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SEVERAL POINTS OF LACKING INTEREST: The Vision Quests of the New Millenium
By: Orin Drake
It’s no secret that video games, especially those of the role playing variety, are exceedingly popular among the youth of the world. And that’s not just because they’re a spectacular time waster and a thousand times more interesting than homework. No, there’s more to it than that. Games sometimes function to fill a void that resides inside the youth of today. It’s something that they probably aren’t even aware of, but it exists within them nonetheless. As it has existed within every young man and woman since the dawn of civilization (I sound so serious, don’t I?) Let me explain.
I, myself, have been playing video games since I was seven years old. While my first gaming experience was Super Mario Brothers, my first obsessive gaming experience was The Legend of Zelda. At the time, it was the most spectacular thing that I had ever experienced, game or otherwise. It was something that fired my imagination and drew me into a world I would become hungry for. Now as I said, I started on that adventure when I was seven. I wasn’t able to actually finish the game until I was fifteen (you can keep your judgments to yourself). When I did finish my fateful quest with Link, I did it with pride, because I had accomplished something. And while it may pale in comparison to discovering the polio vaccine, it truly meant something to me.
Okay, stop right now. You were about to write in and tell me how horribly sad it is that Zelda was so special to me. Well don’t, because this is where I get to my point and everything will start making sense to you (I hope). You see, modern society finds itself afflicted by a great spiritual malaise. There are more unfulfilled, discontent people now than there ever were. This sad condition often takes root early in life, i.e. the teenage years. Kids today are discernibly uncentered, and when you think about it, it’s not really much of a surprise. For thousands of years, and across the entire cultural spectrum, the miserable little moppets were subject to a “special something” that is conspicuously absent from contemporary culture: the rite of passage. It’s that illustrious event that marks the passage from childhood to adulthood; a coming of age journey less like a saccharine episode of “The Wonder Years” and more like a Native American vision quest. While no one here would dare devalue kissing chicks in the woods or nicking your first taste of beer, those events lack something more fundamental. So where does one go to find that fundamental x-factor? Well for many years, but especially now, kids have found it in video games.
So just what is it about a particular title that can transform it from a simple game into something so much more? Well, let’s take the obvious first. Something like Zelda, for instance, is known as an RPG (albeit more specifically among purists as an “action RPG), or “role-playing game” (as you should already know, but if you don’t, shame on you). By taking on a role, a player is in a sense putting on a mask, and a mask has the wonderful power to free a person from themselves. It’s that freedom that allows them to enter a new world. And it’s in that world where they will find themselves again, either as a hero capable of feats they never thought possible, or as a dirty, dirty failure. Majora’s Mask, for instance, is a game that involves almost nothing but wearing masks, taking on the powers of the masks themselves.
In regard to this strange new realm we speak of, it’s usually a plane of time and space that, though unfamiliar in most ways, is almost teasingly familiar in others. It’s an exotic place full of myth and mystery, aching to be explored. And you all know that you will explore it until you know it like the back of your hand.
It’s in this mystic land that we meet what someone years ago affectionately dubbed “the boss”. Actually, we meet up with many, each one worse than the one before it. They run the gamut from hideous monsters to homicidal maniacs, and they make completing the quest near impossible. But guess what? There’s a reason for the bosses. Not only is the act of fighting a boss the perfect opportunity to “weave a magnificent tapestry of profanity” as it was so well put in A Christmas Story, but battling a boss is also a players chance to shine in the face of adversity. Mythologist Joseph Campbell probably put it best when he said, “Basically the vision quest involves getting past your own limitations, which are within even as they appear to be without. They are symbolized in myth as monsters and demons, and in each age the characteristics change; because as a people changes, so do its limitations.”[1] You see, in a game, your mental -- and to a point, physical – agility is put to the test. And if you can conquer the demons on the outside, maybe you can conquer the ones that they represent within as well. And when you’re done with them, there’s always a puzzle or two or eight hundred to solve; puzzles and riddles that make the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile seem like an open and shut case. To anyone that can solve them without even the smallest hint from a fellow gamer or the internet, I offer you entire free world, for it’s what you deserve for your accomplishments. Now granted, the entire free world is not mine to give away, but let’s not argue over semantics.
So as you can see, your standard RPG can actually be a rite of passage to some. In exploring the unchartered waters of your new realm, your abilities, your patience, and even your sanity is tested. By successfully battling your way through obstacles, overcoming foes and solving puzzles, you’re leveling up—maturing even—through experience points and the mastering of your world. As these environments become more expansive, so too do the stories involved in them; it’s a perfect place to come into your character, and yourself.
In these modern times, the vivid, exceptionally elaborate video games of deep stories and deeper emotion fills in that spiritual void I mentioned earlier: that need to become initiated that modern society is unable to fulfill. Just because it’s a series of pixels unfolding on a television in front of you does not mean it’s any less valid or real than it would be otherwise. This is the technologically advanced equivalent of being sent off into the desert as a boy, only to come back a man (Though I do feel it necessary to express that it’s no less important for a female to have such experiences, as well.)
I also want to mention that though I said in the beginning that games were (obviously) popular amongst the youth, they still hold a place close to the heart in our “older” gamers. There are more rites of passage than merely from child to adult, and there’s always more to learn and achieve, regardless of age. The expansive and deep story-based RPGs might even be more popular with the gamers who’ve “been there, done that”, either because it reminds them of what they’ve forgotten from the past, or maybe because it inspires them to look toward the future. Or maybe it’s just that in an awfully material world, it’s nice to get a much needed dose of spirit (non-denominational, I should add).
I end this time with another quote from Joseph Campbell, expressing in so few words what I could never be focused enough to do with a whole article. “The adventure is its own reward—but it’s necessarily dangerous, having both negative and positive possibilities, all of them beyond control. We are following our own way, not our daddy’s or our mother’s way. So we are beyond protection in a field of higher powers than we know.”[2]
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Footnotes
1) Toms, Michael. An Open Life. Perennial, 1990Return
2) Toms, Michael. An Open Life. Perennial, 1990 Return
-- Orin Drake
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