A couple of weekends ago as Management and I slowly shuffled through a Target we passed by the videogames section only to be brought up short. For months I had been breezing by this section with the hope of spotting a Wii and on this day sat three in the display case. Three available for purchase. We stopped and stared.
“Just buy it!,” exclaimed Management with an edge of irritation in her voice, “For months you have bemoaned the lack of stock, extolled the virtues of its games, and basically acted like a whiny twelve-year old. So just buy the damn thing!”
Shifting from foot to foot I hesitated. I stepped forward only to rock back on my heel. Why did I want this again? When was the last time I actually played the consoles we already own? Making a quick calculation, scrunching my face up at Management I attempt to come up with the last time I fired up a game: fourteen months. Gaming has not happened in any shape or form in over a year. We have a Gamecube gathering dust, an Xbox which has been unplugged since before Gabriella was born, and a GBA which goes everywhere with me yet is never turned on and used.
So I stood there with my wife slowly rocking the baby in the carriage. I thought back on why I jumped into gaming in my late twenties and how it ended so abruptly. It was an escape when I needed it the most and like most escapist pursuits evaporates when the impetus moves on. Gaming kept my sanity during grad school but shortly after finishing I found myself playing less and for shorter periods of time. The first usurper was Linux when I decided to go full-time with Ubuntu 4.10, then it was the house, followed by the dog, the baby, then photography, and work. Life pressed in and squeezed things out leaving only the essentials, the people and things I love the most: family, reading, Linux, and learning.
The cliche is true: life presents choices but at times it forces the choice. My choice of Vi over Emacs is just that, a forced choice. Having been a longtime Nano user–its learning curve is like steep downward slope–I was never motivated to learn anything else as I could always pull it into something like Gedit or Bluefish to do something crazy like search and replace. My new job eschews a windowed environment and I found Nano’s quaint limitations to be powerful frustrations. My decision of Vi over Emacs was simple: crontab -e launches Vi. The decision was handed to me.
Like passing over Emacs not gaming doesn’t leave me wondering what I am missing. Standing in Gamestop with my brother-in-law yesterday while he bought a copy of Gears of War I pursued the collection of DS games. There were many that seemed fascinating and certianly looked fun but I found myself questioning when I would play them and how the cost of a DS and a handful of games would put a dent in my lens budget I walked back to wait in line with him.
When we got back to his house he hustled to the livingroom to play the game while I sat outside on his deck in the cooling evening. With my daughter on my knee I talked with my in-laws and the kid who lives next door about first jobs, first loves, and simple pleasures. My wife leaned over and asked I would rather go inside and play a few levels. No, I replied, I’m happy right here and now.
Yeah, I haven’t turned on my ps2 in a while either…just other more interesting things going on. Maybe when G. is old enough to want to play, you’ll be wanting that Wii. And btw, I use vi simply because that was what I was originally taught by my dad when he loaned me a shell account on a university computer years ago.
Then I’m going to go ahead and say what I’ve always thought about gaming, but kept to myself out of respect for your abilities and contributions.
Family, work, creativity, vs. recreational consumerism. Embracing responsibility vs. escapism. Maybe this change can be described more simply as continuing the transition into adulthood.
No criticism meant–it’s a long process for most, myself included, and our culture today seems to discourage it.
I’m in a different place than you are, I guess. My kids are older so that makes a difference. Our gaming has increased dramatically over the past couple of years. It’s become a family hobby and something we all enjoy. Even Hazel at age 3 “plays.” Or at least she holds a controller and presses the buttons. Family and gaming don’t have to be mutually exclusive. There is a significant social component to it that is ideal for family bonding. But as Mike mentioned, all that can come later when Gabby’s a little bit older.
Dale, I hope you’re not suggesting that people who play video games are necessarily shirking their families and responsibilities. Everyone needs some down time. Whether you spend it reading books, watching tv/movies, exercising, playing games, or whatever, it’s all good. You can’t be productive 24/7 !
