Genius Around

It is not absurd to try diagnosing a civilization in terms of the games that are especially popular there. In fact if games are cultural factors and images, it follows that to a certain degree a civilization and its content may be characterized by its games.

(Caillois & Barash, 2001. p.83)

A quite interesting quote, like Huizinga Caillois also tries to link culture and play. It was interesting to read the illustrations given on the example of shamanism which can be seen as a form of simulation and vertigo (which is a form of play where the loss of control and the search for “dizziness” are the main goal) .  The use of masks is religious celebrations as well as certain rituals is indicative to Caillois that the shaman becomes someone or something else; a spirit.
(compare Callois & Barash, 2001, p. 87).

I have already written about similar topics but instead of rewriting what has been written I would like to accept the premise given by Caillois and ask the following question: What does Video Gaming tell about our society?

If you think that the hypothesis is not a valid claim then think about the status of movies or sports in our society (at least here in Europe). People watch football as a source of entertainment and the money that is floating around in the sports and entertainment industry has reached far into the millions (source ; source). Well if you have heard about Modern Warfare or World of Warcraft you probably also know that these franchises bring in lots of cash for the industry. Modern Warfare 3 alone has reached 6.5 million units sold  and IGN speculates that it might even be around 20 million; which means that a large amount of people are playing the game. Blizzard has announced in January 2011 that “World of Warcraft’s subscriber population had grown to more than 12 million players globally”, which also indicates that the game is broadly popular. The video gaming industry is not niche anymore, it has become a million dollar industry, just like sports and movies. Games like Starcraft or League of Legends are even played on competitive level and people watch them just as they would sit down and watch a football match on TV.

As I cannot focus on every game I would like to make a more general overview focusing on World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare. I am aware that other games are very popular as well and that by no means these are really representative. However I think using these two as examples you guys can surely extend to other games and find differences or similarities.

Video gaming can be individual and I can only speak for myself when I remember the days and nights I spend playing alone in our living room trying to beat that boss or get to that next level. I think that there is a change, games tend to become more social even by integrating local or online multiplayer components. Modern Warfare is played online against other players, Starcraft, League of Legends are competitive games that live from the online components and World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO). I think that the rise of social media like Facebook and Twitter and the parallel development of community based video games do say something about our culture. Communities of gamers form around games like Modern Warfare and they adapt and modify the game to their like as can be seen with Minecraft and the huge amount of Mods for Starcraft.

I think one important aspect that differentiates video games from sports such as football is that you can be whoever you want and play what you want. If I feel like playing a fighting game I can take up the controller and become a fighter and an hour later I can become a nightelf priest that supports my raid in World of Warcraft. In a sense I think that video games are our masks and the taking the role of someone else has moved from the real world to the digital space where we meet other people. The masks are not handcrafted and individual but the trend goes to more customization in video games as well so that each player can create his own avatar according to their liking. A study (Blinka, 2008) has shown the relationship between the players and their avatars, stating:

At the same time, it may mean that the player does not perceive the avatar as something “more” but simply as a game mechanism [...] The data obtained in our survey also show that it is younger players who tend to identify with (i.e. not to distinguish from) their avatars, while the younger the respondents were, the stronger the phenomenon. On the other hand, the “immersion” factor shows a deeper interconnection of the player and the avatar.

So even though the players perceive the avatar as something different from them the study suggests that there is a relationship between the two. At the very least the avatar allows the player to get in touch with other players and thus is one way of presenting themselves in the game; they are in that sense a mask.

I think there is a competitive aspect to most, if not all of these games. Sometimes it might be who gets the most kills or who kills the other player first and sometimes it might be who makes the most damage, who has the best gear or who is the most creative but I think there is also a cooperative part. It might be more present in some games then in others but a lot of games also have a “working together” part or some part that makes players work together in improving the game by creating a community; a shared interest.

Just as we share our experiences on Facebook, we get shared experiences with video games, they enable us to connect to people all around the world and allow for the creation of gaming communities.

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