and not learn, but they are wrong; there are new types of gaming where the player can interact physically with the game and this is called virtual gaming. They also say how a violent game can change one’s mind, confusing emotions, but I beg to differ. I don’t agree that there is only violence in games and there is nothing violent in books. I think that there are many books that are disturbing such as “The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty, where a 12-13 year old child could legally buy the book but if it  was a game it would be 17-18 rated.

On the other hand, there is a much better side to technology such as looking up useful things and research:  robots and 3D printers have all been developed through people collaborating in the online community. The web is a brilliant tool where most people can go on to: although they are quiet places to work in, libraries are no longer as efficient to go to to do research – most people will just download an app on their device such as Kindle. The dark side of the internet , however, is all the explicit content that is put up for people over 18+ .

Games can make you have mixed emotions when you play and they can improve on things such as your hand eye co-ordination and your reaction skills when doing things in general.  I think that books can help make people intelligent but so can games, some of the new game that come out can improve your hand-eye co-ordination which can help with every day tasks.

In my honest opinion I think that books and games are close but at same time far away depending on how you look upon it; there are books that you can interact with such as pop-up books and hyperlink stories. Reading books is starting to become less popular, because people have to go to the library to educate themselves which could be very far for some people and many libraries are being shut down.  

Nearly all of the books which you would get from the library can now be downloaded to a device. Books themselves are becoming a part of the online environment, and here everyone can have access to them. In conclusion, the internet is a new form of technology and because it is new people are both afraid of it and it gets abused. In the future, however, I believe that it will evolve to point where people understand its usefulness as well as its secrets.