Image: sean dreilinger
[This article is from my original blog at BriceMorrison.com. Looking back over it, the content seemed to be something TGP readers would be interested in as well. I'm still alive, I promise, and the book is coming along great! Enjoy!]
My mother was never interested in games when I was little. Looking up from her newspaper, she would give a soft smile as she saw my brother and I engrossed in Super Mario Brothers before slipping back into her reading. “Mom!” we called. “Come play Mario with us!” We happily tossed her the controller, only to grimace as we watched her plummet poor Mario off a cliff accidentally. “I don’t like these games. You boys have a good time,” she would say, handing the controller back to us. With a sigh, my brother and I would take back the controls and continue on.
Try as she might, my mother could never get the hang of moving that “tiny man”, as she called him, around the screen. To her, games were toys; children’s play things, a skill not worth investing time in. Games provided no lessons, no useful knowledge, no reward that interested her. They were fine for us, but to her, an intelligent adult, they were a waste of time.
Only entertainment
It was only a few years later when I myself began to share my mother’s point of view. I was disappointed to find that as I matured, I was leaving games behind. While my interests in other media grew substantially more adult, from Nickelodeon to CNN, from Dr. Seuss to George Orwell, games did not seem to have a more intelligent counterpart for me to move to. As I entered college, I became less interested in mindless entertainment and more interested in encountering new ideas. I didn’t want to kill time; I wanted to take advantage of it. I wanted to challenge myself with profound concepts, to learn of new paradigms, processes, and possibilities.
To fill my growing need for intellectual nourishment, I left games and moved to other media, texts largely influenced by schoolwork. In the search for ideas, books more than satisfied me. Fiction and non-fiction books such as Brave New World and Seven Habits enriched my life and took me places I had never before been. Television and documentary films followed close behind. I was an “infovore”, eager to learn all I could about the world I live in.
But the games I played appeared to have nothing to say in this discussion of the pragmatic. And so reluctantly I waved goodbye to my entertaining friend in search of deeper art and ideas.
As a long time video game player, I wondered: did it have to be this way? Why were games stuck with a preteen obsession while other media managed to satisfy different consumers at different stages of life? Books were also capable of pure entertainment, so why was it that the written word was versatile enough to delve deep into the human psyche, while games could only provide simple fun? Surely there was a way to make games with more depth than Super Mario. But if so, where were they?
TV can do it. Why can’t I?
I began to compare games to other communication forms, and I noticed that some media have hit the big time, so to speak. Television is one. Film is another. Books and magazines yet another. All of these media are universally accepted and not even questioned when we see them expressing the deeper concerns of reality, simply a palette on which artists can create their craft. They are capable of being either pure entertainment or pure intellectual discourse. As a medium, they are free.
Games do not have this luxury. To many people, games are only allowed to exist for pure entertainment. Another medium that has succumbed to this sad fate is comic books. Artist Scott McCloud has written (and drawn) extensively about the tragedy of comic books. They, like games, are a medium which has yet to break out of its childish audience. Only a small handful of comics have been able to reach deeper and more intellectual concepts than the slam bang action of superheroes. Yet McCloud argues that comics as a medium are capable of so much more than children’s fantasies. Themes of romance, biography, satire, or surrealism are not out of the reach of comics.
Perhaps comics are not yet down for the count; perhaps they will one day serve more purposes than children’s entertainment. For example, a comic, drawn by McCloud himself, served as the tutorial for Google’s newest Chrome browser. But for a form of communication that has been around since the 1930’s, comics are a long way from where they would like to be: read by children and adults, men and women, expressing a multitude of themes and ideas.
Games as the baby brother.
Games, luckily, are only about 30 years old at best, much younger than comics, and certainly much younger than books. As a medium, they have a lot of time ahead to grow and find their identity. So what exactly are the barriers of entry for great thinkers (or groups of thinkers) to leave their mark on games? What must happen for games, or interactive entertainment, if you will, to mature as a medium?
While no one knows the answer to this question, many people (and companies) have stepped up to the plate to attempt to bring games to the next level. The Nintendo Wii has been a monumental development in the games industry, not because of its innovative technology, not because is has in part gotten people off of the couch, but because of the way it has changed the audience. My mother, who claimed she could never play games, frequently plays Wii bowling with my aunt. A substantial amount of Wii owners claim that it is their first video game console. This means that by taking away the buttons that confounded my mother and replacing it with movement based controls, Nintendo has opened up the possibility that games could be for people other than kids.
But Nintendo is not the only one moving the age of gamers up the scale. The ESRB claims that the average gamer is 35 years old, contrary to most anecdotal evidence. As kids (such as myself) who grew up on games turn into adults, the opportunity exists to satisfy their new tastes.
Who cares if games are played by an older audience? That doesn’t guarantee that it will become a truly respectable medium. Ian Bogost, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote that games will not be truly expected as a medium until there are more boring games. Only when games are mundane enough to be accepted as a method to, say, teach us how to drive safely, will games have truly arrived. While the goal isn’t to create boring games, the goal is to approach a world and a public perception where boring games are not outlandish.
So how do we get there? One step at a time. Games like My Weight Loss Coach, or independent titles such as The Passage are slowly, one by one, changing the public’s conception of games. As new titles appear that push the envelope of what people, like my mother, think of as games, we approach an environment where emotional and intellectual discourse is possible.
So what’s the big deal?
Games have a lot of growing to do before they are ready to be heard. But imagine when we arrive: a world where games could teach you how to drive better, how to write better, how to talk with coworkers and friends better. Imagine games that could help you understand life outside of your country, to conceptualize the hardships of the poor. Imagine games that could expand your mind, and make your personal world richer than it as before. Those are games worth seeking out.
