Today I watched Simon Bysshe's short documentary Modern Day Gamer^[1]. It's a ten-minute film, freely downloadable, that takes place at a LAN party. Through a series of interviews with the participants (and one participant's girlfriend), it probes the concept of games as a social pastime. It's mostly successful. I'm not going to get into a review of it. I'm just going to talk about the issues raised in the film that struck a chord with me.

The aforementioned girlfriend says, at one point, "I think [my boyfriend] enjoys games because he's got a high IQ." She goes on to say that he enjoys being logical and planning ahead, and that games allow him to do that. This statement completely blew me away. It's a contrast to the rhetoric that gaming is a stupid pastime. Years ago I watched the movie Rookie of the Year (you know, the one about the kid who breaks his arm and finds himself with a strong pitching arm). I don't remember anything about the movie other than one scene. The main character, the kid, is playing a Gameboy. One of the other players walks up to him and says, slowly, "That's gonna make you dumb." The kid ignores him. He's that entranced with his game.

When my friends and I saw it, we all laughed. We all played games--we all had Gameboys. We all brought them to school and played them at recess. We took it as kind of a wink to us.

Now I realize that the scene is slightly offensive. Not that I'm being overly sensitive or anything, but the implication is definitely there. Read a book. Go outside and play. Do some kind of intellectual challenge. Because we as adults, we think that your little Mario game is stupid. It's remarkably authoritarian. And it's remarkably narrow-minded.

Modern Day Gamer focuses on PC gamers--Counterstrike, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Diablo II are ones they mention or show shots of--while I and most of us folks at AllRPG are concerned with console RPG games. Even so, gaming is still--for most of us--if not a traditionally intellectual pursuit then at least a mental one. Plots are becoming more in-depth and mature. Strategy and tactical-based RPGs provide a more logical challenge. Even in a simple Doom-esque lock-and-key puzzle at least some form of spatial reasoning is needed.

Later on one of the gamers in the film says how his girlfriend gripes about how much of a waste gaming is. "You're doing nothing in front of the TV watching Eastenders," is his retort, and it's a pretty interesting comparison. It boils down to legitimacy. As I've said before, games are not considered a legitimate hobby. Watching television, however, is. He goes on to say that when gaming, he's "interacting with other people--interacting with something that actually involves some thought process, as opposed to some television which doesn't involve any thought process whatsoever." This implies the attitude that gaming is somehow a "higher" form of entertainment than television. In a sense, I agree.

There's a slight problem, however, regarding this concept of interaction with other people. The games that are called into question in this case are online and networked games. When playing Counterstrike, one is faced against a character controlled by a living human being. When I'm playing Disgaea or Final Fantasy X-2, though, I'm by myself, fighting computer-controlled opponents. Is there interaction there, then?

I'd venture to say that the interaction is of a very different nature. When Disgaea first came out, for example, there were few strategy guides available online. The AllRPG message boards, for one, were full of people asking for advice and helping each other with strategies. Similarly, I was instant messaging back and forth with my friends about X-2--what we thought about the plot, the direction the characters were taking, how to get through certain missions, etc. Maybe not as immediate as playing against another person--maybe not as refined--but certainly a form of social interaction.

Now while you're probably going to say, that's no different than talking about last night's episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm at dinner, I'm going to counter by saying that because of their nature, games have a deeper level of discussion available to them. One can talk about the plot of a game--certainly I've had dozens of conversations about Final Fantasy VII--but because of the nature of gaming, one can also talk about strategy. In discussing a text, people speak from the point of view of a shared experience. In television, the shared experience is only that of watching. In gaming, the shared experience is twofold: first, that of watching--viewing the cutscenes, taking in the story, etc--and second, that of playing--the interactions themselves. No matter how linear a game may be, one still interacts with it. Other than the cursory nod towards interactivity in such shows as American Idol, one cannot affect or influence a television program. People can discuss how to better play a game. Other than seating positions and what kind of snacks we eat, there really aren't different ways of watching TV.

Interestingly enough, while the levels of shared experience are deeper in gaming than in television, a television audience's degree of shared experience is greater. You have a group of people watch a television program, they're going to see the exact same images in the exact same order. Even in a cinema-heavy, linear game, two players will never have the same exact experience of a game. The interaction causes differences.

It's perhaps interesting and appropriate to note that Square(-Enix), infamous for its single-player linear epics, is taking more of a direction towards the multiplayer, towards social gaming^[2]. Final Fantasy XI is, after all, an MMORPG, and Crystal Chronicles is, as I've been told, at its best when you round up three friends to play with you. In fact, the whole rise of the MMORPG genre is designed to cater to a desire to create a greater degree of shared experience--taking a friend along on a quest with you not only ensures that the watching and the playing are the same, it also ensures that all will be done at the same time, and in the same way.

Really, though, at the risk of repeating myself, the main issue here appears to be one of legitimization. If I shut myself in my room and read a book, that's considered to be a worthwhile way to pass the time. However, if I turn on the Playstation and wander around Dark Cloud 2 for a few hours--then I'm being antisocial, I'm wasting my time--I'm participating in a brainless hobby.

I don't have any answers to this problem. I can only posit reasons for its existence. Maybe it comes down to the whole view of games as a children's toy. If I, a 21-year-old man, like videogames, then I'm not acting my age. Maybe it has to do, as I said in my last column, with the puerile nature of videogame conversations. Maybe it has to do with the fact that people focus on the Grand Theft Autos and Manhunts rather than the Icos and the Metroid Primes^[3].

Certainly, though, things like Modern Day Gamer lead us towards legitimization. Sure, it's got its share of gamer hijinks and guys laughing at each others' onscreen deaths, but it proves its major thesis--gaming is a social activity--quite well. A sequel--called, appropriately, Modern Day Gamer 2, focusing on professional and competitive gaming--has been released. I'd like to see more people take on similar challenges. That'd be a nice further level of interactivity--commenting on games in even deeper ways.

Our dumb little antisocial hobby certainly deserves it.

Discuss this Editorial on the Forums

Footnotes

1)Click here for a few links to the film.Return

2)To its credit, Square has been taking a great deal of risks with its flagship series--something that I never would have thought possible. Why, the past few games in the Final Fantasy series--Tactics Advance, X-2, XI, and Crystal Chronicles--are worlds apart what we're used to in a Final Fantasy game. Everything I'm hearing about XII seems to be along those lines. Who knew the company would be getting daring in its old age?Return

3)This is a sticking point that always gets to me. Jason Biggs and Vin Diesel keep making movies, Jerry Bruckheimer is still a well-known producer, porn is a huge industry, and yet film is still considered a legitimate genre. Ditto with literature and authors like Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel. Why are videogames the only genre where the low form of it is concentrated on?Return