Musing on Video Games...ahem....Electronic Gaming

I never intended this post to be this long, but one thing led to another.


Since many people simply don't understand the electronic gaming culture and still refer to all things played on a screen by the ugly moniker "video games," I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed by the fact that I'm a "gamer." OK, I admit it: I still call them 'video games' too, but video games have come a LONG way since the days of the "beeps" and the "bops" of mindlessly clicking a button to blow up little blocks that represent space ships. Nowadays, games are complex, mature and, dare I say, an art form. I'm not alone in my thinking as millions and millions of overgrown boys who grew up playing games have attained manhood and have enough casheesh to buy video game hardware and software. Indeed, it's a pretty well known fact that games now earn more revenue than movies do at the box office. Furthermore, big movie names such as Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas are now producing and/or directing video games (Spielberg just produced a game called "Boom Blox" in the Nintendo Wii while Lucas' name is behind the latest Star Wars game and Jackson is working on a secrent non-FPS Halo title that's forthcoming on the Xbox 360 sometime in 2009 or 10).

Today a sort of hierarchy of video gamery exists. Most games are simple or, as the industry likes to say, "casual." This market consists of card games (Solitaire...ugh), Tetris-style puzzle games and all kinds of accessible little games aimed at women, children, and men with low levels of testosterone.

Next you have the big genres, namely sports simulators (sims), shooters (mostly First Person Shooters) which, of course, refers to the perspective one plays from, namely the first person in which you only see your weapon (I use this to teach my male students the difference between first person and third person in writing and it works like a charm), adventure games, action games, massively multiplayer online role playing games, or MMORPGs, the most famous of which is currently the money printing machine known as World of Warcraft (these are subscription based and people interact by playing together or against one another online and, as it were, lead to divorce because they're so time consuming...I've never played it by the way), role playing games (RPGs), platformers (in which you hop around and kick midgets and collect coins and what not, such as Super Mario Bros.), and so on. There are now games, however, like the forthcoming SPORE (google it), that are truly innovative and groundbreaking and, in some small way, may change the world.

Gaming, for me, has been both an escape from day-to-day life and also a social activity. Sometimes I like to stay up late and fight a furious battle against aliens all by myself with headphones on while others times I want to play a basketball game with a friend online and talk the whole time about what's going on in life. Like anything else taken to an extreme, gaming can cause problems (lack of sleep and a catalyst for serious procrastination being the first two things that come to mind).

So, obviously video games have a very dark side: they can be a very solitary activity, contributing to everything from anti-social behavior to obesity. Some people literally lose their connection to reality; one guy in Korea died of heart failure in South Korea after an insane gaming marathon during which he failed to sleep, eat, or consume sufficient fluids. Wow. The online gaming phenomenon that started on the PC and now extends into the console sphere has created great ways to play games with people remotely, but it has also spawned racial epithets galore and all kinds of foulness that I don't even want to get in to (I've heard some really strange, sad things online as you can imagine). Generally, it's pretty difficult for me to find a decent, mature person with whom I play with online if I'm not playing with someone I know in "real life" as people put it. In fact, as a father and teacher, I constantly debate whether or not we should even have games at home, but it's going to be very difficult to ever give them up entirely since it's been a part of my life since as far back as I can remember and I can remember all the way back to the Atari 2600 (playing the old Atari football game, PitFall, etc. with my dad, uncle and cousins and then later the NES in the late 80s, early 90s...indeed, I remember that fateful trip to Fedco and my first two games were Super Mario Brothers and Kung Fu). So, like TV, the internet or any other technology, one must find a middle ground.

Atari 2600


Kung Fu (Sunsoft, 1988)

It's funny, actually it's a bit aggravating, when someone says, "Oh, where do you find the time to play games?" Or, "Yeah, I just don't have the time." I can't help but think of how much TV most people watch. I don't watch TV very much, maybe an hour or two a week. Instead, I get online, watch a movie every two weeks or so, and play games. I still find time for everything else in life such as family, work, church, reading, exercise (OK- I need to "find" more time for that!), and so on. Also, I don't play games in front of Carter unless they're age appropriate and we try to limit his screen time as much as possible. I will admit that I play a lot more when I'm not working for the month and half in the summer (my school's year round, so I don't take the whole summer off).

So, what's this post about? I guess I just wanted to share some thoughts about gaming. Like the internet, or TV or movies or anything for that matter, there is good and bad in gaming. Depending what you play, how much you play it, etc. gaming can be a very appropriate and wholesome form of entertainment. Is most of what's out there negative and violent? I say yes. Is not having gaming in one's home the best way to avoid that negativity? Probably.

With that said, check out this trailer for the upcoming game "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" by LucasArts and tell me the inner geek doesn't cry out to play it (BTW, this games uses three different engines to render the various graphical and physics based elements it employs...geeks will savor this one frame by frame):



Even more...