On Video Games
Dec 19th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 7 Comments |
One of my best buds out here in the Greater DC Metropolitan Area (imagine calling yourself a “citizen” of such a region. Would never happen) was talking to me about about creative energy and relaxation the other day.
We don’t get to see each other nearly enough. We had just gotten out of I Am Legend and I was telling him what I had been up to recently and how I had discovered that doing all the writing on the study guides left me with no energy for any other creativity. He said that he had been experiencing a similar lack of energy, to the point where he couldn’t even bring himself to play video games like he would normally.
Was it because video games always involve some kind of tension or problem to be solved, and that having to deal with problems and tension wasn’t what he needed to recover from a long day at work, dealing with problems and tension?
No, he said. It was the fact that video games are seen by most people as a complete waste of time, and this makes it difficult for people in relationships to also be gamers. It’s the tension that video games cause in the home that kept him from finding them fun/relaxing (like he used to).
Recently, The Wife and I have been watching G4, and while I don’t own any gaming systems, I’ve begun to wonder whether creating, exploring, and participating in worlds/stories through gaming isn’t somehow the same as that which happens in reading fiction, telling stories, watching movies, or using myths.
I think that to listen to a story properly (whether in reading, or movie watching, or hearing a friend talk) means to participate in it, to live vicariously through it. Stories help you get outside yourself. They make you feel less claustrophobic, almost in the same way that talking about famous people does.
Humans are by nature gregarious. We need to live outside ourselves both to make connections with other people and to be able to see the world through other people’s eyes. Our worlds are three dimensional, and yet we only have one set of eyes. To properly inhabit our voluminous world, we need to be able to be in multiple places at once. This happens when we properly experience stories.
Stories give us the chance to live other lives. And, as I Am Legend proves, to live other people’s lives without actually endangering ourselves. (While watching the movie, I was living through Will Smith’s character [that's what it really means to "suspend disbelief"]. Vampire people were after us. We had a helpful dog. We were alone in the world and trying to save it. We loved Bob Marley. We were on the verge of insanity. Were it not for the movie, I would have never been able to live that particular life. My experience would have been that much more confined. Or something.)
And there is something fundamentally right about doing this. We humans need stories. So, I don’t think that playing video games is any more a waste of time than reading a novel just for fun. Both activities are an expression of human nature and need.
The question is, is it better to follow along (as in reading, watching, or listening), or to actually become an actor in (as in gaming) the story? Are stories in which we must solve a puzzle (e.g., the Legend of Zelda games, or in mystery novels) better than ones in which we are more passive? Is it better to listen to your talkative friends’ stories, or to Dostoevsky’s stories. And why? What’s the hierarchy of goodness in the world of stories?
I don’t have all that figured out. But I think there’s something more philosophically important about gaming than we non-gamers normally see.
I think there are very few activities, if any, which are by definition a waste of time. Gaming falls into that too. I say this as a non-gamer, but one who as younger fellow did engage in his fair share of video games.
I will also say, as a non-gamer, that not all video games share the kind of fantasy/story connection you speak of, and are rather mindless to some degree. When I was younger, I can safely say that a lot of the time I spent playing video games was in fact, wasted time. Much as, up until recently, I wasted a ton of time watching TV, even though I don’t think watching TV is inherently a waste of time either.
I do see value in the kind of fantasy/story connection that does exist in many of the games that are popular today. I don’t think a nominal amount of time spent playing such games is a bad thing. The one thing I do see about the gaming world sometimes is people getting overly caught up and trapped in those fantasy worlds in a way that is much less likely to happen by reading a book, or watching a movie.
As to the “what is better” question, I don’t come prepared with a full answer. I will say though that I think that to some degree, having the stories “imagined” for us via mediums like TV, movies can have a dimming effect on our own imaginative/creative capabilities. I don’t pretend to have done an exhaustive study on this, I only have witnessed my 3 young cousins who watch very little TV/movies relative to the average kid these days, and who continually blow me away with their imagination and creativity.
