Video Games – Virtual Worlds Not So Far From Our Own

By Miriam Rabkin
Contributor to Tolerance.ca®

During my winter holidays this past December, I visited friends who had just received the Nintendo Wii for Christmas. At first I made fun of them – grown adults playing games after all! But after a few days of watching them play, I was intrigued and had to try this out to see what the big deal was about. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed myself. That winter morning, as I simulated playing tennis and boxing, I realized that I was quite good at it. Moreover, it was great exercise, and even an interactive activity, since I was playing against my friend. This was quite a revelation for me - as an adult female who just doesn’t “do” video games.
Nintendo and Sega were a remote part of my childhood. I did not have video games at my house, which meant I could only play when visiting friends. By the time I graduated high school, these games no longer interested me and I did not think about them at all until just two months ago when I discovered the Nintendo Wii. I had certainly been aware that the gaming industry has grown exponentially in the past decade, but in my viewpoint, video games were mostly for kids, and sometimes grown men.

The stereotypes that video games were for boys weren’t just my own. They are definitely perceived as a “guy’s game,” even though both the female and adult market have expanded tremendously in recent years. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 38% of gamers today are female. And contrary to popular opinion, the average age of a gamer is 33. Even more astoundingly, the average age of someone purchasing video games is 38. When I mentioned this to a friend, she asked me: “if parents tend to limit the time their children play video games, who limits the time for the parents?”

Games can use up a large amount of time. According to the Smith & Jones Wild Horses Center, for people addicted to gaming in Amsterdam, 20% of gamers are liable to develop a dependency. One of the clinic’s clients, interviewed for the BBC, said that he would play for up to 17 hours a day. In 2005, a 28-year-old South Korean man died after playing almost without pause for 50 hours in a row.

Numerous websites deal with computer addiction. Part of the treatment is to find activities that can fill the void left by not playing games. In China, where the gaming industry is one of the world’s strongest, the government has imposed a time limit on how many hours one can play so called ‘massive multiplayer online role-playing games’ (MMORPG).

Bernd, a 26-year-old Austrian currently living in Montreal, started playing when he was nine. He tries to avoid MMORPGs. “They are like having a second job more than playing a game, and they are very habit forming.” Yet Bernd says that he is not convinced that addiction is a psychological phenomenon in the case of video games. “Computer games are habit-forming, sure, but in the same way that chocolate, or weed, or watching foreign movies is - people can get to "need" them in a way that defines identity or helps them bear their day; and habits are just the result of a learning process. Of course, addictive substances are also habit-forming, but that's quite separate from the addiction part of the equation,” he says.

Video games are a very diverse world, encompassing basic games with rudimentary graphics and simple actions, as well as others that are quite complex, with difficult rules or adult themes, including violence and pornography. They allow fantasies to unfold in the virtual world in ways that would be largely restricted or would have serious consequences in the real world.

The gap between the sometimes extremely complex, compelling, and even realistic virtual universe and real life creates interesting dynamics. For example, MMORPGs allow your avatar to be and do things that you would not consider in real life, and fans argue that there is a considerable difference between doing certain actions to an avatar than to a real live human being. The person behind the controller can disappear, which can be positive or negative. Several male gamers have noted that men who play with female avatars end up receiving special attention and gifts from other gamers, presumably male players. People with physical disabilities are able to be fully functional in this virtual world and compete on an equal basis with athletes. Ordinary people can also build islands, own property and travel in time. It is easy to see the attraction of these fantastical universes, and even more simple games can be a great escape from the tedium of every day life.

Linda, a 30-year-old working in the Information Technology industry, explains to me that when she was bored at work, she used to play mahjong online for hours. She also used to play video games at arcades. “I used to like the shooting games, which gave me a total adrenaline rush, so I try not to do that very much and haven't played in several years.” It bothered Linda that she felt a rush even from the simulation of violence, and she feels that video games can desensitize people to violence. “Even though it's just a game, I don't think any form of violence has a positive effect”, she says.

Gender Roles Persist

Another concern Linda has with the gaming industry is the gender divide. Though increasingly more women play video games, female avatars are almost always portrayed as highly sexualized females. According to Tara, a 28-year-old Montrealer and a friend of mine, “conventional male fantasies are definitely prominent in games, with impossibly proportioned women dressed in tight, busty outfits.” And while women are given more prominent fighter roles, unlike in the early 90s, when they were normally the ‘princesses that needed to be saved’, their figures haven’t changed. More than one female blogger has complained that she feels alienated by this. In one game, the reward awaiting the gamer after successfully reaching the last level was to watch the female avatar strip off her clothes and reveal a highly provocative, scantily clad figure. This certainly decreased many female gamers’ joy in winning. Though they wish this trend would end, so far the results, although they exist, have been slim. Even in games that specifically target women, the female avatars’ appearance is not all that different.

From outside the gaming community, criticism for gaming can be much more harsh. I discovered this after I posted a question online asking the general public for their opinions. Raphael, a 21-year-old student at the École des hautes études commerciales in Montréal, thinks that video games are an outlet for people who are bored with their own lives. Linda, who works in the Information Technology industry adds that “even though there is interaction in videogames, such as hand/eye coordination, it's a passive form of entertainment and doesn't encourage thinking - I mean intelligent thinking. People could be spending their time so much more effectively, besides the fact that it perpetuates a society of couch potatoes.”

Gueula, a 23-year-old student at the Université de Montréal who answered my Internet query, feels that people should be picking up books instead. “There is so much out there! People who play video games are just trying to block themselves from their lives.”

Bernd takes a more historic perspective and views gaming in a different light: “Games have been around for ages, they are as old as mankind. Now we have computers and so the types of games have evolved.” Chess, when seriously played, can be extremely consuming as a pastime, but it certainly enjoys respect.

Moreover, recent studies have shown that video games can play an altogether positive role in society. The Nintendo Wii, for example, can help treat people who’ve suffered physical injuries regain movement and dexterity. It is already used, with considerable success, in several hospital physiotherapy units in Canada, for example at the The Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton, as well as across the United Kingdom and the United States. Video games can also play a big role in education – from elementary schools to medical schools – where learning is facilitated through a variety of interactive means. The disconnection between the game and real life also offers the potential for people of different ages, abilities, and genders, to play together on a more even playing field, bridging distance between continents and cultures.

The negative and positive effects on society and individuals are not so easy to weigh out. As with every media, caution and judgment need to be applied. There is a reason for which video games are rated, some recommending parental guidance for example, while others are exclusively for those aged eighteen and over.

Perhaps video games have, indeed, replaced the traditional board game, even though many parents still play the electronic version with their children. And maybe, though opinions vary, violence, blood and gore in video games are making people today, and especially youth, less sensitive to these sights. Moreover, it does seem that female/male stereotypes continue to be perpetuated. It is therefore easy to go on a rant and start decrying all these aspects that video games certainly bring to the fore. And yet, maybe most importantly, we should simply acknowledge that they are here to stay: they have a very real and ever growing presence in the entertainment economy, in education, in military strategy, in medicine. So instead of shrugging them off, as I once did, let’s keep an eye on this trend, to make sure that they are only used, and not abused.

^* Anshe Chung, an avatar in the virtually real world of Second Life.

Source : http://acs.anshechung.com/gallery.php

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