This post touches on life and videogames, and is a kind of mild rant, which means it sort of covers all three of my blog's subheadings. Excellent.
This post will also be a break in the Memoires series. Think of it as that quiet moment of reflection in a war movie, where all the gunfire fades out and the reflective music is turned up to 11, and the main character looks at the faces of his dead comrades and asks himself (or herself, lets not be sexist here): what is it all for?
All that time, effectively spent jacked-in to the matrix of Azeroth. What was it all for?
No doubt by now, if you've been reading this series of posts, you will hopefully have realised that MMORPGs hold in themselves complicated challenges and lend themselves to the construction of completely new social structures as well as allowing people to connect in completely new ways.
You may also have thought that the whole thing was pointless, especially if you weren't a gamer (although I have my doubts that anyone who has read this far falls into this category). Be that as it may, I hope the following discourse will still provide fresh food for thought.
To answer the question of "What is it all for?" I think it's best to start from the basics.
What are video games? How do we classify them? I think the clue is in the title - they fall under the category of "game" along with such things like Chess and Backgammon (which I have no idea how to play). This differs however from what I perceive to be general perception of the video game; that it is a form of mindless entertainment like watching the TV, where one consumes content but does not interact with it (or even in some cases, create it). Of course, it's a bit of a sliding scale as far as video games are concerned, as some games are quite mindless whereas others require ample amounts of mental dexterity and lateral thinking.
By extension then, this means that the popular perception of the gamer as a media consumer is fundamentally flawed. Video gaming is actually a hobby, like pursuing a craft such as writing or depending on the game, even a sport. If we look at video gaming from this light, then it's easy to see why people get passionate about it, notwithstanding the fact that games are inherently designed to dole out certain rewards for the work which a gamer puts in.
Right, let's go back to our initial question: What is it all for? Why do people write? Why do people play games?
If we ask this in the context of say, creative writing, a multitude of answers can arise: some people will write because for them it's a release and an escape from the stress of daily life. Others will write because they want to show their skills to the world, and they want to be appreciated for their work and others still write because for them it's how they can study the world and the people around them.
The same applies to video games. For some it is again, an escape. Others play to showcase their skills and to win (for example, there is a growing professional eSports scene surrounding games like Starcraft 2, which is also incidently a fun spectator sport). Finally, and most excitingly to me, social games allow people from all different creeds and classes to connect and be on equal footings, which broadens the horizons of all involved, and they also allow a unique and valuable view of various aspects of the human condition which are difficult to study in real life.
So, what is it all for, for me? Well, at first, playing World of Warcraft was my way to get away from the boredom that was life outside school. It turned into something different altogether; it became my way to prove myself - to try and find meaning in my teenaged existence, it became a way to satisfy my competitive urges and it also turned into a surprisingly good social experience too. Amongst that online space in a world where slaying dragons was the norm, I found somewhere where I really felt accepted and appreciated, somewhere which taught me how to lead and manage a diverse range of people, somewhere where I made long lasting friendships, and somewhere where I experienced visceral highs and crushing lows, all wrapped up in one neat little package for £8 a month.
Funnily enough, Badminton fills most of these criterion too, and that's been another activity that has been a staple of my life for as long as I can remember. However, if I spent hours a day training Badminton, it could easily be considered a noble pursuit. If I spent those same hours researching and theorising about how to maximise the healing potential of my priest, well...you get where I'm going with this.
This is the one thing that frustrates me a lot; the perceived lack of "validity" of video gaming as a pursuit. By this I mean that even though I don't have any interest in something like Major League Baseball, I recognise that it takes skill, dedication and talent to play well and to rise to the top. On the contrary, when a video gamer achieves something, the common reaction of joe public is to go: Good for you, but it's only a videogame - it doesn't matter!
It's a viewpoint that's sold readily by the media and along with all the other stereotyping that's applied, has pinned a very negative stigma on people who play games. This of course, isn't helped by the fact that "video games" is an umbrella term which covers all sorts, from simple puzzle games like Tetris to an extremely complicated game like Civilization IV - a strategy game where the objective is to build a civilization and dominate the world. To use the writing analogy, the difference between the two games is like the difference between a haiku and a full blown fantasy epic: you can of course find meaning in both, but the fantasy epic is more complex, deeper and one would expect the more satisfying read.
If you're good at Tetris, well, you're good at Tetris. If you're good at Civ IV, it shows sound strategic thinking, resource management and tactical thinking, it shows that you are good at balancing competing demands and are able to prioritise as needed - in short, it shows you are able to perform well at a lot of high level cognition tasks; the sort of thing which is valued in pretty much any job.
According to Google, one can define a "game" as a form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck. Using this definition, we can say that there is fundamentally no difference between Starcraft 2 and Football, and the two are only perceived differently by society and given different weights of importance and validity accordingly.
In a way, even passing exams and getting a degree is a game: the examinee is trying to maximise points scoring by providing answers which conform to an arbitrarily chosen set of criteria. You could argue that the importance of getting a degree comes about since it relates directly to your earning potential, however, given that there are now monthly Starcraft 2 tournaments that pay out $100000 in prize money and there is a growing market in the sale of virtal items and money for real world cash, it should no longer be considered strange that one can make a living from video games. But anyway, I digress.
The point I'm trying to make is: so much of what we do in life is actually just playing games. These games go under various pseudonyms such as exams, job interviews and climbing the career ladder and so are artfully disguised by the cloak of cultural norms, but they are still games nonetheless. It seems odd then, that when we play games that are labelled as games, society as a whole is all too ready to look down on it.
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