Jon Ferguson
Co Editor-in-chief
The social atmosphere of our world today requires us to compete with one another
on several bases. This biggest battle between us, though, is the battle of our intellects. This
competition, though it is never won and no victory has even been achievable, has been waged for
as long as man has had a cognitive mind. Although the ultimate victory, intelligence, has never
been granted, now more than ever this victory is possible.
In the past, we tried to outsmart others by reading more novels. Novels were thought to
make man create the images he cannot see in his mind and involve him in the plot of the story.
For centuries novels were the main tool for learning. To this day, most think novels are the best
way to expand the mind. This simply isn’t true. The man who reads novels incessantly will
eventually develop several problems with his mind, leading less cognitive reflexes than others.
First of all, the man who reads a novel is submissive. He fills his mind with the ideas of
someone else. He has no choice in characters, plot, events, or climate of the story at all. To see a
different world, he does not make up his own but sees someone else’s created world. He has no
creative thought process throughout the course of the story. By virtue of reading someone else’s
novel, he has already lost the battle for outsmarting them.
In contrast, today’s world has the greatest tool for the intellectual race: the virtual video
game. In a video game, man is free to choose what he wants. He can choose the world around
him, the characters that accompany him, and he controls the plot instead of submissively giving
in to one.
Since a man has control of the actions of the main character, he has complete control of
the story itself. In a novel, it would read “Alex knew he could not take the monster face to face,
so he crept to the back of the building where the hidden ladder was located. He climbed the
Jon Ferguson
ladder and killed the beast from behind.” The reader has no control over what Alex does in this
instance. Yes they may have to imagine what Alex, the beast, and the ladder look like, but that is
as far as their creative mind goes. They did not have to invent Alex or the Beast, or have to figure
out how to defeat it for themselves.
In a video game, the player would have to do his own investigating to find a secret
ladder, and know that the beast could only be taken down from behind. This causes a lack in
logical reasoning and problem solving in the mind of the book reader.
Along with an investigative mind, the gamer also has another advantage over the reader.
In a video game, part of investigation is always failure. This failure most usually results in virtual
death, which is perfectly fine since he probably has several more lives to spare. Since the gamer
is used to spending lives and taking risks, they are more likely to take chances on different
aspects of their lives, which can usually lead to great intellectual success. Since the mind of a
reader has always been told what to think, it does not know how to comprehend the possibility of
taking a chance. A reader expects life to happen to them instead of them working towards a goal.
This, also, sets the reader behind in the race for intellectual
The simple truth about life is gamers will succeed in intellectuality far beyond the
intellectual capacity of the reader. As time progresses, more advanced video game technology is
becoming available to help prepare man for his competition with the rest of the world. Man must
be aware that without the help of the video game, he has no chance at any type of intelligence,
and therefore no chance at happiness.