I too am over 36 and quite well-to-do, yet still play video games online, these days I put in about 10 hours a week in to Call of Duty 4, or madden, or a racer like burnout. I’m far from a geek, being a general firearms expert, race sports cars, rides a Ducati, can water and snow ski, golf, bowl, fly single engine aircraft, and just about any other hobby is in my repertoire(I’m looking now for a Ferrari 308 to restore). Many of my male friend are also very self sufficient and share a lot of other interests, and ALL of them own at least one of the new gen consoles(most of us have all 3) and play online. I’d be hard pressed to think of a peer who doesn’t play some sort of video game. Most of the gen-x age males are the first ones who have known video games their entire lives, with the first Atari 2600 consoles showing up when we were about 10-12 years old. Go back a few years many over 40 just don’t understand the entire thing. Not to mention the money we spend on the video game ‘hobby’, I must have $3000 in (current) consoles and games, and about the same in a gaming computer…
Personally I think video games(in moderation, just like every other single thing in life) actually is a huge learning asset to any child. I’m pretty high up on the ‘food chain’ in the video games skills department, but the young children of today by the age of 7 have incredible reflexes and fine motor skills and can multi-task at an amazing level. My 5-year old niece can operate a universal remote control by feel alone and can already predict the trajectory of a relatively fast moving ball with precision, let alone engage in two conversations at a time.
HOWEVER!
Politicians don’t give two S@#%s about video games, or global warming, or gun control, or speed limits…. They only follow what they see in the media news of the day. They are completely controlled by their advisers and handlers to jump on every bandwagon, regardless if it wastes millions, billions, or even trillions of dollars to chase the cult of popularity with those that vote for them. For McCain, a true war hero, (for which Hillary or Barack have never remotely close to anything as dangerous as the most innocuous single minute of rest on an aircraft carrier) to completely roll over onto the global warming bandwagon can show its power over politicians. The scary part is the absolute cowardice and sudden liberal slant of the supposedly ‘conservative’ politicians, leaving us with absolutely ZERO hope for anyone in congress or the White House caring about anything regarding the American citizen.
Every politician has completely folded to pander to the media. Watch what any major politician does or say these days, they simply run their lucrative careers and campaigns terrified of upsetting the nightly ‘news’. So if nitwits say video games are bad on the news, expect the stupidity to quickly move to politicians. What do you think the chances are that any politician who is on this particular bandwagon has ever even played anything outside Solitare on a computer or console before. These are the same morons that hold a press conference on the content of movies they have never seen before.. And they day after it stops running in the ‘news’, they never mention it again.
