"Turn off the video games and go outside", this is a quote I'm sure most people have been at the receiving end of at one point in their life or another. It was the bane of my existence as a child, hearing that foul sentence uttered from my mother's mouth. "Go outside and be with nature" she would say as I hissed, slumped my shoulders, and prepared myself for the terrors of the outside world. Grass, flowers, sunlight--who needs it, all of that has been perfectly crafted into a virtual medium of which I can control. Anything one can get from "nature" another can get from the virtual world of video games, right?

Does the act of playing video games actively delude or otherwise divert those participating from the realities of the environment around them? In J.E. Good's study entitled The Cultivation, Mainstreaming, and Cognitive Processing of Environmentalists Watching Television she attempts to find patterns between time spent watching TV and the content of the TV viewing and how these affect both environmentalist and general populace views on the environment. Her data shows that environmentalists who spend more time watching nonfiction TV had views more aligned with those of the general population rather than other environmentalists, who watched less nonfiction TV. Good conclusively states at the end of her paper "What the research presented here highlights, unfortunately, is that television viewing may be acting to erode concern that individuals otherwise have for the environment", these results would likely be similar if the paper had been focused on video games, assuming that playing video games derives from a like thought process as watching non-fiction television.

For many, myself not excluded, playing video games can offer an escape from reality, a vacation from the woes of the world. An appealing offer, no doubt, but when does it go too far? Because an escape can quickly turn to neglect. Think of video games as a nice drive you take on a Sunday morning and the environment as the puppy you didn't bring along for the ride because you didn't think you'd be gone for that long. Once you hit the road you start feeling really good, the weather is great, your favorite song is on repeat, your popped collar is flapping in the breeze, and you've got a bumper sticker that reads "lost and not tryin' to be found". Suddenly you realize that it's now night time and your favorite song has repeated 350 times totaling 17 hours and 30 minutes of driving. Now you're stranded without any gas and your puppy who you forgot to take on your trip is dead--maybe not dead but found a new owner that would cherish it, a nice optimistic orphan girl perhaps.

I'm not saying that playing video games has caused the environment to decay and Earth's population to ignore said decay for hundreds of years, and I'm not saying to stop playing video games. Video games are wonderful and provide a great outlet for relieving stress, what I am saying is that it's crucially important to come back to the reality that you are trying to temporarily escape because negligence is a sure fire way to make a bad situation worse. Speaking on behalf of the environment just remaining aware is half the battle, so once the smash tournament is over, do go outside and be with nature just as a reminder that it's still there.