Are Video Games Really Worth the Time?

I spend a lot of time thinking about video games. My main activity at home is playing them, the main things that I watch are about video games, a huge amount of my conversation with friends is about video games. In my head I’ve designed video games, I’ve improved existing video games, I’ve deconstructed video games and now I’m planning to write a dissertation about video games.

I also spend a lot of time wondering why I do this.

It isn’t medical research or civil engineering, it isn’t applied economics or gene therapy: it’s just video games. A pass-time, a luxury, a form of entertainment to be enjoyed, put down, and forgotten about. I could be spending my time thinking about the other things I’ve listed; things which, when placed in a list with video games, causes the idea of enjoying them as much as I do seem inordinately stupid. Yet I still do it and thoroughly enjoy doing it, despite having mulled these sort of problems over in my head for about seven years now. So there’s got to be a good reason for me to continue as I do, right?

Well, it’s complicated really. I will readily admit that video games will most likely never have the impact on day to day life of people in the way that the hard sciences and engineering will. I know a lot of people play video games but spending too much time on Call of Duty is not as life changing (on a grand scale) than, say, the invention of the car. However not many things are going to be as practically important as those disciplines are and so video gaming takes its place in the more subtle group of human endeavour. It stands alongside literature, music and film as that which is primarily entertainment but uses this engaging power to become momentous art. That sentence might sound pretty damn pretentious but it’s true. The most affecting things in people’s lives, apart from real experience (births, weddings, deaths etc…) will come from one of these three, hopefully soon to be four, sources.

Then why video games?

I honestly think that video games have far more potential for greatness than the other three. Not to say I don’t value those other three immensely: I spend most of my time listening to music, I have a mind-bogglingly large film collection and I’ve devoted the last five years of my life to the study of English Literature. I also discovered video games after the other three, so there really isn’t any possibility of nostalgia clouding my sense of importance. The reason I think video games are more important is due to their level of interactivity and their ability to create almost limitless forms of experience.

Take the old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words”, now I don’t completely agree with it but it illustrates (ohoho) a good point. As a writer I often become frustrated with the limitations of the English language and unfortunately you can’t just make up gobbledygook and keep things meaningful, despite what post-modernism tries to do. Of course the counterpoint to this is that whatever a film shows you will pale in comparison to what your imagination can come up with when goaded by some words on a page. Video games have the potential to solve both of these problems: The limitations of language are removed by the ability to use written, aural and visual effects to get the point across, and although this is something that films are capable of the structure of a game is naturally more investing. The length of the format and the ability to move around at your own pace to explore whatever world you may be inhabiting can fuel the fires of your imagination more than any film is capable of doing. It also makes the unknown more unknown that in films, because agency is assigned to you. The player is not limited by what the camera sees. There is no set experience (at least not for most games) and the thing which may be lurking just outside your view could become known to you if you choose it to. Or you can just walk away. It’s all about the choice that games give you.

One must also take into account the control schemes of games and the fact that this creates a boundless opportunity to explore the way in which we can interact with art in a way that no other form can. From the clicking of a mouse to the swiping of a touch screen; from the old light-gun controllers to the Oculus Rift, we haven’t stopped exploring the way’s in which we play games and I hope we never stop.

I think ultimately I prize gaming above other media because it still fills me with a sense of magic, of being able to explore never before seen realms of experience and of never really being able to fully come to grips with what all that means. I’m sure this all seems a bit starry-eyed but seriously: go and play a game like Bastion or To the Moon then watch Indie Game: The Movie and tell me you don’t feel the same way.