You guys should read Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson and Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning by Marc Prensky for some positive looks at gaming and their role in contemporary culture.
No, Scott, that wasn’t what I was suggesting. It’s true that everyone needs to have some fun, and if games are a family activity, instead some kind of solipsism, that puts them in a different light. And I was thinking a little while ago that adults play chess and bridge, and so it’s not that all games are inherently immature. I sort of associate electronic games with that adolescent attitude of “I’m not ready for adult life, even though I want to act like I am, and this will be my hole in which to hide from it a little bit longer.” Maybe that’s just an unfounded prejudice. It wouldn’t be the first one I’ve had.
I mainly play games online for the social aspect, something that is missing at home. I read for escapism, but I have to be *very* careful about that… don’t want to get adicted to books. Would be easy for me.
(I live in the middle of no-where public transport wise, and I’m only now learning to drive.)
Hopefully, I’ll cut back my gaming when I get some friends a bit closer to home. Till then, I’ll keep on playing R6V etc.
I actually think that you are both onto something with regards to the notion of activities that are solitary vs. collaborative. Many videogames for certain are solitary pursuits as are many other non-electronic forms of escapism such as reading (when is the last time you sat with a group taking turns reading out loud?) or to borrow your cards analogy, Solitare. What it boils down too is context and frequency. As social creatures we still need to retreat from the pack once and a while to gain a little perspective, within and without, and those individual pursuits allow us to do that. But the thing of it is that videogames are a flexible medium for games in that they can occupy or bridge the solitary with the community as Scott points out.
For myself, I jumped deeply into videogaming during grad school because: it was convenient, ie I didn’t have to travel; it was relatively cheap, high initial buy in but the per hour cost of entertainment outshines movies and is only potentially rivaled by books and music; it could be social, my wife, friends, and family could easily jump in on a round of Donkey Konga or throw it down in Dead or Alive. But, Dale, you are spot on in your assessment that there is a push to delay “adulthood” and that manifests itself in many of the pursuits and interests that my generation is involved with. Scott is right in saying that these forms of entertainment are valid but when dropped in the context of adults collecting Transformers and Hello Kitty paraphernalia things appear a little skewed. On my reading list for the past year or so has been Rejuvenile which looks at how and possibly why adults continue to cling to vestiges of their childhood with something beyond a strong sense of nostalgia. The dust jacket rgues that it is an effort to maintain that sense of child-like wonder but that only scratches the surface for myself.
As a child of the 80’s I find myself imbued with a deep distrust of “adults” and “the establishment”–two incredibly loaded words that conjur up the most cliche of the antiwar movement of the 60’s and 70’s with a surface account of Lord of the Flies. That decade saw the opening of The War On Drugs, PLT scams, realty investment scams, The Evil Empire, the compassion of the conservative in “ketchup is a vegetable” and “the homeless want to be homeless”, and endless mergers and aquisitions. At the opening of the 90’s I saw my father cut loose from a job he performed with more energy and heart than he might have invested in my family–something I no longer begrudge him as I better understand the realities of modern life, marriage, and parenting–and while he was one of the lucky few to recieve a severance package friends who toiled alongside him for 29 years were lucky to get a box with which to pack up their belognings as security showed them the door. This was and is the domain of adults: Fear, Aggression, Egotism, War, Debt, Poverty. Growing up in this morass the last thing I ever wanted to do was become one of them and today Bread and Circuses are about all one can do without going insane.
Before I let this comment meander further, the real problem is not with what medium we entertain ourselves but in what context and for what purpose. One can learn as well as be social with videogames just as one can sink themselves into anti-intellectual and solitary mush between the pages of a paperback.
“…don’t want to get addicted to books. Would be easy for me.”
I’m right there with you Kirrus. Honestly, I could just sit around all day and read. History, social theory, sci-fi, fantasy, poetry, cookbooks, memoirs it doesn’t matter. Nothing beats that feeling of sinking into another life. Like pulp crack.