Courtesy of Bigfishgames.com
Pretty soon, high school students will be finding an even more cut-to-the-chase tactic for acing those English tests that’s a lot more fun than looking up things on SparkNotes. The gradual appearance of video games based off of classic books like Dante’s Inferno and more recently The Great Gatsby have finally dawned on a generation of instant gratification and technological prowess. According to ology.com, a game based on the Fitzgerald book just came out and ispart of a “Classic Adventures” game series for the PC.
I never thought that reading an actual book with pages and sentences would become passé. SparkNotes made it easy for kids to bullshit essays on books they should have read, the Kindle made reading into a class distinction among all age groups, and audiobooks made interactive reading as passive as watching TV. Now videogames are putting reading onto the level of audiobooks. Physical books are once again taking a backseat to less educational (and by educational I mean actually using you brain) forms of easy access to information.
For non-high school students, the videogame has no purpose other than to relive a favorite book or alleviate boredom. This makes the videogame’s primary purpose a means to write an essay or cram the night before a test. A videogame cannot replace anyone’s critical thinking skills. That’s not to say that the videogame is desensitizing children. This new genre of gaming might even make remembering plots and factual information from classic books a little easier for younger people.
The main problem I have with these types of games is that it takes the original artistry of the book and turns it into something that needs to be played out by the reader instead of the characters. Readers will find empathy towards characters in the actual book, whereas if the reader takes the place of main character, such as in a videogame, that feeling is gone. Now, the theme of the “book” is centered on finding hidden objects or slashing the antagonists.
Besides the depersonalization of the book videogames, at least gamers are trying to bring back the awesomeness of classic books and bring that to new audiences. I admire the thought and creativeness that goes along with such an idea, though I can’t say by any means that this should be a replacement of SparkNotes proportions for students.