I don’t know about your mother, but check in at any retirement park if you don’t think that older people are interested in games. OK, they may be card games, or golf, or shuffleboard, but they still play games.
I am far too old to have played Super Mario Brothers as a child, and I’m sure I’d be nearly as inept as your mother with a controller. It’s different when you didn’t grow up with this stuff. I love computer games, but I’m really bad at “real-time” combat. I mean, I think Mount&Blade is great fun, but you wouldn’t believe how bad I am at it. I’m sure it would be hilarious to see me play.
But you know, it might be that your Mom could beat your pants off in pinochle. Maybe not. I can’t stand card games myself. But you understand what I’m getting at, I hope. You’re mistaking particular kinds of games for games in general.
Personally, I don’t care if games become a “respectable medium.” But although entertainment is the basic point, games have always been teaching tools, too, at least for children. We need to take more advantage of that. We play games because we want to, because they’re fun. Wouldn’t it be great if we could learn something at the same time?
And games could be great motivators for all sorts of things. Or they could unleash our creative side – for ALL of us. Books and movies tell a story created by someone else. Games could allow us to create our own stories (within the specific framework – setting, history, rules, NPCs, etc. – created by the developer). Dwarf Fortress is one of the games leading the way in this, which I actually think might be the future of gaming.
All great points. Games certainly exist outside of the classic video games many of us grew up on, such as board and card games. Facebook games are a new medium that many traditional gamers don’t really take seriously.
I hadn’t heard of Dwarf Fortress, I’ll have to check it out.
Thanks for the response!
Amazing points, dear Brice, as usual.
And I have to tell you that this kind of discussion I’m having with myself for some time – and after reading your post and putting my ideas together, it just make me think more about the role of games on our lifes.
I’ve even posted a small discussion at my site, entitled “Are videogames a lost of time?” (in portuguese), in which I wrote some of my own visions about gaming and why I and many people like them.
In an average, gaming is just for fun. But I think it can be more than that, more than just entertainment. Let’s wait and see what games will be on the future – because today they’re just the baby brother.
Interesting thoughts. What I’m missing is the example of GTA4 which has received a lot of good critics for its very satiric content concerning the american culture. And not only from the gaming community but from regular newspaper like The Times.
It’s sort of like asking, “Why isn’t hide-and-seek adding to the discourse on ideas?” With a few exceptions that only prove the rule, people play games for fun. This is how it has always been, since long before video games came into existence.
You can read serious books for intellectual nourishment, and still play games for fun. Fun is good. Don’t look down on fun. Super Mario Bros. is not inferior to Animal Farm. They are two different things. Having both of them adds richness to life. I don’t see why games should try to not be games.
The analogy to books and movies doesn’t really work. If you want, compare software in general to books and movies. Then you will see that software is already doing many things, including educating and enlightening people in ways that non-interactive media cannot. Video games are one subset of software, which serve the purpose of entertainment.
If it is not doing what a game does, then it not a game. It is something else, something which does not make actual games any better or worse.
@Robert, I agree with your statement that having both fun and intellectual discourse are a fine balance. Also, great insights into other aspects of software. There are plenty of examples of educational software or utilities which make our lives better, which could be compared to film documentaries.
One wish of mine, however, is that just as there are mainstream films like Hurt Locker which make you think, there would be mainstream (not utilities or edutainment) games as well.
Of course, I’ll be doing a design analysis of Heavy Rain soon…:-)
clearly this kid has never played an RPG or an online MMORPG
adult oriented games have existed for like ever
but he does have some nice ideas
Interesting article. I can personally identify with a number of different points, like I had the same experiences growing up, and on average the gaming industry isn’t as open a medium as the others mentioned, like writing or film.
But there are some points that you may want to consider. Games are not just entertainment. Games are advanced systems that modify a player’s beliefs, their views of the world, and the behaviors they exercise in that world. They deal with complex realities and teach meaningful lessons that can be transferred into a player’s real life. Without even realizing it, a player excepts the developers concept of realty and makes it apart of his.
This is not true for all games. Basic and primitive games that have little educational value and are quickly labeled as a “waste of time” or “just entertainment”. This is simply because the core experience of the game is to test reaction speed or basic problem solving skills and the like.
However, this whole concept shines true when you examine some of the more complex games. Let’s take for example World of Warcraft, a massive multiply player online game. On the surface you could say that players are having the same experience over and over again. This, one may say, has no real value. Not so when you consider the fact that they are playing with other people. This brings in social dynamics, team work, organizational skills, resource management, time management and much more. These all have real world value that can be put to use in business and in personal lives.
Games are fast becoming a medium through which social change is nurtured. Take for example Peacemaker, a game that was developed to facilitate awareness and help bring about change in the middle east. It brings the player into the conflict and makes them personally responsible for getting the outcome that their country desires. The player is faced with complex issues, juggling the wants and needs of several different groups, many of them conflicting. What do you think a player will take away from a game like this?
Gaming as an intellectual platform from which people express complex thoughts, ideas, and concepts hasn’t been fully realized due to the accessibility of the medium both on a consumer and creative end. This fact is quickly changing. As noted above, Facebook games are gaining in popularity. The internet as a platform is making the number of possible consumers rise to levels just unreachable years ago. Advancements in software allows wider access to game development than ever before. More people are able to enter into the medium without having a “professional” level of training, which increases the number of developers and decreases the costs. We are and will be seeing more casual developers enter the field.
Just like stated above games are in the infancy, there is so much that can be accomplished through this medium. It is up to you to help make the future of gaming, where do you want to take it?
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