Hi, I’m Big Mad over Bloomberg’s recent opinion piece How Gaming Will Change Humanity As We Know It, because I gotta be honest with you — reading it was an exploration of personal patience.
I’m aware it’s an opinion piece, perhaps one seeking to find people like me who get Big Mad over video games since that’s a laughable extreme, but this essay basically argues that gaming is…you know what, I don’t even know what its trying to articulate. Games are coming for you, everyone, watch out? Participate? Don’t participate? Go to art museums instead?
There are statements in this essay that speak to a discomfort with modern culture and a deep romaticization of more traditional forms of entertainment which — sure, I guess. I like watching musicals and listening to Jazz as much as the next perennially overburdened millennial, but I also like pressing buttons, and God forbid we find interest there. There’s such an odd lamentation to the article, like a soft pining for a thing that’s pretty easy to access.
I find this entire sentiment particularly egregious, and I want to understand what the hell it’s trying to say:
When it comes to culture, the West has been in a dialogue with itself for centuries, indeed millennia, stretching at least as far back as the Bible and the ancient Greeks. Literature, music, cinema and the visual arts provide a common body of knowledge that intellectual elites are expected to be conversant with. Knowing one part of that canon usually helps you master the other parts; Verdi drew upon Shakespeare, who influenced Orson Welles, and so on. Culture has never been about self-contained worlds. Quite the contrary. Games break that continuity.
Are you — ? Okay, so, what I’m reading here is that gaming doesn’t utilize any of our cultural cornerstones and is actually created in a…vacuum, of sorts? What are they then, singularities or something? Isn’t War of God like foundationally theological? Aren’t we dealing with Greek deities in that game that are — and I stress this — mentioned in the essay as being a part of the cultural conversation? And then, with something I interpret as unhinged audacity, it states that games break the continuity of culture?
What the hell does this mean?
That gaming doesn’t receive influences from anything outside it’s own influences? Jesus Christ, if that’s the case than what the hell do we think of gaming outfits like K/DA, the League of Legends popstar group recently outfitted in Louis Vuitton for their new album release? Am I completely missing something, or is this not a collaborative effort within the “cultural continuity” context of fashion and media? Doesn’t Nier: Automata have whole segments that reference different philosophers and doesn’t it try to articulate those ideals through a marriage of gameplay, music, and visual storytelling?
Gaming itself is a product of culture, and globalization has created a particular zeitgeist of global cultural realization (and this take feels a bit America-centric). Saying games themselves exist as a self-contained world is the exact same thing as proclaiming a movie as a self-contained world or book, for that matter, or a Coheed and Cambria album — isn’t that the point of storytelling? To create worlds? Usually — and always, honestly, because nothing exists in a vacuum — in conversation with each other? Unless we’re talking about gaming as a function of itself, the act of gaming instead of the story, but even so — isn’t that the same thing with any sport?
It does posit that gaming is a part of culture, but the way that’s presented is a back-handed compliment:
Games very often use interesting music and visual effects, and in this sense they are cultural objects. But the fundamental appeal of gaming has more to do with performance and focus. Gaming is more like participating in an event than watching an event.
Then what in God’s name is the point of this essay? Is it that the current intellectual “elite” feel left out by what they assume are all these kids smashing their faces against keyboards?
And dude, listen — watching gaming is an event. Worlds is the e-sport equivalent of the Super Bowl. I’m not playing that particular League of Legends game, but some insanely talented person is, and I get to watch if I want to. Is my relationship to volleyball less important because I’m not playing at a competitive level? And if this is a Bad Take on my end and I’m missing that he’s speaking of gaming as a cultural event that people can’t all actively participate in…isn’t that a bit anthropologically insincere? Can’t you too pick up a game system of any designation and start up a game of your choice in order to participate in this particular conversation? It is a very low bar! The only things in the way are socioeconomic access to the luxury of being able to afford a system and find free time to game, or else a disability that prevents you from gaming, but I doubt that’s the issue here.
I know sound Big Mad but I’m more just startled by either my misunderstanding of this article’s articulated points, the points that are being made, or an inability to read satire. Because there’s a tone deafness to this that makes me wonder. It makes me wonder a lot of things. I bet this author is really nice. I don’t know, but I don’t want to hate on him as a person. He’s written a lot of books on things he’s really good at knowing that I know nothing about. He’s probably a pretty chill dude with super fine intentions and simply a single opinion that I don’t agree with. I don’t want to rip him a knew one because of that — but I am also a nobody on the internet wielding an opinion and by God I will vocally bludgeon someone with it.
I get what this sort of sentiment is, in a sense — if I go to college and reference Final Fantasy VII as being a prescient and idealistic representation of millennial environmental angst, heads might turn. Why not reference something more highbrow, they may ask, or more familiar? Aren’t there plenty of novels and movies that exemplify that struggle with more…I don’t know, finesse?
No! This is my anecdotal essay and as per the rules I’m going to write what I know, and I know my personal history with Final Fantasy VII and how it helped transform me into the frothing environmentalist that is now the bane of my extended family. But really, how long do I have to wait for something to age into complexity? Because gaming isn’t going anywhere, and the likes of Pac-Man and Mario have been a part of the cultural landscape for, like, forty years now.
Now the essay’s discussion on trading in game — I’m not even going to touch that. Because I don’t even understand what the Big Mad concept is! Are we upset that gaming isn’t more regulated? Are we upset that gaming economies exist as…fictional gaming economies? Does my measly one million gil in Final Fantasy XIV affect my prospects of acquiring property in the real world? No! I don’t think so? Could it? I should look into that…
The point is: whatever wealth I amass in game usually stays in game. There’s this fear of shorting out traders like the whole Gamestop fiasco…but what, really, has that to do with gaming as a cultural movement? Are we talking gacha mechanics and loot boxes? Because those have been done to death. Or is this just…the concept of a fictional economy? The gamification of trading itself?
I don’t know! I honestly don’t know. Maybe I’m too stupid to understand. Perhaps the point has flown over my tiny little head and I have failed to shoot it down.
What the hell am I, after all, but a poor office pleb with a love of JRPGs and a gutsy collection of tastefully rendered fanart? I am not part of the intellectual elite. I’ve never read Moby Dick or anything by Malcolm Gladwell. But I have played Spyro a whole bunch, and it’s good start.
