为视频游戏申辩：养虎为患？(Defending video games: Breeding e

There's no solid evidence that video games are bad for people, and they may be positively 1 good

没有任何可靠证据证明电玩游戏有损于人们的身心健康，相反他们或许还能发挥一些有益的作用。

 
“IT IS an evil influence（影响） on the youth of our country.” A politician（政客，政治家） condemning 2 video gaming. Actually, a clergyman（牧师，教士） denouncing rock and roll 50 years ago. But the sentiment （情操，感情；观点） could just as easily have been voiced （表达，流露） by Hillary Clinton in the past few weeks, as she blamed video games for “a silent epidemic 3 （流行疾病） of media desensitization （脱敏[医]，这里是比喻没有察觉）” and “stealing the innocence 4 of our children”.

一位政治人士谴责电玩游戏称“它们是对我国青少年的邪恶侵害”。实际上，50年前神职人员也曾以同样的态度斥责如今被广为接受的摇滚音乐或摇滚艺术。如同过去几周里希拉里.克林顿对电玩游戏轻松随意的批评一样，她这种反对的立场同样表达得恰到好处 “这是一种伪装得连新闻媒体都疏于察觉的瘟疫，正在肆无忌惮地吮吸着我们孩子的天真！”

The gaming furore（狂热，狂怒） centres on “Grand Theft Auto 5: San Andreas”, a popular and notoriously（臭名昭著的） violent cops and robbers game that turned out to contain hidden sex scenes that could be unlocked using a patch downloaded from the internet. The resulting outcry（大声疾呼） (mostly from Democratic（民主的） politicians playing to the centre) caused the game's rating（等级） in America to be changed from “mature”, which means you have to be 17 to buy it, to “adults only”, which means you have to be 18, but also means that big retailers 6 such as Wal-Mart will not stock（进货） it. As a result the game has been banned in Australia; and, this autumn, America's Federal Trade Commission（美联邦商务委员会） will investigate（调查） the complaints（抱怨，牢骚）. That will give gaming's opponents an opportunity to vent 7 their wrath（愤怒） on the industry.

一种臭名昭著却大肆流行的狂热游戏“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”由于其暴力的警匪场面中夹杂色情镜头而被禁，但它却可以补丁下载的方式变相的解禁。招致的反对呼声(大多来自民主派政治人物)导致了该游戏的定级从“mature”升至“adult only”，即参与者法定年龄分段从17岁提高到18岁，这同时也意味着像Wal-Mart（沃尔玛）这样大的零售商将不再进货销售该产品。如此，该游戏在澳大利亚境内也被明令禁止。并且，今年秋天，美联邦商务委员会将调查事后的社会反应。这将给电玩游戏反对者们发泄愤怒的机会，出气筒当然是以此游戏为产品的相关工业。

Scepticism（怀疑主义，怀疑论） of new media is a tradition with deep roots, going back at least as far as Socrates' objections to written texts, outlined in Plato's Phaedrus. Socrates worried that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would “create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external（外部的） written characters and not remember of themselves.” (He also objected that a written version of a speech was no substitute（替代品） for the ability to interrogate（询问，诘问，这里指一种提问与辩驳的方式） the speaker, since, when questioned, the text “always gives one unvarying answer”. His objection, in short, was that books were not interactive（交互式的，指灵活多变）. Perhaps Socrates would have thought more highly of video games.)

新媒体怀疑论（即对新生传媒方式持异议）是一种根深蒂固的老传统，能够至少追溯到Socrates（苏格拉底）对文字记录的反对，这在Plato（柏拉图）的Phaedrus中是有所记载的。Socrates担心靠文字记载而不是传统的口头传述,“会使学生产生遗忘，因为他们不再使用自身的记忆力，而是迷信于文字记载的长久生命力冷落了人本身的记忆。”（他同时也反对记录形式的语言表达，认为那些不能作为对演讲者发问的替代，因为在提问时，文字记录的问题，“总会被限制到一个永远不变的答案。”）简言之，他认为书本并不具备互动的优势。那么也许，Socrates会对电玩游戏批评甚之。

Novels were once considered too low-brow（庸俗的，没文化的） for university literature（文学，文艺） courses, but eventually the disapproving（不赞成的） professors（教授） retired 8. Waltz music and dancing were condemned 9 in the 19th century; all that twirling（旋转） was thought to be “intoxicating（醉人的，这里指使人迷醉的）” and “depraved（堕落腐化的）”, and the music was outlawed 10 in some places. Today it is hard to imagine what the fuss（大惊小怪） was about. And rock and roll was thought to encourage violence, promiscuity（混乱） and satanism（恶魔崇拜，邪恶主义）; but today even grannies buy Coldplay（摇滚乐队的名字，代表作有“yellow”） albums.

