How Far Gaming Has Come In The Media Culture

Gaming has become a large part of society nowadays, with everyone ranging from young boys to older girls seemingly interacting in gaming with each other. This “gaming” includes hardcore gamers who play multiplayer shooters, to casual gamers who play candy crush on Iphones on the way home. It also provides gamers with almost never ending content in the world as Raessens describes, computer games can easily be “modified, copied and distributed without the loss of quality” (2005, p. 374). Video games are now a form of participatory medial culture.

 

It used to be that gaming was only played by nerdy young boys and society looked down on video games as ‘uncool’ or ‘childish’. In a study by Juul Jesper (2012), he stated that video games have been reinvented sense the year 2000 and now acts as a casual revolution. These days around 45% of gamers are women, and according to the Entertainment Software RatingBoard the average gamer age is now 34 with 49% of gamers in the age range of 18-49. Video games have come a long way from being look down as ‘uncool’ and now contribute to one of the strongest points in entertainment.

The readings of Joost Raessens give an interesting insight on gaming and how it has and will continue to affect the media. He stated that the “young mass audience" (Raessens, 2005) will explore the notion of multimidality, virtuality, interactivity and connectivity through gaming. A recent example on how far gaming has effected are culture was success of the new game GTA V, which took  $1 billion income in 3 days, breaking the all time record for profit in all areas of media. This is one of many examples of how gaming has impacted our lives, and clearly will continue to affect the world around us.

 

Video games are usually seen as merely a form of entertainment, but in some cases they can also be utilised in teaching young people about everyday life skills that they will need in the future (Gee Paul 2003). In many news articles the teaching values of video games are overshadowed by the writer’s focus on the use of violence in games. However recent studies contradict the cliché ‘video games are bad for kids’. A study by Squire Kurt (2011) found that video games do not increase the level of violent behaviour in kids, and are a “vital key to teaching people participatory culture.”

Games can also be very important for the development of the human brain. For example, in your everyday life you will be faced with variety of problems which you must overcome. Likewise in computer games, you are faced with a variety of similar issues and are required to solve these problems in a specific time limit. Studies have shown that these video games actually help people deal better with problems in real life by remaining calm and behaving rationally when sudden issues arise (Diana Graf 2009). 

 

I consider myself a casual gamer, someone who plays video games once in a while (on my phone when on a bus or tram), and I think many video games are an art and a form of escapism. I use video games to escape from my problems and they provide me with “a window back into our world.” (McCloud 2005). While gaming can provide social interaction with other people and serve as a way to escape reality from time to time, it is important that it does not serve as a replacement for communication or addiction. While virtual reality can be fun it is important that it doesn’t make you break away from reality.

A video game that I think has impacted my life (and most of my friends) the most is Pokemon. The game (for those who have been living under a rock for the last 19 years) centres around a child who lives in a fictional world where you catch and train imaginary animals called ‘pokemon.’ The role playing game allows players to roam freely through the game with the goal to complete the Pokédex by collecting all of the available Pokémon species found in the fictional region where that game takes place, and to train a team of powerful pokemon to eventually become the strongest Trainer i.e. the Pokémon Master. Funny enough both goals are actually impossible as not every Pokemon is catchable, and it is nearly impossible to be the best trainer in the world. This was part of it’s appeal as it was a journey without end, an aspiration that could never be fully achieved.

 

When I was growing up Pokemon was the most popular video game, it spawned countless spinoffs in the form of TV shows, movies, trading cards, toys.etc. Pokemon was so popular it even connected children from different cultures. When I was in primary school my class went to Japan to experience a different culture. I thought it would be impossible for our class to connect to Japanese people as we were too different, however I couldn’t have been more wrong. While we did not have much in common we did have one thing, which is Pokemon. My class not only connected to other children through Pokemon but we also ended up becoming friends, some who I still connect with on Facebook to this day. Looking back at that experience, it highlighted the positive side of globalization and cross-cultural communication.

It is also worth noting the different range of media forms that have developed in this current media culture, and although I do not see myself as a hardcore gamer, I do think that I unconsciously follow the range of aspects of this current culture, where even though I am uninterested in video games at times, because of the social media I still unintentionally follow what video games are coming out. Thanks to the current era I interact, develop and express a portion of my ideas online, and due to globalisation and the internet, the power of media cultures will only grow stronger every day.

 

The virtual world of gaming went from being socially look down on to being the highest grossing means of entertainment. Although video games are now seen by many as a bad example for kids or just another use of entertainment, it also has overseen teaching values that help people in everyday life skills and can serve as way of communication from one culture to another. Every year the population of video game players seem to grow higher and in my opinion video games is the future of entertainment.

Reference List:

Link 1: http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/who-plays-video-games-more-girls-than-you-may-think-1200569882/

Link 2: http://www.esrb.org/about/video-game-industry-statistics.jsp

Link 3: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/9/23/technology/gta-v-sales-speed-past-1-billion-three-days

Link 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon

Image 1: https://dov5cor25da49.cloudfront.net/products/921/636x460design_01.jpg

Image 2: http://images.thesource.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/gta-v-details-revealed-rockstar-0.jpg

Image 3: http://gamerfitnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-Shot-2011-11-05-at-11.16.32-AM.png

Image 4: http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/33100000/Pikachu-Gangnam-Style-pokemon-33193931-1049-1038.jpg

Image 5: http://scienceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/video-games-reality.jpg

Raessens, J 2005, ‘Computer games as participatory media culture’, Handbook of computer game studies 2005, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 373-388 

McCloud, S 2005, Scott McCloud: The visual magic of comics, TED.com,

Squire, K. (2011). Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age. Technology, Education--Connections (the TEC Series). Teachers College Press. 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027.

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 1(1), 20-20.

Graf, D. L., Pratt, L. V., Hester, C. N., & Short, K. R. (2009). Playing active video games increases energy expenditure in children. Pediatrics, 124(2), 534-540.

Juul, J. (2012). A casual revolution: Reinventing video games and their players. The MIT Press.