"Video games and computer holding power" by Sherry Turkle
Turkle presents a world of computer games that I have never been an authentic part of. It is one thing to keep an Atari around, next to the PS2, for the sake of heritage. It is quite another to play Pac Man in an arcade, and really mean it. Turkle compares video games to many other pass times: sports, transcendental meditation, playing house, and Dungeons & Dragons, to name a few. In fact, not all of these comparisons are her own. Some of them are advanced by the gamers that she has studied and interviewed. For a reason that escapes me, Turkle discusses only people who have problems that they attempt to solve with computer (or arcade) games. By showing how computer games empower people who feel powerless (the short for his age twelve year old), or make scattered people feel focussed (the man who replaced Transcendental Meditation with video games), Turkle shows gaming as something potentially useful in society. However, in showing this perspective, she also makes it much easier (and she acknowledges this herself) to view computer games as sinister figures that can take over lives. When something as perfect and consistent as a video game exists, the argument goes, why should gamers bother with real life?
The gamers Turkle interviewed valued consistency in the gaming experience. They often played the same games over and over, using the consistency and unchangingness of the games to measure their own improvement or state of mind. Contemporary video games do not reflect this. They have become more sophisticated, have developed the capacity to learn and change, and are influenced by the player(s). While they may still offer the intense concentration that Turkle's subjects valued, there is no longer perfect consistency. It seems that the state of mind of serious gamers has changed along with the games themselves. A flexible game, I would argue, is more fun than something that stays constantly the same. For example, beating Bubble Bobble is different from beating Katamari Damacy. Once Bubble Bobble is over, the player can go back and start over, but the challenge will be exactly the same. The moves can be learned more or less by rote, or at least employing only a small variation of strategy. A contemporary video game, such as Katamari Damacy, is constantly changing. It is extremely difficult, in one play-through of Katamari Damacy, to explore every section of any given level. Further, the skills gained in playing are of more use to the player, in that they allow for more efficient rolling, better control, and a more nuanced understanding of level structure. Bubble Bobble has WYSIWYG levels. There are only so many places to go, and they are all evident. This comparison doesn't even take into account the games that don't follow a level structure. Simulation games allow extreme, verging on limitless variation. In sim games, there is no rote. Strategy can be applied, but in newer games of the genre, strategy does not apply for long, since the game is constantly learning.
Turkle interviews a twelve year old boy named Jarrish, who gains a sense of control from video games, like all of the other gamers she discusses. Jarrish professes an undying love of video games. He says that he will never give them up. Turkle (just before she goes on to discuss adult gamers) states that she does not think that Jarrish will be nearly so passionate about gaming when he is thirty. If Jarrish was twelve years old in 1984, he would have finally hit thirty in 2002. 2002 was a very good year for video games. It saw the release of two titles in the Tony Hawk franchise, two Grand Theft Auto titles, a new Super Mario, new Warcraft, Resident Evil and Zelda games, and it was also the year that The Sims became the best selling video game of all time, surpassing 6.3 million copies sold (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_in_video_gaming). Unless Jarrish completely abandoned geekdom, I'm willing to bet that he found more than a few games worth playing at the age of thirty.