Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

As a reader of this article I am inclined to agree with, and disagree with parts of the writing. I enjoyed reading this article very much because I could relate to much of the cultural issues it talked about. Myself growing up in the video game age, I could make connections between my childhood and how I spent my free time after school. I agree with many of the stands, such as video games are sometimes one of the only options a child has these days, considering lack of play space and parental restriction. I also disagreed with some points made, one being that video game can replace outdoor exploration which I also took part in. I believe that the author targets adults of our day. The parents of the children who are playing video games. This is because video games have been given such a bad rap, that I think the author is trying to tell them that there not as bad or destructive as we think, and maybe are more productive if anything. As a reader positioned as an audience member, I feel that I could not connect with this piece of writing as much as I would like to have. As an audience member I only read the passages without ever fully hearing or seeing the author or authors of this passage. To handle this effect better the author could have possibly put in personal interviews or quotes from actual children or parents talking about these issues. This would have made me feel more like it was a personal account. I would like to have listened to personal accounts of children about playing the games, and what they thought about the comparison to earlier playing culture. After all the kids are the ones who are being affected by it.