Lucas Ordoñez, GT5, and the power of video games.

Video games may be much more powerful than many people realize, for training skill sets in people. Lucas Ordoñez is an eye opening example. Recently, Lucas Ordoñez and his team, including Franck Mailleux and Soheil Ayari came 2nd place in the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race. Now, you may be wondering why I regard it as newsworthy that someone should come second in a race. Well, it is quite simple. Lucas Ordoñez is not a trained racing driver. In fact, Lucas Ordoñez’ primary experience of racing comes from sitting at home with his Playstation 3, playing Gran Turismo 5. Lucas Ordoñez is a computer games player.

I found this a remarkable case, for what it says about the effects of video games/computer games on our children. It is clear that they are certainly learning something whilst playing them. It would be wise, perhaps, to look, therefore, at which games they are playing. Lucas Ordoñez became an expert racing driver, without even setting foot in a racing car, simply by playing Gran Turismo 5, or GT5. What, however, is becoming of children who play Call of Duty, or other warfare simulators? Are they becoming more efficient killers? Perhaps a child who plays such games, would grow up to be a better soldier.

There seems to me, to be an opportunity for enlightening games, that would entrain positive skills in our children. I am not so familiar with the available games to know whether such games exist – but it would be good if our games actually taught them something worth learning. They certainly taught Lucas Ordoñez how to drive.

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The Retro Kid "Hippy".

There is a hippy in our house. He is very short but definitely a hippy.

He doesn't have long hair. He has curly hair. It is not his fault if it won't grow long in the traditional hippy manner. However, he has a signature which is definitely pure "hippiness".

I heard it today. He was trying to load his favourite computer game onto my computer (which he usurped with great, unchallengeable authority, by simply ignoring me), when something untoward happened: there was nothing but silence at the opening credits - the sound was down.

"Oh Maaaan!", he said, just like a Sixties hippy would have done, in the same circumstance. He said it again, a moment later, when something else wasn't right: "Oh Man!".

The "hippy" of the house is little Tiarnan, aged two. It is hilarious to hear this little boy of the 21st Century sounding so much like a hippy of the sixties, in his choice of words - and the long, lazy way in which he says this catchphrase. The mystery of it is where he ever heard the phrase at all: you see, none of us have ever said it around him, or indeed at all. We just don't say: "Oh Man!"

I can only presume that he must have heard it on television once, and now echoed not only the phrase, but the manner of its phrasing - the pacing, the long drawn out expression and the stress on "Man". The whole effect is that one is in the presence of a toddler hippy.

It is a funny household in which even the littlest ones sometimes seem like little old men. Or should I say: "Oh Man!"

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