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A very interesting piece of long form journalism cum memoir about the way video gaming has subsumed and changed the way we live, interact, and think.
To the uninitiated, the figures are nothing if not staggering: 155 million Americans play video games, more than the number who voted in November's presidential election. And they play them a lot: According to a variety of recent studies, more than 40 percent of Americans play at least three hours a week, 34 million play on average 22 hours each week, 5 million hit 40 hours, and the average young American will now spend as many hours (roughly 10,000) playing by the time he or she turns 21 as that person spent in middle- and high-school classrooms combined. Which means that a niche activity confined a few decades ago to preadolescents and adolescents has become, increasingly, a cultural juggernaut for all races, genders, and ages. How had video games, over that time, ascended within American and world culture to a scale rivaling sports, film, and television? Like those other entertainments, video games offered an escape, of course. But what kind?
In 1993, the psychologist Peter D. Kramer published Listening to Prozac, asking what we could learn from the sudden mania for antidepressants in America. A few months before the election, an acquaintance had put the same question to me about video games: What do they give gamers that the real world doesn't?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @06:10AM
I like stories. They are a good way to convey ideas, to entertain, provoke emotions etc. I read/play a lot of visual novels which are classified as games. I also spend a lot of time playing RPG_s which have a similar role as VN and traditional novels for me: they provide a story, and in come cases it may be interactive, and others not.
Video games (as well as novels, and anime in my case) also fill the roll of providing shared social context. They give me something to discuss people which I often find more interesting than our local professional sports teams.
Now that I got the justifications that fit with social norms out of the way (That's not what the article is about!), I'd like to comment on the article:
What did the game offer that the rest of the world could not? To begin with, games make sense, unlike life: As with all sports, digital or analog, there are ground rules that determine success (rules that, unlike those in society, are clear to all). The purpose of a game, within it, unlike in society, is directly recognized and never discounted. You are always a protagonist: Unlike with film and television, where one has to watch the acts of others, in games, one is an agent within it.
I strongly disagree with this claim. I play games that are mostly not about winning. Sure on my first play through I won Undertale (I guess?), but maybe I really lost? Its not clear. Also with regards to sports, I play casual level Ultimate Frisbee, and its pretty much never been about winning. When I played today, we mostly didn't keep score, and switched teams a lot. Thus the claim that sports are about winning, and games are as well seem really flawed to me. When I played WoW, and layer Wildstar, it was about exploration, not clearly defined success: it was less linear goal oriented than when I go on a hike in the real world. Also, life doesn't make sense? Really? You have fun while you can, then you die: there is nothing to be confused about.
I do not have goals. I do not strive to achieve anything. This is the same in real life, and in games. There is nothing special about games in that regard here: they are just one form of novel stimulus I enjoy, and thats really all I live for.
Again from TFA:
In those games, too, players typically begin in the same place, and in public agreement about what counts for status and how to get it. In other words, games look like the perfect meritocracies we are taught to expect for ourselves from childhood but never actually find in adulthood.
I know my utility specked Druid in WoW wasn't good at anything. I also didn't give a shit. I also sure a hell don't view a visual novel or most of my RPS_s as a meritocracy, that doesn't even make sense: they are stories and they love to advertise their moral choices and such (though most games that advertise that suck at it). I also never expected the adult world to be a meritocracy. Really, does anyone actually think good people rise in the world rankings? That is only in specialized ranked areas, which include a small subset of games, and many real life activities. Again, video games arn't special: there are some competitive ones, but most gamers arn't trying to climb the ladders, and I certainly never have. This article makes about as much sense as claiming "Since artists all start with blank pages, and there are art contests, art is a meritocracy, and therefore people turn to it to get what they wanted out of adult life."
We turn to games when real life fails us — not merely in touristic fashion but closer to the case of emigrants, fleeing a home that has no place for them.
Of fuck you. Games are a medium, that you are thinking of is the genera of fiction, but even in that case the argument is bullshit. Games (and fictional stories) are part of life, and life just is, it can not succeed for fail someone. Sure, I'm an an antisocial introvert, and I love to spend time thinking about imaginary worlds. But you know what, the "reality" most people spend their time thinking about isn't actually different is any way. If I spend a few hours crying over a VN about terminal illness (Like Narcissu) and you brows the news headlines that happen to cover a similar topic some day, who's experience is more real? Which is more relevant? I'm not escaping the world: I'm augmenting it. Sure theres lots of pointless fun in video games, but people also watch football on TV. The world is many dimensional, and hierarchical in its aspects: you do not leave, you only explore other areas. I love "real life": it contains so many fun things, like video games.
Thats one of the very few things I get defensive about. Don't diss on reality. Its fucking awesome. Have you seen emergent behavior? An evolved blob of cells can write an amazing story, and from it we can construct entire worlds of our own.
So I don't know how that article ends, I just can't read and further: I'm going to go consume better fiction because our amazing reality has far better to offer than the TFA.