Why videogames are absolutely amazing

Buckle up, this is going to a long read. Get a drink, light a cigarette, walk the dog before you sit down to read it, just make sure you're generally up for it.

You all know my sentiments towards video games. Hell, if I didn't like them, this blog wouldn't exist. However, sadly, in this day and age, there's people who still consider video games a waste of time, a childish hobby for people without conversation skills, with no artistic merit, a nerd hobby for social shut ins. It's to people like that this post is primarily aimed at. The rest of you might enjoy it, but it won't tell you anything you don't already know. It might put it in terms you might not have possibly used before. Feel free to use this post to explain your love of video games to any non-gamer giving you grief. As for you, non-gamers...I'm about to blow your mind. Let's break it down.

Much of the bias towards gaming stems from false assumptions, preconceptions and, in many ways, bullying. Yes, bullying. It wasn't so long ago that teenagers openly admitting to liking video games would get ridiculed by the cool kids, the popular kids, the jocks. Why? Because of the teenager mentality, actually. That DNA malfunction encoded in most human beings that urges everyone, upon reaching a certain age, to vehemently deny everything they used to have fun doing and, moreover, to mock it. People who have fond memories of playing Nintendo or Sega or even arcade games while growing up will, in their attempt to shed their past identity and act like "grown ups", associate video gaming with, pretty much, toys. A whole lot of people never grow out of the mentality, and here is where false preconceptions and assumptions come in. Suffice to say, before video games became the target of that mentality, it was books, no matter how much we want to pretend that isn't so.

You are, basically, perpetuating high school bullying that occurred years ago, all because you don't want to face the possibility your viewpoint is wrong, that maybe you don't have all the facts. And believe me, you don't have all the facts. Video games have come a long, long way since the days of yonder.

You see, a lot of people consider video games as a product aimed towards kids, but that isn't so. Far from the truth. This is why bad parents blame video games for their domestic dysfunction, as they used to blame the TV, comic books, rock music, and pretty much everything that was different to what they grew up with. Hold that thought for a second while we get one very important thing out of the way: video games are not, repeat, not aimed at kids. Video games are much like any other visual/mental hobby out there. You're going to buy Spongebob Squarepants: The Novel to your 6-year old, not Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. So why is it the industry's fault and not your own when you buy that 6-year old Modern Warfare instead of, say, Peggle? It's not. The blame for whatever dysfunction may occur lies solely and squarely on your shoulders. You can't blame an entire industry if you're not willing/able to take two minutes to make the distinction. But admitting your preconceptions might be wrong is hard, right? Better to blame someone else, better to bully everyone to fit our preconceptions by whining. Just because. 

To put it bluntly: if you buy your kids whatever they ask for, yet won't even look at the PEGI label that says which ages the game is aimed at or whether or not it contains violence, language, nudity et al, yet still blame video games as a whole for being violent, then you are a shitty parent. It's harsh, but it's the truth. You are a crappy parent, and, to add injury to insult, your kids are going to be raised by video games more than they will be raised by you.

That's not to say they'll become homicidal maniacs that bludgeon people to death with original x-box controllers, no. But they will learn their morality and ethics from games and other gamers. They will also learn puzzle/problem solving, lateral thinking, multi-tasking, improve their hand-eye coordination and their reaction times, help them learn how to keep their composure under stress, resource management, tactics, experimentation, that violence isn't always the answer, risk control and, in some cases, history, science, culture. Some games will make them less racially biased, less sexist, more accepting of difference. Some will teach them the difference between good and evil and some of that grey area in between, when does the goal justify the means and when the means are too much. Online games can teach them the value of team work, cooperation, socializing, while others will allow them to compete, much like sports but without so much of a physical requirement. Much like books, every game is different and may or may not a different message. Whether or not a person is ready to understand that message is another story entirely. 

But games are a relatively new field, and most people do not know what it is or care to know, thinking it's more toy than entertainment. Let's attempt to rectify that. 

The very first games were created in oscilloscopes, and rapidly spawned a whole new area of possibilities. What is a book? What's a comic book? What is a film? They're stories, viewed and judged on artistic presentation, depth of story, plot, characters. What is a puzzle game, a board game, a card game? They're activities that are meant to push your brain forward into thinking ahead, trying to win while abiding by the game's rules, employing strategy, resource management, quick reactions sometimes and observation. Video games are both those things combined. The reason early games were simpler and, perhaps, more accessible to younger ages, was because of the technological limitations of their time. Imagine writing a book while we could barely communicate with grunts, imagine composing a symphony right after we invented the drum, imagine watching a stop-motion film a minute after the first photographic camera was made.

As technology progressed, it allowed for more complex games: more detailed environments, more fleshed-out characters, the use of cut-scenes and soundtracks, voice-overs, interactivity, games being more than moving a platform horizontally to bounce a ball off some bricks. Other mediums went through a comparable evolutionary process, so why are video games getting picked on? The simple answer? It happened fast. They haven't been around so long, and for them to evolve so much so fast, there's understandable to be people who couldn't, wouldn't keep up with it. Those early games weren't that far back, in the grand scheme of things, and since they were rather simple affairs, they defined the industry in at least two generations' collective minds. Those of us too young to care about branding things back then, we were the lucky ones.

We saw the whole evolution of gaming in our times. We saw technology allowing designers to create the games they had hoped to have created a few years back, we saw innovations, the birth of franchises, the whole field of games becoming a multi-million dollar industry. We saw video games become what films were to other people; a definite part of our lives. Like film, or books, there's genres, different styles, whole schools of designing (e.g. JRPGs, meaning Japanese role-playing games), creators and companies we revere, others we hate, blockbusters and loving independent projects, games that are made by people clearly after money and games made with solely the intention of pleasing the gamers as much as they can. We have our underdogs and our favorites, our arrogant assholes and our executives, people and games we love to hate and ones we hate to love, large profile events, conventions, publications. How are we any different from the film industry, apart from the fact you won't get to know us?

Sure, there's people who escape into video games never to come out. But how are they different from people who did that with books or films or music? Video games, much like every other hobby, is one that should be enjoyed with restraint, but an obsession with them is not their fault. Rather, a symptom of an underlying issue. You do not blame a headache for your ills when that headache is just a symptom of brain damage, do you? It is the exact same with the all-present boogeyman, that video games cause violent tendencies. I'm here to tell you: no, on mentally healthy people, they do not. No more so than society, films, tv, rap music, metal music, books by Chuck Palahniuk and others. A person having violent tendencies with video games will have had them without them,and, like I said, the fault lies with deeper issues. But, of course, it's easier to blame video games for all our faults as parents, relatives, friends, human beings. Why should we care to know what they're even about?

Short answer? Because the future generations will, and we'll look like bloody fools. It's a shame to miss out on a cultural phenomenon, a technological and entertainment evolution while it's still happening.

And believe me, you're missing out on so much. Imagine living a book, being inside a film, playing the most fiendish but fun puzzle, imagine being immersed in a story. Imagine being to, on command, be someone else, the hero or a villain of an epic story. Imagine being able to meet total strangers and develop friendships with them.

Just imagine giving video games a chance. They might surprise you.