Take a Byte IV

Tristan talks about the things you shouldn't talk about on a kid-friendly website, and tries to relate it to gaming.

Sex! S/M! Porn!

And now that I have your attention...

One of my recent philosophy papers at University focuses on sexuality in the modern world. We covered everything from heterosexuality to pornography and sadomasochism. Needless to say, it was quite an interesting paper. Our final topic focused on cybersex, and we got into an interesting discussion about the people who found it really enjoyable, versus those who considered it to be weird, or a waste of time. Our lecturer then moved on to talk about online worlds that people inhabit, showing screenshots of games like Everquest. At that point, he asked the class if anyone actually played any of these games. Now, throughout the course, all of us had been very careful not to give away any of our own personal experiences on the various subjects, lest one of us said something like, 'well, when I participate in a bit of bondage'. So naturally, dead silence ensued - until I raised my hand and said, 'I've recently gotten into one of these games'.

Dead silence continued. Suddenly, I felt as if I had just admitted to having a taste for leather and whips. The unspoken feeling of the lecture had been, 'why would anyone waste their time in a world that isn't real', and I suddenly felt like I had to defend myself. And so I started wondering about mainstream attitudes towards games and gamers, specifically PC gamers and online worlds.

Sony and Microsoft (and Nintendo?) are working very hard to bring consoles to the mainstream, and to an extent they are succeeding - just look at Microsoft's decision to unveil the 360 on MTV. We are seeing more famous people - who are looked up to by a large portion of young people wondering what to spend their money on - playing videogames. Elijah Wood hosted the 360 event; Christian Bale loves Halo. Hell, look at The Gamesman - they probably paid quite a lot of money to have Tana Umaga smile at you when you go to their website. All of this seems to be having an effect - console sales are going up, and I see many 'casual' people nowadays with a PS2 or Xbox. Increasingly, console gaming is being seen as a more 'acceptable' past time or hobby. However, there are still numerous sensationalist media reports that inevitably exaggerate the fact that most young, lonely, male killers have played videogames at some point in their life.

Interestingly, this sensationalist attitude is very similar to the one that plagued the novel for the first couple of hundred years of its life. These fictional books were seen as potentially dangerous time-wasters - it was feared that young people would lose themselves in this world that didn?t really exist, choosing to spend time with made-up characters instead of real people. It was feared that novels might encourage people to act in strange ways, mimicking events in the stories and causing general mayhem.

Now read the above paragraph again - but this time, substitute the word 'novel' for 'online games'. As if by magic, you will be left with today's mainstream view of games such as Everquest and World of Warcraft. In practically every society, social interaction is always praised above solitary pursuits. Look at sports - we revere our rugby and cricket players to an extraordinary degree. Taking a leaf from many philosophy books, it seems as if 'public' activities are also placed above 'private' ones. Why? Because that way, other people can see what you are doing and easily judge and appraise you. Whereas with private activities - such as reading a novel or playing a game - it becomes harder to tell exactly what the person is doing. Who knows what is going through their head? Are they learning things that are socially unacceptable? In the privacy of their own home, people could be getting up to anything.

Not surprisingly, this was one of the main issues discussed in my philosophy course, and it is closely related to the idea of virtual worlds. Online, people can assume any identity, pretending to be an elf or a dwarf alongside thousands of other people. As I mentioned earlier, the general attitude in my class was, 'why spend your time online when you could be doing things in the real world?' It would seem that online worlds are typically thought of as a waste of time, much as the novel was a couple of centuries ago.

The point I'm trying to make is that, while console gaming gets more mainstream, many of the most popular aspects of PC gaming remains relatively stigmatised. Why is this? Are PC gamers just more 'hardcore' than console gamers? Even if this is the case, does the average PC gamer really deserve to be labelled as a social delinquent simply because he or she spends some time in a virtual world? While there are undoubtedly cases of socially awkward people who value online worlds over the real one, I doubt these people make up the majority of games like World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, it seems that in many people's minds, inhabiting online worlds automatically means you are a social delinquent.

So what can be done about this? Developers seem to be doing their bit already - they are desperately trying to come up with online games that will appeal to a greater mainstream audience. Who knows, maybe a MMOG will one day have the same sort of widespread success as The Sims - and then perhaps gaming will start to be viewed as just another alternative to reading a novel.