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Video games don’t rear their head until page 11 of the NEA’s “To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence.” This reading study, published by the National Endowment for the Arts, looks at the grim state of reading in America. Americans are reading less, don’t understanding the little they do read, and, consequently, aren’t becoming contributing members to society.
Video games don’t get a bum rap here. They are just one of many entertainment outlets which eat up our free time. The biggest time-stealer is still the television, but the report notes that even if people weren’t watching tv, they wouldn’t necessarily read more.
Similar news from abroad, “England plunges in rankings for reading” (Guardian, UK), does blame gaming, which prompted an interesting rebuttal from Steven Poole.
Poole, friend to gamers, notes that games like the Phoenix Wright series or Phantom Hourglass “demand reading skills” and “reward reading.” Writes Poole, “As the experts and politicians commenting on the report wonder aloud how to put the ‘buzz’ back into reading, Phoenix Wright and Zelda are already doing it.” Maybe Nintendo’s on to something, I previously noted that Hotel Dusk is basically an interactive novel which requires the player to hold the DS like a book.
Poole makes a good point. Gamers who do in-game reading aren’t counted in surveys and articles. If they were, that type of reading wouldn’t be valued anyway. Likewise, while the majority of online interaction requires reading and writing, that also isn’t counted or valued.
The fundamental problem I see with studies like this is that they look at reading as being a connection between a reader and a printed book which should take place in a quiet location. I believe that if studies looked at the migration of readers from printed page to digital display, they would have an added value.