suppose we all want to be kids again at some point or another. Recalling the afternoons spent playing "cops and robbers," "don't touch the ground," "doctor," and a myriad of other imaginary roles, we lament the fact that as adults, it is unseemly to "play pretend." We've learned to let the lighthearted go to make room for that which is "deep," "meaningful," "useful." And when we play video games, we are often accused of being childish, of squandering our precious time on mindless entertainment.
Why do we play games? Is it merely a form of escapism, a coping mechanism to escape from a world rife with stress and sorrow? I for one would like to believe there's more to it, that the active use of imagination is itself a worthwhile goal, and that there are some truths we cannot get at without "playing pretend."
But, I've been told, don't kid yourself. Games stifle your imagination. They limit your potential to think outside the box. You and your friend inventing a scenario in the back yard is totally different. Why, then, do we encourage kids to read? Is it the imposition of someone else's narrative structure that stifles creativity? Or are we simply assuming that the interpolation of a digital display robs narrative of its power?
Some argue against gaming along similar lines as the dying fight against film and television. The difference between games and reading, they say, is that when reading you are forced to visualize the entire world of the book, whereas in gaming you are told what to think. This thought pattern is then used as the basis for an assumption that reading engages the mind while gaming rots it away.
Is it the imposition of someone else's narrative structure that stifles creativity? Or are we simply assuming that the interpolation of a digital display robs narrative of its power? To some extent, we must accept as true the premise (if not its hasty conclusion). Yet where the medium limits imagination in terms of mise en scene, it makes up for it in terms of narrative. For, when you read a book, or watch a film, you are given a concise beginning and a concise conclusion, and a quite rigid line connecting them. The story you experience is the one which the author designed for you to experience; there is no "wiggle room," no chance to question the behavior of the characters in terms of your own interpretation. Notwithstanding the "choose your own adventure" genre, which has never achieved much literary or social respect, other storytelling media are incredibly passive experiences.
Gaming changes that. Gaming encourages us to engage ourselves in the story, participants in the unfolding narrative. When we speak of the events of a good game, we speak in the first person: "I escaped The Library. I defeated Sephiroth. I saved the princess."
Yet the medium offers an even greater leniency to player choice when we abandon the old notions of storytelling altogether in favor of the open "sandbox" experience. In games like The Sims and LittleBigPlanet, the story being told is your own. Indeed, as such games grow in complexity, and as map editors proliferate, the potential creative power in the hands of a gamer far exceeds the output of imagination that any past medium has been able to invoke.
When you pick up a book, you are choosing a genre. You are choosing a set of characters and plot points created by someone else. You are choosing to have a story told to you. Gaming is the book that could never be: a story whose path you direct, whose characters react to the decisions you make, whose genre is determined by the way you choose to tell the story.
Gaming appeals to the child in us all and gives us the chance to see and hear the ideas we used to have in our yards and forests come to life in a vivid and exciting way. Now, I'm not saying games can or should match or seek to replace the sheer power of a young unbridled mind. Nor do I think we've come close to the full potential of the medium in terms of player power, particularly in terms of story-driven gaming. What I am saying, however, is that gaming affords us an opportunity we'd otherwise be without.
It is a chance to be kids again, a chance to free our minds, and a chance, just maybe, to remember something about ourselves that we've long forgotten.
True, Joseph.
That said, I think we as gamers mustn't bring ourselves down to that level per se. Gaming is only a waste of time insomuch as we are not truly engaged in it, or if we are engaged in trivialities. This is perhaps the reason I am so unsettled by my investment in FFXIII.
Kidding aside, I think there is a great and troubling tendency to game even when there really ISN'T a lasting value to it--as much as I have enjoyed the hours of Slayer and Team Deathmatch over Live, I am still struggling to justify all the eye-glazing nights, the sessions spent not chatting with friends but silently trading bullets with strangers.
Gaming can be a legitimate past time, but perhaps we have not adequately made it such? It seems the greatest argument against gaming comes from those who have observed hundreds of hours spent in non-terminating, non-stimulating tasks. Hand-eye coordination can only defend MW2 for so long; at some point, we must concede our gratuity.
By the way, that probably should have been my article instead.
I think it's only truly a waste of time when the gamer feels it was a waste of his or her time. There are some games I certainly didn't enjoy or got overly frustrated with, but I still don't feel I wasted my time. Would a die-hard sports fan feel like he wasted his time watching his favorite team play a really intense game only to lose?
I don't really like to play MMORPG's. I never got into WoW cause I felt like it was a complete waste of time. I'm not much for multiplayer gaming at all. I liked "couch multiplayer" when a group of my friends and I could sit around playing Goldeneye but I dislike playing online with strangers. Just not my cup of tea. I don't look down on others for it, though.
I guess I'm just really open-minded about things.
Well I guess my view is also more of a worldview thing. I consider anything a waste of time when the time spent engaged in it could have been engaged in a clearly more edifying or fulfilling way.
There are many things we can do that will make us better people--reading certain books, listening to good music, engaging in conversation with friends, creating something, getting exercise, etc. If the games we are playing aren't improving us in any way, I see them as detrimental. Nothing is neutral because even if the only lasting effect is time spent, that time could have been spent better.
But like I said, that's just a personal conviction, and a newly stirred one at that. I'm not going to condemn (at least not outwardly) what I see as the waste of time by other people, but for my own life if I think I wasted my time it's going to bother me for awhile.
I think at some point a similar topic was discussed. The people who dismiss gaming as a waste of time can't possibly say that everything they do is productive or makes the world a better place.