Is the conventional wisdom of video game's influence upside down?

Can the continued barrage of the advertisement actually be telling us subliminal messages even the corporations paying for them do not want us to hear? Sure there have been studies & conspiracy theories telling us corporations use such tactics as product placement, celebrity endorsements & feeling of nostalgia to sell us more than we need or want, but is it possible this may even be backfiring on them given they are in competition with completely unrelated products to get their message out? What are you talking about you may be thinking, but bare with me a second or two.

I was watching a program tonight, The Colbert Report, yes Sumner Redstone you can send me a check for endorsing your product, and something completely odd dawned on me from viewing an E-trade commercial followed by one for GTA. Now mind you, I didn't camp out for 3 days waiting for GTA to go on sale, nor have I downloaded 15 competing online trading software programs hoping to make millions over night then follow it up with a shooting spree through Liberty City, however both are the craze at the moment. "Ohh, be real there is no connection," you say but there is, ...and it is not as you think.

Let me diverge for a moment into each of these two seemingly unrelated phenomenas. GTA, as we know has spurned a heated debate over whether it has caused an increase in violence because "it desensitizes the player [read:youth] to the real impacts of violence," and is therefore linked to such unthinkable tragedies like Columbine, VTech shooting and even to modern warfare, where military "gamers" drop bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan from a cozy workstation in Tampa.

Now let's look at the rise to prominence of the on-line trading software, "so easy a baby can do it" and "so much fun an entire family is sitting around the computer making their first trade," pops out in my head as images so-well ingrained they replace memories of first everythings. How far we've advanced in family interaction that we no longer have to be satisfied communicating via text message to our parents or siblings sitting across the table at dinner, but we can all partake in making the family rich "24/7 trading."

Not quite ready to connect them yet, but let's think about a time not to long ago, in particular just before the Bear Stearns collapse & weekend federal bailout. Hell, I wonder which company cashed in nicely plugging Washington DC into on-line trading to make this modern day feat possible in unbelievably short notice? The Fed's efficiency allowed it to be the equivalent of a Friday news dump and barely rippled the waters of 2-3 subsequent news cycles and now a simple google search doesn't even reveal an article showing exactly how many billions were spent in this record breaking boondoggle. So prior to this event and even currently, with it nicely swept under the rug of the taxpayer's recognition of more corporate welfare, the financial media continues its "buy, buy, buy, the market continues to rise" diatribes, most notably shown by Jim Kramer just before the collapse. How quickly the media, the corporations and apparently the government would love us to forget about the impacts of the Tech Bubble Collapse circa 1998-2000, and keep us plugging our money into their greedy pockets when the market "stability & steady growth" they tout is predicated on a strong dollar.

The reality is the dollar is weakening steadily and precipitously, and the dirty little secret spoon fed us all is, not that the market value is increasing, but that it is actually decreasing due to the fall of the dollar. If a company's value, for simplicity's sake lets go just off its assets valued at $100 per share on the stock market, but now let's drop the value of the dollar from 1 to 1 with the Euro, to 0.95 USD to 1 Euro, now all of a sudden the market value increases magically to $105.26 per share. This is all hocus pocus valuation increase, that will only continue to get worse due to increasing foreign held debt tracked by The National Debt Clock. Isn't it slightly odd how the price you pay at the pump for gas or for a loaf of bread doesn't work in your favor ever, but always the corporations can recuperated their losses by increasing the price?

"Alright you were talking some connection here," you say.

Let us return to the video games to find the connection. What is one of the key foundations of any gamer's success in a game? "Blasting the bad guy" or "Running over the rival gang member." No, it is maintaining a viable economy, whether it be money, resources, lives, ammunition, etc. Without which, you cannot continue on through the game and perish. This is the inherent underlying attribute to any game, and yes solving a mystery or plugging a thousand rounds into the enemy makes it exciting, however without a positive "economy" you die.

What is the demographics on people who play video games and grew up on them? It started with the 30 somethings of today, back in the late 70s and early 80s when Atari and other gaming systems were just developing & becoming a backbone of family fun and interaction. It has continued to grow and the percentage of gamers per age demographic grows over time. What else is laid down during these formative times of our youth, when the corporations are not indoctrinating us with their products? Nostalgia! Nostalgia of what? Gaming! And what is inherent in all gaming? Maintaining a positive economy!

What is the trend of the 20 to 30 somethings with regards to deficit spending, setting aside being fooled into racking up immense credit card debt? I think it is, "we are sick of our leaders [read: parents & grandparents through their proxies, government] racking up debt at our expense for which they will never live long enough to have to worry about paying. Just looking up "Me Generation" gave me multiple negative portrayals of us being self-absorbed with a sense of entitlement unmatched by any of the past, however I think there is a shift occurring, calling the older generations & the politicians, predominately in their generation and by whom they control, out on their true self-absorption and complete disregard for a future they will no longer be in (we don't live forever).

The cost of the war & occupation of Iraq in combination with the mortgage meltdown going on now, has highlighted to more people than ever in our generation the need to win the game. And to win the game, all of us in our 20s & 30s have been indoctrinated to know & can remember back nostalgically to urge us to buy into, requires us to maintain a positive economy. I think this is more elemental to the Change Movement that is growing amongst our generation today than anything else. And to a certain extent, maybe the nostalgia our parent's had of enjoying those first video games with us so many years ago, is drawing them into this Change Movement, more so than the need to get out of Iraq itself or something is rotting in Washington they point to.

This is a present surprise that struck me this evening, and you know what? I look forward to laughing in the face of corporate ads selling me something stirring warm emotions from my past, knowing that their grand scheme failed and is backfiring on them now. Bring out more games of senseless death and destruction for children, because as they get older, survival through positive economies will be ingrained in them more than the Happy Meal & bad hair is in our generation.