The Meaning of Video Games
I don’t think there’s any doubt regarding the importance of games (video or otherwise) to our culture. Whether it’s Xbox, NFL Football, or beer pong there are few days that go by for most of us that do not involve playing, watching, or hearing about a game. As Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca (NST) point out, creating games seems to be “a fundamental human tendency” (p. 45). The bigger question in this week’s readings, however, is not how important are games, but rather, how do we construct meaning from games? This seems to me to be a pretty relevant question – if games are a fundamental human tendency there must be more behind them than just blowing things up, right?
NST begin hinting at possible meaning in their history of games. They provide Monopoly, that cardboard bit of capitalist awesomeness, as “a fascinating example of how games can reflect – as well as foster – cultural values” (p. 46). They’re right – in Monopoly there is no nice guy. There are no government bailouts. There is no money under free parking (talk about spreading the wealth). You buy property and you demand payment until your opponent is bankrupt, pleading for mercy, or bored after 8 hours. If there is a better reflection of American values, I’d like to see it. I’m going to guess that Cold War Russians didn’t play a lot of Monopoly. We learn our values by the examples we see in our parents and popular culture. And then we reenact those values as games. Most of us, if we played House as children, didn’t pretend to be the stay at home Dad.
I think it’s interesting that so many games seem to be the domain of young males. It’s not surprising, since many of today’s video games grew out of genres that emerged from science fiction and fantasy literature. NST point out that those books were intended for adolescent males, so it would only make sense that early games like Space War and Adventure would appeal to that same audience. And while we might claim now that our video games don’t really reflect those genres, NST, through there history of video games, make a pretty good case that they do. With some exceptions, we are faced with a landscape of war and fantasy. Even the sports games are presented as wargames in their advertising (Has anyone seen the ads for the new football game being endorsed by Lawrence Taylor?).
Liestol attempts to find some deeper in meaning in video games. She engages in the type of reflection that only critics (like me) would find useful. She states as her goal, not only locating meaning, but to determine if video games “can be ‘read’ as we have been accustomed to ‘reading texts’” (p. 327). She proceeds using an established model of description, analysis and interpretation. I found her description of her experience with Duke Nukem a bit condescending. She seemed to be describing the game as if she thought it was ridiculous (which I suppose in a sense it is). But the description is not the important part of her article. After playing the game, she seems surprised that there was little reflection occurring within the game. Liestol says “strangely, this lack of understanding and inability to interpret did not seem to prevent us from performing the basic actions necessary to win the game” (p. 339). Of course not – if the game wanted you to find meaning, it would give it to you. If it was required to interpret every metaphor presented in a game like Duke Nukem, no one would ever finish it, except for critics like Liestol. That being said, I think her analysis further illustrates my earlier point about games and their reflection of cultural values.
As Liestol points out, the story of the brave man slaying the dragon and saving the city has been told countless times in myths and legends – the very stories we invent in order to pass down our cultural values. Liestol focuses on the fear of the female in her interpretation of Duke Nukem, and rightfully so. The naked women were unavailable. The available women were aliens in disguise. And the whole point of the game was to destroy the head woman. Liestol describes the game as providing us with an outlet for angst – angst that “emanates from the secret cavity in the female body where the births occur” (pp. 341-342). Awkward genital descriptions aside, this is once again a common theme in narratives directed towards young men. An article that I really like called I Married Rambo (I forget the author) points out that war stories (like many video games, including Duke Nukem) are often a response to the emasculation of the American male. Once again, video games provide a direct reflection of our cultural values that the American male should be strong and in charge (the cowboy, the Frontier Hunter as Rushing and Frentz would call him).
Turkle, although her work is starting to show its age, took the idea of video games and meaning in a different direction. She argues that video games carry “a message about how people feel about computers in general” (p. 500). She describes video games as a window onto “a new kind of intimacy with machines” (p. 501). In an interesting statement that has been made by critics since, Turkle points out that we don’t think of ourselves as controlling a character, we are the character. This would become even more prevalent later in the evolution of video games when players were able to take a first person point of view. So what do video games mean? For Turkle, they mean that culture has moved on and is continuing to do so. Video games are “a more perfect expression” (p. 502) of our actions. She claims that with a video game we are able to “[inhabit] someone else’s mind. Conversation gives way to fusion” (p. 502).
For Turkle, video games mean that it is more difficult to separate our lives from the ones we live inside the screen. She describes Jarish as feeling more at home “inside” the computer than outside. He says that endig the video game makes him depressed: “You walk out of the arcade and it’s a different world. Nothing you can control” (p. 503). Perhaps unfortunately for many, such feelings have only intensified since Turkle wrote her book. While she has a tendency to overstate the role of computers, Turkle makes an astute observation: video games do not have meaning in the way that Liestol attempts to find it. Video games have meaning in their implication. She describes how players become one with the machines and how they enter an “altered state” (p. 509). For Turkle, games are “a place for manipulation and surrender” (p. 510), not for reflection and understanding. In the end, I think it’s Turkle’s search for meaning that is more important than Liestol’s.
Finally, Jenkins examines how players use games to create meaning. He states that “new meanings take shape around what we already know and what we already think” (p. 210). IN other words, we will gain meaning from a game based on our previously embedded cultural values. So, it is important to make sure that games are appealing to the values we want to emphasize. Before doing so, we must change the way that we view video games. We should not focus on “stimulus/response”, but rather on “conscious reflection” (p. 211). Jenkins believes that games “are most powerful when they reinforce our existing beliefs” (p. 213). If this is so, then the effective use of games relies on conscious reflection of our existing beliefs. Such conscious reflection should result in better game design.
Jenkins states that “most contemporary games do little to encourage players to reflect upon and converse about the nature of violence”, and they also “represent powerful tools for learning” (p. 215). The conscious reflection mentioned above would allow us to design games that are both effective teaching tools (they teach “appropriate” values of nonviolence) and engaging (by reinforcing our already held values). Jenkins goes on to describe a game students created to learn about Lain American history. Once again, however, he falls victim to his own love for video games. He wants them to be great educational tools and they can be great educational tools, so he assumes that conscious reflection upon values and design will lead to conscious reflection by players and video games will be awesome. The fact is, however, that video games don’t do that. Even ones that are consciously created to teach actually teach very little. All that “educational” video games teach kids is how to be good at the educational video game.
For a research project as a Master’s student, I observed an educational game design course. And what the instructors and students struggled with most was how to make a game both educational and entertaining that taught more than just how to master the game. In the end, they couldn’t come up with anything they felt effectively acted as both an entertaining and educational game. This world in which players will reflect and want to learn more simply doesn’t exist. Like in his chapter on Pop Cosmopolitanism, Jenkins is giving victims of the Culture Industry too much credit. As I mentioned above, I think Turkle’s search for meaning is much more relevant and useful for practical application than Liestol’s and Jenkins’s. Liestol provides interesting criticism and analysis and Jenkins gives us something to wish for, but in the end the meanings of video games themselves are not as important as the meaning of video games.