For the most part, modern video games try to avoid telling players how to live their lives. Sure, there are more than a few games that examine morality and other larger-than-life questions, but these are the minority — most games nowadays are about experiencing a story, playing with friends, or a combination of the two.
All things considered, there's a pretty good reason for that: video games usually tell terrible lessons. If you think that sentiment was reserved solely for modern video games, you're mistaken — if anything, NES-era games were even worse about giving out terrible life lessons. Some modern games spread their message throughout the entire game, but back in the days of the NES, developers only had a single screen — kids were basically having terrible life lessons shouted at them from their TV.
Now, thanks to the Internet, you can have terrible video game life lessons shouted at you from your Twitter feed. Video Game Advisor (via Kotaku) is a collection of classic video game philosophy: whether it's telling you to give up, that fighting is your only option or that money is the key to happiness, VGAdvisor is a testament to how messed up video games used to be:
— Video Game Advisor (@VGAdvisor) September 28, 2015
pic.twitter.com/U23Tp0qP08 — Video Game Advisor (@VGAdvisor) September 18, 2015
Going by VGAdvisor, you'd be forgiven for thinking that old games were entirely about fighting or getting rich (or sometimes fighting to get rich). Everyone talks about how terrible modern video games are, and how they're ruining the youth... but, from the looks of things, video games have been doling out bad advice for decades.
— Video Game Advisor (@VGAdvisor) September 17, 2015
pic.twitter.com/4bmNCnBtDl — Video Game Advisor (@VGAdvisor) September 22, 2015
Of course, that's not to say that video games have only ever given out bad advice. For example, games have been giving gamers just as much bizarre, nonsensical advice as anything else:
— Video Game Advisor (@VGAdvisor) August 29, 2015
pic.twitter.com/jKcOwZfL5F — Video Game Advisor (@VGAdvisor) August 18, 2015
Playing video games: perfectly fine. Listening to every lesson that video games teach: probably not the best idea...
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