Me, the Gamer: How My Relationship to Games Changed Over the Years
Claudia Feiner about the evolution of Esports
As Project Manager for the esports community, I am at home in the world of video games. In the last few years, I have noticed a change. The world of games has evolved into a holistic cosmos that influences pop culture. A personal observation:
Recently, the last episode of the Pixeldiskurs podcast was published. One of the podcast’s merits is undoubtedly to make the cultural studies discourse on computer games accessible to the masses — without the widespread, exclusionary academic arrogance. I will miss it, as it was part of my everyday life and brought a wonderful dose of computer game topics to my ears.
The end of this inspirational source is tragic because this kind of media consumption, talking and reflecting about computer games, has become at least as enjoyable and important to me as gaming itself.
I enjoy reading secondary literature such as narrative analysis, behind-the-scenes and meta-analysis of video games. In fact, the time I spend playing is very limited to a few hours per week. The time I passively and cognitively occupy myself with the topic itself, on the other hand, is manifold. Does that make me less of a gamer?
How the perception of computer games changed
Computer games have been with me all my life. When I was a “screenager”, the term did not even exist. From my mid-20s onwards, however, I feared that adult life and gaming would be mutually exclusive and that my hobby would have no place in a “serious” life plan. In my environment, even though I worked in IT, every role model carried the negative connotation of “nerd” when it came to gaming. It was the time when the primary media on computer games, the classic print magazines, had passed their circulation peak. However, the internet was dawning in a direction that everyone, including classic games journalism, had yet to turn to.
And now, the opposite of my fear has come true. It has never been as natural to talk about video games as it is today. Over the past 15 years, I have observed how the way we talk about games and how they are being received changed. The narrative of “guilty pleasure” is fading and I hear less of the resentment and polemical rhetoric parroted — often due to a lack of self-acquired gaming expertise. In my perception, computer games are now understood as works of art, there is more and more transparency in the broad everyday media, and we are finally also talking about them in feature articles.
A new world opened up to me
For me, listening to podcasts, reading books and articles, is not only a way to passively participate and follow the world of games. It changed my relationship with gaming itself. I can receive computer games differently and that is precisely due to that secondary consumption. There is a saying: “only the knowledgeable see” and I have the feeling that I look differently at games now. I read and understand them, recognize them differently, compared to someone who is not involved with them.
The execution of the game, the concrete “game” — as Stephan Schwingeler writes so beautifully in his book “Kunstwerk Computerspiel” — is only one part of this hobby. “The computer game as a medium strives for transparency — to make itself disappear in the process of mediation and to make its conditionalities invisible […]”
What at first glance sounds like a shrinking, a “becoming less”, is in fact growth since the world around computer games, the contexts and contents have expanded so much. In this media evolution, a cosmos of its own has emerged, blossomed, become more visible, more accessible to the non-gaming world out there, and yet it has made it richer.
It feels like society has learned to articulate how games can be read: as interaction, experience, aesthetics, experience, simulation, immersion and — admittedly — sometimes naked escapism.
We can now talk about it out of different dimensions, and with a differentiated and interdisciplinary vocabulary. Gamers and non-gamers can now dive into the world of games together.
I celebrate every new medium, every new podcast, every blog and every article that allows me to engage secondarily with one of my favorite topics, even if I can’t take on the “active” part myself at a given moment.
About
Claudia Feiner is Project Manager for the esports community at Porsche and driving the virtual racing experience for all esports and car-racing fans.
Porsche constantly extends its activities in the digital universe of esports, sim racing and gaming, as it is a way to connect with a new generation of sports car enthusiasts and to bring the Porsche feeling to new areas. Therefore Porsche organizes their own virtual racing series, the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup, and cooperates with games like Forza Motorsport 7 and many others.
