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Growing up gaming I
recently overheard a couple speculating on whether kids who are raised on video games will have the same level of imagination as those who weren’t. If something will be taken away from them if they experience too much exposure to this medium. To anyone ruminating on that same question, as someone who grew up on video games I’d like to try and put some minds at ease. The primary console I grew up with was an N64, translucent green with truly terrible controllers for tiny hands. My dad and I would go to pawn shops to find games to play, or rent them from our local vid-
eo store when one looked Mario 64 in all my years with the game because interesting. We played I preferred to simply plenty of games togethrun amok in the colorful er as a family, and the worlds, my memories own narof such silly ration and shared adscenarios ventures are streaming something through I look back my head as on fondly I gleefully to this day. ignored the Still, as an A Taylor’d Approach game’s set only child Taylor Davison objectives. with two Editor, Valley Journal The racing hardworkgames I ing parents, played were I spent a lot of time playing an assort- ripe for drama, my own ment of games by myself. telenovelas playing out at every corner, pass, and And my imagination wreck. A tank game my ran wild. cousin and I would play I never completed often, meant to be commore than a couple levposed of short rounds els in my favorite Super
The trees you can email C
this approach in the past: ities around the globe are transoverplanting female trees forming urban jungles that resulted in a pollen apocalypse into literal jungles. Drivin the US. en by rising Nevsensitivity to ertheless, environmentrees usher in several tal and air quality issues, significant benefits cities are optfor urban ing to boost ben there their tree landDONE that populations scapes. Ben Stone in urban arOften, the Media Production, Valley Journal eas. In a premost vital vious column, of these I described a pitfall to improvements is the re10 - March 23, 2022
duction of ambient temperature. When sunlight is absorbed by leaves in photosynthesis, less heat radiates into the atmosphere. In contrast, darker-colored streets generate increased temperatures by absorbing the rays. Additionally, trees improve air quality by removing CO2 and other pollutants from the air. Dust and fine particulates are captured by the leaves before being washed away when it rains. Visualize an umbrella with air
and lots of combat against each other, had us instead driving around side by side, exploring the map to find the perfect fort where we could play pretend for hours. No matter the intention set for a videogame by its developers, I constantly and consistently found my own fun in their worlds. I replayed some of those old games I loved so much as a child in recent years, and was a bit saddened to find they didn’t hold that same spark for me anymore. Without the rampant imagination of my childhood, I’m more limited to the fun I can find within games. Now I simply follow the story laid out
before me, and, well, I suppose I remember my own stories invented in those worlds as better. The expanses of a child’s mind are often hard to fathom as an adult. But just like the old - and accurate - joke of a child being more interested in playing with a box than the toy that came inside, their innate creativity will always rebel against the confines of any medium. In my experience, video games were just another doll house, an added visual element to my favorite activity of playing pretend in precisely my own way. Whatever shiny new tool comes along for kids to play with, it’ll never
filters-that’s what trees are in cities. All of this is fine and dandy, but how do you email a tree? Well for that we need to go to the land down under. In the early twenty-teens, the city of Melbourne, Australia chose to highlight their urban development, based on scientific studies of the benefits of trees in cities. These Aussies commissioned a bold new initiative to catalog each and every one of their more than 70,000
trees. Once the data was collected, the city’s urban forest team collaborated with a data visualist to display the information visually. The result was the Urban Forest Visual. First published in 2013, this massive online interactive map allowed visitors to see every tree in the whole city along with what species and age the tree was. Alongside the map, when looking at a specific tree, was an option
Valley Journal
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be enough to tear them away from the more interesting activities that only they can come up with and perceive. All it will do is give them a new way to play it out.
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