在大学文学课堂上小说曾被认为难登大雅，但最终反对者还是退出了历史舞台。19世纪Waltz（华尔兹）同样舛命，它无尽优美的旋转被钉固在堕落腐朽的十字架上，甚至有些地方为法不容。 不过，今天人们已经很难想象那大惊小怪的滑稽年代了。摇滚音乐一度背负着暴力，混乱，邪恶的骂名；但而今，细心观察没准会看到邻居奶奶正在街角的音像店寻觅Coldplay的专辑。

游戏嗜玩者(Joystick junkies)
(joystick:游戏操纵杆；junkies：吸毒者，这里是比喻义)

The opposition 11 to gaming springs largely from the neophobia（neo-: 新，phobia：恐惧病） that has pitted the old against （pit… against…: 使…与…对立）the entertainments of the young for centuries. Most gamers are under 40, and most critics are non-games-playing over-40s. But what of the specific complaints—that games foster（养育） addiction 12 and encourage violence?

几个世纪以来人们惯有的对新事物的恐惧和抵制意识使得成年人一向反对青少年的娱乐方式，这也正是反对游戏一派最大的思想根源。大多数电玩游戏针对40岁以下的青年设计，这也难怪批评者大多是超过40并没有接触游戏的人群。目前更具针对性的抱怨是什么呢——游戏使玩家嗜其成性，更有甚者会激发暴力倾向。

There's no good evidence for either. On addiction, if the worry is about a generally（普通的，普遍的） excessive（过度） use of screen-based entertainment, critics should surely concern（联系，涉及，牵涉） themselves about television rather than games: American teenage boys play video games for around 13 hours a week (girls for only five hours), yet watch television for around 25 hours a week. As to the minority who seriously overdo 13 it（做事过火）, research suggests that they display addictive 14 behaviour in other ways too. The problem, in other words, is with them, not with the games.

然而没有任何确凿证据证明以上任何一项“罪责”。并且，如果担心更本质上来自于屏幕娱乐方式的过度，那么首当其冲的应该是电视而不是电玩游戏：在美国一个十几岁的男孩每周消费在游戏机上的时间是大约13小时（女孩子只有5小时），而泡在电视机前的时间却高达25小时。至于那些极少数游戏嗜玩者，研究表明他们同样也表现出对其他形式娱乐的上瘾行为。这就是说问题在于玩游戏的人而不在于游戏本身。

Most of the research on whether video games encourage violence is unsatisfactory, focusing primarily on short-term（短期的） effects. In the best study so far, frequent（频繁的） playing of a violent game sustained（维持，持续） over a month had no effect on participants' level of aggression 15. And, during the period in which gaming has become widespread in America, violent crime has fallen by half. If games really did make people violent, this tendency（趋向） might be expected to show up in the figures, given that half of Americans play computer and video games. Perhaps, as some observers have suggested, gaming actually makes people less violent, by acting 16 as a safety valve.

大多研究着眼于游戏在导致暴力问题中的短期效应，但都得不到令人满意的结果。目前最成功的研究是要求参加实验者在超过一个月的时间内频繁的玩暴力游戏，结果显示游戏并没对参与试验者的暴力意识产生任何显著影响（正面的或负面的）。值得提出的是，在游戏风行美国大陆的一段时间内，美国的犯罪率却下降了一半。如若游戏真的使人狂暴，那么这个数字应该上升，因为半数左右的美国人从事着电脑和其他视频游戏。或许，游戏正像一些观察家们提出的那样，实际上起到一个安全阀的作用（释放了真实社会中人们面临的压力），从而减少了暴力案件的发生。

