Will video games harm e-books?
So how much attention is the e-book industry paying to video games–a major competitor for time and money–and just what will the games’ effect be on the young? Here’s an excerpt from Weaned on Video Games in today’s New York Times:
“We have been looking at data that shows that kids at an earlier and earlier age are starting to play video games,” said Julia Fitzgerald, vice president for marketing at VTech Electronics North America. “We wanted to know how we could make this phenomenon work for Mom” - and make it educational.It is unclear whether video games teach preschool children more about phonics and problem solving than about simply how to tool around in a virtual playground. But everyone seems to agree that the ranks of young video gamers are substantial.
A report last fall by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research organization, found that half of all 4- to 6-year-old children have played video games - on hand-held devices, computers or consoles - and one in four played several times a week. Of children 3 or younger, 14 percent have played video games.
Will young video games players have the same patience to read books–having accustomed themselves to fast action? And how might this influence the content of the books themelves? Will multimedia books become the norm? I can see the virtues of them for explaining math or science–but do we really want to see the typical virtual novel dependent on, say, animated graphics?
Cash for games vs. e-books
Oh, and here’s the real question at the end of the day, beyond the effect on children’s brain development and the issue of stealing time that parents might spend on reading aloud to Jane or Johnny:
Will a family lavishing several hundred dollars on a child’s games be as inclinded to buy that same child books?
And is there a way for e-books for children to show up on style on video games consoles–perhaps even old-fashioned versions with text and restrained and maybe even stationary graphics?
Yet another big question
Wait. It isn’t as the e-book business has that many books for children anyway, in the grand scheme of things; at least that’s been a problem in the past. Ideally that has been changing. One way or another, e-bookers should be as keen on developing their market among the young as the video games people are.
Leave a Reply