Videogame Virtue

Henry Jenkins III

Playing computer games doesn’t shorten kids' attention spans—it helps them to manage competing demands in the new era of "continuous partial attention"

Frank Lantz, the head of game design at New York GameLab, demonstrated Arcadia at the Game Developers Conference a few years back. Astonishingly, Lantz played four basic Atari-style games on the screen at the same time. In one window, he was arranging puzzle pieces. In another, he was making a funny little man run through a scrolling maze. In another, he was defending the Earth against alien invaders. And in a fourth, he was moving his paddle to deflect a Pong ball. His mouse circled between windows, always seeming to be in the right place at the right place at the right time to avert disaster or grab an enticing power-up. Each game created a different spatial orientation—in and out, up and down, right and left. To anyone who respects skilled game play, Lantz gave a virtuoso performance.

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