来源：芝士英语
Despite their ubiquity (无处不在) and vast sales, video games still have an image problem. The problem, in fact, is more than superficial (表面的). It goes to the heart of the home, where concerned parents worry about games’ harmful effects on their sons and daughters.
游戏无处不在，销量巨大，但它仍然存在着形象问题。事实上这个问题并不停留于表面。它事关家庭的核心，因为家长们会担心游戏对子女带来有害的影响。
Gaming, however, is far from just a mindless and pointless hobby. The flexibility of the medium allows children to grow from players to creators. “Games always involve creativity on the player’s part,” says Benjamin Donoghue, creative director at Blackstaff, a games development company based in Northern Ireland. “Creativity is about exploring what you can do within a defined set of rules.”
然而游戏并不只是一个愚蠢且毫无意义的兴趣爱好。游戏作为一种媒介，其灵活性可以使孩子们从玩家成长为创造者。“游戏总是与玩家的创造力有关，”黑魔杖的创意总监本杰明·多诺霍说道，黑魔杖是一个本部位于北爱尔兰的游戏发展公司。“创造力是在有限的规则中探索无限的可能。”
In time (经过一段时间后), children stop just being the consumers of digital content. They develop the patience for more involved creation, added Donoghue. Sony’s LittleBigPlanet games (《小小大星球》系列游戏), for example, are fun, visually appealing and include a set of accessible level-creation tools. More than nine million levels have been made so far and Sony has been employing creators from the LittleBigPlanet community.
经过一段时间后，孩子们不再只是数字内容的消费者。他们培养耐心以涉及更多的创造，多诺霍说道。例如，索尼的《小小大星球》系列游戏有趣、具有视觉吸引力，并包含一系列易使用的关卡创造工具。迄今为止已创造出九百多万级关卡，而索尼公司已经开始借助该游戏的社区来雇佣这些关卡创造者。
One child who has felt this creative urge is Sam Smith. The 12-year-old went from making levels in LittleBigPlanet, to working on variables (可变因素) in Minecraft (《我的世界》), to developing a game called Spacepants, which is now available in the App Store. “I make games instead of going to school,” says Sam. In the United Kingdom alone, thousands of children are home-educated like Sam, and game development is one way to cover the basics. “It teaches mathematics and language, and I have learned a lot of programming,” says Sam.
其中，一个名为山姆·史密斯的小孩也感受到了这种创造冲动。这位12岁小孩的工作内容包括在《小小大星球》中创造关卡，在《我的世界》游戏中致力于设计可变因素，并自行开发名为《Spacepants》的游戏，现已在苹果应用商店出售。“我现在不上学，而是开发游戏。”山姆说道。仅在英国，就有数以千计的孩子像山姆一样在家中自学，而开发游戏就是一种涉及基本学习要素的方式。“游戏开发教会了我数学和语言，我也学习了许多编程内容，”山姆说道。
Yet it is believed that literacy, mathematics and computer skills aren’t the only benefits. The European Union has co-funded an initiative (计划) called No One Left Behind to get children as young as eight making games to study subjects such as science and history.
游戏开发并非仅培养孩子们的读写能力、数学运算和计算机技术这些好处。欧盟联合赞助了一项名为“不落下一名学生”的计划，从而使只有8岁的孩童们通过开发游戏来学习诸如科学和历史等课程。
“If a child can play games, he can probably make games. That’s one of the awesome things about video games in general,” says Donoghue. “We’re building Hogwarts for the Minecraft generation. For any child who would like to learn the magic of making games for himself, a trip there is a good place to start.”
“如果一个孩子能玩游戏，他可能也可以开发游戏。总的来说这是电子游戏的一项了不起的优势，” 多诺霍说道。“我们正在为《我的世界》的玩家一代建立他们的霍格沃兹魔法学校。对于任何想要学习开发游戏这种魔法的麻瓜们，去那所学校将会是他们一个很好的起点。”
