From Shallow Thoughts to Critical Thinking

Hiding. Thinking. Analyzing. Strategizing. Ambushing. Killing. Don’t we all do that nowaday? Everyone play video games. From “Call of Duty” to “Leauge of Legends”, hundreds of brilliant developers are piling up these video games on the market. However, just playing it virtually doesn’t seem to fit our need, thus comes the creation of LARP(Live Action Role Playing Game): Laser Tag, Paintball, Slap game, etc… These games simulated violence into the real world but in a physically non-harmful way. However, since it’s a video game simulated event, competitiveness are also being simulated; therefore, everyone want to stay alive and win thus diverting them from the shallow, depthless thought into a more critical, analytical thinking, that can make them a winner.

According to “The New Yorker” article, a strategical role-playing game called “Killer” has been an important end of year ritual for a school: St. Ann’s. “Initially, each team… the school becomes a souk of intelligence-gathering and disinformation.” By having this complicated information from each source, it’s really hard for any player to distinguished from the reliable information; thus, in order to acquire the legitimate details, each players must think critically about their sources and therefore, helping them to hone their skill.

In addition, one of the prospective participants, Willis Cohen, had taken his critical thinking and analyzing skills to the next level. The prodigious team that tried to kill Cohen came up with a strategy “The idea was to use a cell phone to call the Cohen’s landline… using Dominic’s [his teammate] Caller I.D. … The call went through. But Cohen’s mom … had been tipped off.” This suggests that Cohen had brilliantly analyzed his enemy team, made an educated guess of their next move, and came up with a backup strategy before they could strike and slipped through his enemy undetected.

“[Willis Cohen] (he) woke up and, as usual, hopped a neighbor’s fence and exited through a neighbor’s house. He caught a livery cab on Amity Street and headed north to Heights. He knew that he was in trouble when his driver refused to raise the windows.” Likewise, this indicate that the Gaisford team had nit-pickingly studied and analyzed their prey habit. They knew exactly what time Cohen will catch a cab thus they cooperated with a cab driver and got the opportunity to take down Cohen. It would take high level of intelligence and critically thinking skill for anybody to develop such a plan and execute it well like they did.

Now some might argue that this is the kind of training that sociopath/psychopath need as it is violent and they can hone their critical thinking skill which undoubtedly will cause trouble for us in the future and if they went into committing the “dark digital fantasy” they would indeed be shallow thinker because they allegedly think that they can run from the police. While this maybe true, there is no real proof that the police found anything relating to the connection between criminal and video game. Plus, when being splashed, shot by paintball or tagged with laser, most people just laugh it off thus psychopath may actually lose taste in killing.

As can be seen, the positive distraction that characterized game provide for young adults can really benefit them. Critical thinking and analyzing skill, let alone making our world safer, are only parts of the benefit. It’s a game after all, play it with sorrow and you will feel hate, play it with anger and you will feel vengeful, play it with paranoia and you will feel confusion, play it with empathy and you will feel compassion, play it with love and you will feel flattery, play it with hope and you will feel positive, play it with humor and you will feel joy, play it without bias and you will feel peace, don't play it at all and you will not feel a thing.

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By Sewen