It’s All About The Game

The popularity of video games has changed in ways more subtle than many of us ever give credit for. Yes, it has become a growth industry due in no small part to the way it has offered people what they want. Cerebral games are now more cerebral, violent games more violent, and games featuring hedgehogs now have all the more hedgehogs in them. However, there is also another difference which has become all the more telling since the 1990s. Early in that decade, to play a really good game largely meant venturing to the local arcade. Now, no such action is necessary.

Console gaming has grown and grown since it came to us in earnest towards the end of the 1980s. However, it used to be the case that consoles had nothing like the power of the mainstream arcade machines, and indeed games tended to be developed for the arcade before being drastically scaled down to make them playable on a console. Now, the vast majority of games are developed with console gaming in mind. Whether this is a good thing or bad depends on your viewpoint, but gamers generally appreciate the opportunity to hole up indoors for a night of action, with the option to drink and snack as they see fit.

Additionally, when playing on an arcade machine one was always conscious of the queue of people forming behind them waiting to take over should the run out of coins to feed the machine. Once you’ve bought the game, it is yours and you can stay there until you’ve cracked it. Long live the console!

How Times Have Changed

A clever comedian once said that the idea that video games influence human behavior is a ludicrous one, pointing out that if the games we played in the 80s had influenced what we did then, people would have been running around in darkened rooms with flashing lights, swallowing pills as they went. He may have had a point. Certainly, what he said has a point behind it in another way. Specifically, computer games have changed incredibly over the years from the days of PacMan – when they were very simple, repetitive affairs – to the present day where we have the likes of Grand Theft Auto, Modern Warfare and various other incredibly deep and textured video games.

Obviously a major reason for this having happened is the improvement of technology year on year. Back in the olden days, three decades and more ago, a video game like PacMan or Space Invaders was viewed as being highly technologically advanced. Merely the fact that you could control a character on a screen by means of a joystick was something pretty startling. And due to the fashion for retro styles, it still finds a place in many hearts. However, there is also now the option to make the character interact more or less realistically with other characters on screen, to take the game in various directions and really feel control.

Whatever else you play a video game for, that element of control is an important one. The increase in popularity of video games may well have a lot to do with how much development has gone into them.

A Whole New World

The vast majority of us will have to accept that the triumphs we dreamed of as kids will probably be beyond us in the end. Not because of failings on our part, but simply because of simple statistical fact. How many people play football professionally? How many will pilot a plane in a war zone? How many will build a new nation and run it along egalitarian principles? As a percentage of those who dream of these things, a pretty select group. Life gets in the way. Practicality messes things up. It’s something we learn to live with pretty early on.

Does this mean that we have to cut that dream out of our life? Once upon a time, maybe it did. However, now there are video games. And while it may not be anything like the same thing to score the winning touchdown in the Superbowl against digitised linebackers, it at least gives us the chance to play at being the best. While it’s not even a substitute for the real thing, it at least allows us to participate in something we identify with strongly.

Try telling a gamer that they don’t get real life. A huge number of them are extremely smart, intelligent individuals who are perfectly aware of the logical disconnect between gaming and reality. The same is true of movies, but they have numerous annual ceremonies to congratulate people in the celluloid industry. Gaming has its awards ceremonies too, but it has a wider band of detractors. They are always going to want to have their say, but it’s OK to ignore them. They rarely get gaming.

Not Just For Nerds Anymore?

The popularity of video gaming has been a comfortable source for many news stories over the years. They are something to blame if something goes wrong in a high school, for teenage obesity, and even in some places for the lowering in quality of outdoor sports. A poor supply of players in skill positions? It’s because they were playing the game on a screen rather than on a patch of turf somewhere, honing their skills. Is it valid reasoning? Almost certainly not. Does it provide a handy way of abdicating responsibility for the failure of a system? Sure it does.

The truth is that video games have their good and bad points, but it is entirely unfair to make baseless generalisations about them to cover for a deeper malaise. High school shootings have been blamed on violent video games, even when it is clear to anyone with an understanding of psychology that the tiniest fraction of people playing a video game will be unable to understand the clear difference between what goes on onscreen and what is acceptable in real life. Not only that, but if people are convinced by a video game that what they do in the game is OK in real life, then they can realistically think that about a TV show, a movie or even a news broadcast.

The vast majority of gamers are completely ordinary people, and anyone with any common sense realizes that. But the stories won’t go away, and we should probably accept this fact.

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