Can Video Games Inspire Good? (Part Three)

Video gaming can be justified as an art for the graphic design, storytelling, music and sounds, and coding involved. Now, we've seen in many cases how video games may have been the inspiration for evil acts. I won't get into the politics of it, but I wanted you to know I know about them. However, as the industry and players change, I've begun to see that there can be good coming from them. For one, tournaments, competitions, and speed-runs help raise funds for charities on the tune of a million dollars collectively in the speed running community, for example. In other cases, funds aren't raised, but in stead service is wrought and tight knit communities are made. I've seen this happen with a new genre of games called "Augmented Reality" or AR games, for short. These games are enabled by mobile devices that use GPS in order to play them. As they require the player to move around, they also usually encourage talking with other people (kindly), something that many online games don't require, as well as interact with the world and experience it. In short, it fosters friendships and exposes people to opportunities to help the global community. One example I love sharing comes form a game called Ingress. Here's a video of what I'm talking about.