The Not-So-Distant Future of Video Games Becoming Reality
Three years ago I went on holiday in Portugal. Unfortunately it was the summer, and my pale Irish skin was not interested. During the middle of the day I began to realise that no amount of dips in the pool would soothe me, and went inside for comfort … and air conditioning. It was here that I had my first introduction to the Xbox 360. I had no idea how it worked, but I was delighted after 10 mins to realise I’d turned it on, and I began to play. The game inside was called ‘Hitman: Absolution’. I completed the game in 4 days. I don’t even consider myself to have an addictive personality, but I would get up in the night to play until it was finished.
I went home and thought nothing more of ‘Hitman’, or the impact Agent 47 had on my holiday. I look back on the experience now and realise that the video game was a salvation for me, saving me from blinding heat and bright red skin. However, this was all to change when I was introduced to the Digital Society.
The psychologist in me listens to Wikipedia saying ‘a video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device’. This is the only clinical game-related-content you’ll find, the rest being YouTube trailers and rave reviews trying to sell them to you. Humans, such as Mitch & Phil (pictured), tell me a different story.
These two are good friends, and sat down with me to tell me about their gaming experiences. I was soon to learn that video games are a learning experience, but by this I mean that it can be anything from your primary social interaction to the thing that defines what you will do with the rest of your life. I asked the boys about their introduction to gaming, and they told me about the Play Station 1. Mitch told me about the first video game he ever played called Frogger, a shared experience with his older brother. They grew up bonding over these games, going as far as to take them to their grandparents’ house so they could play there too, but lets not get into addiction. Aside from this game, Phil and Mitch both noted that their older brothers enjoyed playing Ace Combat, both of whom are now pilots. But video games, according to these young men, go far deeper than that. Many independent publishers use games as an art form, and an example I now present you with is Little Nightmares, in which a small girl in a yellow raincoat tries to escape the confines of a dark and destitute place where the janitor catches you and gives you to the Chef to prepare for the customers. Phil explained the conspiracy theory behind this however, that assumed Six (the girl) was being held by her abusive mother, who hated her because she was the only beautiful one, and trying to get away from the customers who are there to eat her.
Once you take this route, you can actually find theories giving even the most generic and popular games deeper meaning. Take Grand Theft Auto V for example, many ‘gamers’ on the internet take the satirical approach that ‘Los Santos’ is meant to represent hell. The famous cowboy game ‘Red Dead Redemption’, though violent and sadistic, made Phil cry during the closing story line. Knowledge like this leads me to believe that video games, for my generation (90s babies), mean more than just an impeccable waste of time. There is a level of emotionality that means something to those who grow up on these games, these stories that they can manipulate and put themselves into entirely.
The Digital Society has opened up my understanding of what it means to live in our digital world. I learned tales of ‘smart cities’ and ‘the internet of things’, all of which turned out to be the not too distant future. Before I began this course I knew nothing of the digital world, but through this course I have learnt about the impact technology has on our society. My generation has been raised in a world were our primary form of communication is via 4G. I remember growing up with chat rooms with my friends on the Nintendo DS, and now I go to a DigiLab in the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons and play PacMan through a virtual reality head set. I put on special soft sole shoes, and stepped on to the curved floor, a stand with plastic rails for those of us who would inevitably fall over. I wasn’t ready for how dark it was in there. PacMan was incredibly realistic, the more I ate the darker it got, and the more terrifying it became when the ghosts came closer. Suddenly the iconic arcade game had been turned into a horrific virtual reality. This experience taught me what gaming could become, and reminded me of a film from a few ears ago called Gamer.
The film suggests that a good use for convicts is mind-control, and teenage gamers get to control them through 30 levels. If they live, they are set free. For the digital society however, I am more interested in the gaming system Simon (Logan Lerman) has. He walks into a room that immerses him in 360 degree game play. I can imagine this as the future of video gaming. Maybe not the use of convicts, but video gaming as a concept seems to be moving in the direction of taking over the player’s senses. I have learnt how deeply video games can effect a person, and know from my experiences at DigiLab that they can have an immediate and very apparent effect on the psyche.The fact is that we live in a very digital world, and video games are a huge part of that, both recreationally and socially. Phil explained to me that one part of gaming is going ‘online’ after school, and joining your friends in ‘quests’ and ‘missions’. Big epic battles that you fight as a group, only interrupted by your mum calling you down for dinner. For some people this digital interaction is their primary form of socialisation. This is taken so far as games such as ‘Second Life’ and other formats which Phil explained are called ‘massive multiplayer online role playing games’ or ‘MMORPG’ (though in my personal opinion that isn’t significantly shorter). When I visited Second Life, it appeared to me as a sort of online interactive ‘Sims’ — though you’re paying a hell of a lot more for it. I hit a realisation in the process though, this is literally another digital world. There are people who spend their entire lives socialising, working, even forming relationships on these sites. Going forward I want to integrate myself into this world, because there is a-whole-nother level to our generation that I feel I am missing.
What does this all mean for the future of this literal Digital Society? For those who prefer to stick to video games that don’t immerse and integrate into real life, Mitch told me he thought games such as ‘The Wii, the Kinect, and Pokemon GO’ were ‘all niche, and things that don’t last’. I had a Wii myself, and can back up the claim that you play it for a while and then it loses its appeal. As far as video games go, MMORPGs are almost entirely online. Phil thinks ‘it’ll go the same way as music’, that GAME and its counterparts will retreat to the dark hollows of the internet, and — according to my interviewees — hopefully taken over by Indie game producers (those responsible for ‘DEEP’ games like Little Nightmares) and the websites that primarily host them such as ‘Steam’. Apparently indie games are worth far more, of course I asked for an expansion: ‘you’ve got a triple A title (e.g. GTA) where you buy it because you were told it was good, or an indie developed game because of the content it’ll give you’ — Phil. Here’s hoping.
There were two prominent and final points that the boys told me. The first from Phil, was that virtual reality is less so the future of gaming, and more a new niche that he thinks will not take off. I directed him towards Bruce Willis’ film Surrogates (in which everyone lives hold-up in a dark room living through robot versions of themselves — aka real life Second Life), and we broached the subject no further. The second was from Mitch, that games needed to be rid of interior downloads. This sparked my interest when he explained. Games allow you to do interior purchases, such as using real money to buy game money to ‘level up’. This however, causes the same classist hierarchy that we find in the real world — within games. In every online game, from Candy Crush to Legend of Zelda, you can ‘buy your win’ says Bruce, which seems to defeat the point. It also seems remarkably similar to the ability of the upper classes being able to buy their way to success. There’s something very dirty about it.
The fear rises in me that video games could take over sooner than the excitement of Smart Cities. That in fact we could allow video games to become our whole lives. For now however, they’re about as important as a blockbuster film, and as long as this power dynamic doesn’t shift, I will leave them alone.
Just kidding, I’m totally moving into my bedroom and living through Second Life. Bye!
