Game-playing to socialize kids

Glenn Reynolds has a useful column about games and society, arguing not that games don't have bad effects on players, but that users obtain socially good information from playing:

Thanks to The Sims, they know how to make a budget, and how to read an income statement -- and to be worried when cash flow goes negative. They understand comparison shopping. They're also picking up some pointers on human interaction, though The Sims characters seem a bit dense in that department at times. (Then again, so do real people, now and then).

This might be a nightmare for some, computer games emerging as tools to hone good behavior.  I'm reminded of Hakim Bey's insistence that art has effects:

The idea that art can be voided of political meaning appeals now only to those liberal cretins who wish to excuse "pornography" or other forbidden aesthetic games on the grounds that "it's only art" & hence can change nothing. (I hate these assholes worse than Jesse Helms; at least he still believes that art has power!)

[emphases in original]

Comments

[mythago]

It's an interesting approach, except that real life does not have cheat codes, resurrection, save-and-restart, and other mainstays of gaming. (We've had to explain to the kids that in real life, dead is DEAD.)