Almost as a coun­ter­weight to the law­mak­ers and media per­son­al­i­ties that use a sin­gle clin­i­cal tri­al to prove games are fun­da­men­tal­ly evil, the evan­ge­lists use a sin­gle clin­i­cal tri­al to prove that games are fun­da­men­tal­ly benev­o­lent. “Play, don’t Replay!” is just anoth­er exam­ple of games evan­ge­lists twist­ing a study into a nail to advance their own ham­mer under the guise of sav­ing the world, and it’s some­thing that peo­ple should be cyn­i­cal about. If being a games naysay­er means think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about the place of games in soci­ety and not over­reach­ing the find­ings of indi­vid­ual stud­ies, I for one will glad­ly be a games naysayer.

Games evan­ge­lists and naysayers

The even-hand­ed approach to using games for change that is cham­pi­oned here is (sad­ly) still uncom­mon in industry.

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.