Dead Pixels has 41 chronicles

1. The Great Gaming Culture War: Outcasts
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Oct 16 2009

   Dead Pixels
   10/12/2009
   By Ryan M. Eft
   
   It’s time to admit we kind of liked it. Sure, when misinformed people claimed our hobby would be the end of not only us, but society, it got a tad annoying…at least, when we bothered to give it any thought. But pretty much every medium ever conceived had done it’s time as the imminent end of society as we knew it, and everyone was still here. This, too, would pass, and in the meantime, we kind of liked being outcasts.
   
   We were in good historical company, too. Readers of The Lord of the Rings were different from those around them in their affection for J.R.R. Tolkien’s world, prior to the release of the films.
   
   The majority of now-famous artists, from Voltaire to Rembrandt, did their time outside the circles of accepted society (particularly in their own minds).
   
   And our own precursors, those purveyors of Dungeons and Dragons, set the tone by being a society unto themselves.
   
   As a history-obsessed writer, no one better understands that there is a tapestry that defines us. We speak in terms of generations, but what we really are is a web.
   
   Everything from Yukon dance hall girls to Janet Leigh getting knifed in the shower forms our pop culture web. And while images such as a plump plumber shooting fireballs are part of the larger cultural background, for most people they occupy the same place as the slinky or Legos; a childhood dalliance to be put away for business suits.
   
   Looking back, the idea that gaming ever gained mainstream acceptance is nearly laughable. None of us ever really thought it would. Almost as few of us really wanted it to. How, after all, could Suzie Soccermom be expected to understand the emotional intricacy of a Final Fantasy game? Or appreciate the special allure of a rainy day, a group of friends, and an arcade full of technological wonders such as Street Fighter II?
   
   So for a while there, we were all good. While most everyone had moved past the Atari 2600/NES driven game craze of the seventies and eighties, we had stuck with it, and earned ourselves a unique place in society (even if we were only partially aware of it).
   
   Mainstream pop culture didn’t give a rat’s ass about us or our Dooms and Marios, and we couldn’t have cared less what they thought.
   
   In the past ten years or so, a lot of thought has been given to gaming’s place in the overall artistic, technological and cultural landscape. A lot of people predicted the Wii would be it, the thing that broke the walls down.
   
   We now know that was far from the truth; while the Wii and DS have definitely been gateway drugs for a small number of people, the majority sits at the gates and refuses to come further inside. The principle achievement of Nintendo’s machine has been to make money for Nintendo; it may even have succeeded in alienating experienced gamers further, but that’s a discussion for another time.
   
   At any rate, it sometimes seems that in the furor over where we’re going, we sometimes fail to cast the right kind of eyes back towards where we came from. I’m not referring to nostalgia; the past was certainly not better than the present where games are concerned.
   
   I’m more referring to the past of gaming and where it fits in relation to that generation and our cultural status. If everything has its place in the tapestry, then gaming’s place seems to be in constant flux; we, and our games, have been a phenomenon, a pariah, art, a staging ground for battles over decency, and entertainment.
   
   We’re going to look back someday and try to determine what piece of the puzzle we are; I say, there’s no time like the present.
   
   For that matter, where does gaming fit into the overall cultural landscape, period? Plenty of people prefer to pretend it doesn’t. They’re fooling themselves. Video games, simply in the way we know them, have been around since the early seventies. But the idea was first conceived of by a Thomas J. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1947. The first patent for a video game was filed with less than half of the twentieth century done with.
   
   Skeptics think games are a flash in the pan. The fact is they probably are not. The form they will take and the importance they will or will not have is still very much up for debate. But they will likely hang around.
   
   That history makes them an indelible part of the modern world’s cultural landscape. While I’m not opposed to violent games (far from it), it is a damn shame that the majority of sales right now go to games that really are, well, thoughtless. That’s not the place games occupy in the tapestry, but an innocent bystander can’t help but get that impression.
   
   I’m only one voice. But from my perspective, games offer a direct window to a different world. I love my vast library of books, and the power to transport that they will always have. And a good film will never go unappreciated with me. But games do more than show and tell; they let you live something.
   
   That’s where games are in my personal tapestry. They stopped being just an escape for me long ago, and become a road of thought in their own right. I wonder where they will stand in twenty years, but I also wonder where they stood, have stood, for the past decades. Because the gaming culture doesn’t seem to have quite puzzled it out yet, and the larger culture certainly does not know.
   
   For the time being, then, lacking the gift of illumination that the passage of time brings, I guess we’ll have to focus on where we fit in. We’ve been a lot of things, but in the end I kind of think we’re still outcasts. We still belong to a world that only a few outsiders will ever get.
   
   It’s possible that the more outsiders accept our world, the more of what made it ours to begin with will be torn away, and a new square added to the tapestry to replace it. It may become a remembered place that exists only with us.
   
   And, hell, maybe that’s the way it should be.

   
   

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