It occurs to me: we chase after the ghost of “interactivity” but is it really good for us?
A static media like story allows certain truths to be expressed. A dynamic, interactive media like video games, seems like maybe, by definition, it would lose some of this quality.
Shakespeare can convey deep truths about the nature of sanity through the character of Hamlet. As we watch him fall apart, we can take Shakespeare’s point.
If Shakespeare had lived half a milenium later, if he’d written Hamlet The Video Game, almost by definition, he would have lost something. (Perhaps he’d have gained some other things, I’m not sure) in pulling us into the thing, by allowing us to make choices we’re being taught different sorts of lessons by the Bard. It’s a bit like the difference between hearing an allegory and participating in that campfire game where everybody makes up a sentence in an ongoing story.
(Do they call that an exquisite corpse?)
Perhaps a major problem of video games and the like only occurs when one spends significant amounts of time involved to the detriment of worship, work, relationships, and life in general.
Oh wait, isn’t that the definition of a mental disorder?
And one plays the same scene over and over again expecting a different outcome (to move on to the next level).
Oh wait, isn’t that the definition of insanity?
:)
Scott–
Great points
Jeff–
There are video games in which you are forced to make moral choices as a player (I think of Bioshock specifically), and it seems to me that that could be used to teach truths (whether it is actually used that way is another question).
And many games today are full-blown stories complete with scripted scenes in between segments of game-play, so the loss you speak of need not be as great as we might think.
Amanda–
You’re right about the mental disorder.
You’re wrong about the insanity *grin* Well, okay, for some of us, playing the same level over and over again is a mark of insanity because the outcome never does change. But for others of us, the more we play, the better we get, and eventually we beat the level.
Ever played somebody in Mario Kart that has been playing it for a long time? They’ve been doing the same thing over and over — but not really, since they’re getting better and better at it (as evidenced by the fact that they kick your butt every time *whimpers softly*).
Actually, the place where I always got thoroughly trounced by people who played games over and over was in Golden Eye. Chris Beers particularly would school me every time.
So playing things over and over again often does get you somewhere.
:-)
Well, I think that definition of insanity comes from Einstein, maybe, I think that’s what Tim said. :)
It was the fact that video games are seen by most people as a complete waste of time, and this makes it difficult for people in relationships to also be gamers. It’s the tension that video games cause in the home that kept him from finding them fun/relaxing (like he used to).
This is the key bit.
Video games are inherently antisocial, and almost certainly destructive to an adult relationship. It’s impossible to justify to a spouse ones daily online relationships with/against reclusive teenage boys. You’re better off reading pulp fiction in bed while she watches Project Runway (and you pretend not to be interested).
Einstein did indeed define insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” However, the people who are playing video games are doing it over and over again slightly differently, which makes all the difference. (I should say that I don’t play video games at all except occasional turn-based strategy games when my wife talks me into it.)
As for the definition of a mental disorder, it goes to show how arbitrary psychology is (or, if not arbitrary, then morality in disguise). I don’t actually object to psychology making moral judgments, but I do require it to be crystal clear and upfront about it when it does so (which is not the case now). In my view, it would be more appropriate for psychologists to diagnose a mental disorder as a behavior that is getting in the way of a person’s life in the opinion of the person himself. If we use somebody else’s opinion (e.g. a psychologist’s) of whether the behavior is interfering in the person’s life, then we are sneaking in a moral judgment about the situation. (That judgment may very well be right, of course, but we should have no illusions about what kind of judgment we are making and what its scientific status is.)
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that since I find our current trend of giving scientific deference to the moral judgments of psychologists to be a disturbing trend. In no way should this be viewed as critical of the profession itself or any of its methodologies. It is fairly clear to me that it hasn’t even occurred to most psychologists (and certainly not to the public at large) that they are making moral judgments, even though this is obvious.