“恐惧病”将继续蔓延(Neophobes unite)
（neophobes=neophobia； unite：联合）

So are games good, rather than bad, for people? Good ones probably are. Games are widely used as educational tools, not just for pilots, soldiers and surgeons（外科医生）, but also in schools and businesses (see article). Every game has its own interface（接口） and controls（控制器，控制装置）, so that anyone who has learned to play a handful of games can generally figure out（想出，断定） how to operate almost any high-tech（高科技） device. Games require players to construct hypotheses（假设，臆想）, solve problems, develop strategies, learn the rules of the in-game world through trial and error. Gamers must also be able to juggle 17 several different tasks （juggle sth. 同时处理面对…）, evaluate risks(估计风险，比较风险大小) and make quick decisions. One game, set in 1930s Europe, requires the player to prevent the outbreak of the second world war; other games teach everything from algebra 18 to derivatives（[数]导数，微商） trading. Playing games is, thus, an ideal form of preparation for the workplace of the 21st century, as some forward-thinking firms are already starting to realise.

如此，游戏真的有益而不是有害于人么？也许吧！作为辅助工具，游戏技术已被广泛应用于教育活动，不仅在飞行员，士兵和外科医生的课堂上，同时也应用于普通学校以及商业领域。每个游戏都有自己的接口和控制界面，那么一个能够对众多游戏都得心应手的人自然可以在几乎任何的高科技设备面前显得游刃有余。游戏过程中，玩家要学会建立假设，解决问题，提出策略，并通过训练和失败习得游戏世界中的生存法则。玩家还必须学会同时协调面对多个任务，预测风险大小和果断定夺采取行动。曾有个游戏诞生于20世纪30年代的欧洲，主题就是要求玩家设法阻止二战的爆发。另一个例子是一款数学游戏，能够教会玩家从简单代数到微商的处理。如此看来玩游戏更是21世纪的一种理想的职前教育方式，一些前瞻性强的公司已开始意识到这一点。

Pointing all this out makes little difference, though, because the controversy 19 over gaming, as with rock and roll, is more than anything else the consequence of a generational divide. Can the disagreements between old and young over new forms of media ever be resolved? Sometimes attitudes can change relatively 20 quickly, as happened with the internet. Once condemned as a cesspool（污水坑） of depravity（堕落）, it is now recognised as a valuable new medium, albeit（尽管） one where (as with films, TV and, yes, video games) children's access should be limited and supervised. The benefits of a broadband (宽带) connection are now acknowledged（承认，感激）, and politicians worry about extending access to the have-nots（穷人，穷国）. Attitudes changed because critics of the internet had to start using it for work, and then realised that, like any medium, it could be used for good purposes as well as bad. They have no such incentive 21 to take up gaming, however..

无论列出多少理由，对于游戏是非的争辩还是无足轻重，因为正如对于摇滚乐的争辩一样这是超越其他一切社会问题之外的代沟现象。新媒体形式如同成人和孩子之间的一条沟壑，可否逾越呢？有些时候态度是可以瞬息转变的，比如对因特网的认识。曾经，因特网被贬低为使人腐化堕落的污水池，但现在，尽管其中的一些板块（电影，电视，当然还有电玩游戏）应禁止向儿童开放或受到严密监管，它仍旧被看作是功不可没的新媒介。宽带连接带来的益处为社会公认，并且政治人士开始担心如何将这种技术推向落后国家。正是由于那些持有批评态度的人开始使用因特网，并意识到它不仅仅可用于消极地用途，同时也有积极的一面，这才导致了他们态度的转变。但是，他们并没有打算以同样的方式面对电玩游戏。

Eventually, objections to new media resolve（解决） themselves, as the young grow up and the old die out. As today's gamers grow older—the average age of gamers is already 30—video games will ultimately become just another medium, alongside books, music and films. And soon the greying gamers will start tut-tutting（发虚啧之声） about some new evil threatening to destroy the younger generation's moral fibre（纤维，比喻义）.

当孩子长大，长辈们死去，最终，反对新媒体形式的呼声将自息。随着今天游戏玩家年龄的增长——而今，平均玩家年龄已至30——视频游戏最终将和书籍，音乐，电影一样成为另一种传媒形式。并且很快这一代头发已日趋斑白的游戏人将又对某些新生威胁性的邪恶啧有烦言，因为“它们有损于年轻一代的道德意识。”