Games R Us

[GullyFoyle]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10619004/site/newsweek/

Games R Us
Bewildered by the frenzy over Microsoft's Xbox 360? A new book explains how videogames are coming to dominate pop culture and why 'cyberathletes' might be the new jocks.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Gersh Kuntzman
Newsweek
Updated: 12:09 p.m. ET Dec. 28, 2005

Dec. 28, 2005 - The first videogame was a rudimentary version of Pong created in 1958 by a government physicist hoping to enliven a boring class trip for kids. Now the videogame industry is so big ($10 to $25 billion in sales this year, depending on whose numbers you believe) and so sophisticated (the U.S. military trains its soldiers on the latest videogames) that it is taking over our culture.

That's the contention of the new book “Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution” (Algonquin), written by self-professed "gamer" Aaron Ruby and Heather Chaplin, who claims she used to scold other kids when they "wasted" their quarters on Space Invaders. The husband-and-wife freelance journalists spent five years researching the book, interviewing programmers, visiting game labs and immersing themselves in online role-playing scenarios. The world depicted in their book is populated by the geeky creators of today's hottest games, pasty "cyberathletes" who spend hours playing Anarchy Online with "friends" they've never met and software companies that want to take over your living room just as they did your office.

This year the line between mainstream Hollywood entertainment and gaming blurred even further. Not only are movies being made into games, but wildly popular games like Doom are being made into movies (albeit not great ones). "Aeon Flux," a sci-fi action story, morphed from a 1990s MTV animated series into a live-action film with Charlize Theron and back into 2-D as a new videogame. And virtual assets accrued online in multiplayer role-playing games started selling for real-life money on eBay—erasing the divide between actual financial risk and just-for-fun videogaming.

The “Smartbomb” authors claim that those who still don't understand why someone would pay hard-earned cash for a fictional online character, or wait for hours to get one of Microsoft's new Xbox 360 game players, are simply out of the 21st-century loop. NEWSWEEK's Gersh Kuntzman spoke with Aaron Ruby and Heather Chaplin about the evolution of videogames and why cyberatheletes might be the new jocks. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Reading “Smartbomb,” I couldn't help but take exception to this notion that videogames have permeated our culture. After all, most Americans know about Brad Pitt, but there are plenty of people who have never played a videogame and don't know anything about them.
Aaron Ruby: You're just out of the loop. When we started the book, the industry was already huge, but it was not mainstream. Now there are commercials for videogames during “The Daily Show.” And now we have the Xbox 360 [Microsoft's newest game console]. The culture is ready. The average gamer age is now 30—a far cry from the stereotype of the 14- to 18-year-old boy in his room.
Heather Chaplin: There is a huge shift going on in the culture and you're just too old to see it.

Thank you. I am officially a square.
Heather: Not a square, just beholden to the old media. One of the first interviews we did for the book was in 2001. It was with a guy who said videogames will be fully part of the mainstream when new games are being reviewed in the “Arts and Leisure” section of The New York Times. Well, guess what, that just started happening.
Aaron: Yet there are very many culturally literate people who don't know anything about videogames.
Heather: Of course. Every elite class thinks the newest thing will destroy society. Socrates thought the oral tradition would die because of the printed world. And the advent of the novel was supposed to bring about moral decay. There's another guy in the book who says that today doesn't matter because in 50 years, everyone who doesn't play videogames will be dead.
Aaron: That's why we don't talk about whether videogames are “good” or “bad.” That question is irrelevant. They're here.

Your book talks a lot about the fantasy world that today's videogamer inhabits, including an ex-Navy sailor who actually feels more comfortable playing Anarchy Online than interacting with actual living adults in the real world. I may be old school, but I find that horrifying.
Aaron: Yes, there is a level at which it can be viewed as depressing. But we are talking about people who don't have the opportunities to express themselves in their real lives. The Navy guy, David Reber, works at Best Buy. Videogames give him the opportunity to link up with many people and congregate in a space that allows them to actually create a community that works for them.
Heather: What's more horrifying is that the real world, whether by geography, class, race or physical appearance, creates people who feel so alienated from the real world that they need to escape into a fantasy world. Games are always a reflection of a culture. You create a society filled with alienation, you'll have games that cater to the alienated. Don't blame the game. Look at the lack of community. All they're doing is role-playing, which is healthy.

But for some of the people in your book, their whole lives become dominated by the fantasy. They call themselves 'cyberathletes,' yet the most athletic thing they do is turn on the computer. Is this the future of society?
Aaron: Those geeks are the people who created the Internet and now no one can live without it. They're changing the culture. What videogames let them do is build their own identity, and that's very empowering. The only thing anyone knows about them is what they tell them. How great is that? And knowing all the rules of the game gives them security that they don't find in what gamers call "RL" or real life. In the real world, it's impossible to discover all the rules—they change depending on whom you're interacting with. But whether it's SimCity or Doom, videogames teach people how to work together and the ability to understand how systems work. And, at the end of the day, how is a guild in Anarchy Online different from the Amish or the Hasidic Jews, who form their own communities and follow their own rules?

Well, for one thing, they physically interact.
Heather: Yes, but in the future, physical interaction will become less important. Thanks to technology, we already interact and have extensive relationships with people we've never met. So all that matters is that you have the skills for those interactions, not whether you look like a supermodel or a hunk. And videogames actually help build 21st-century skills. That's why the Army trains soldiers on them. Videogames help develop better tactical skills, and they're cheaper.
Aaron: Yeah, now you can set up a war game and figure out things instantly, like “Does he have a sightline on me?” or “Can I hit him at this distance?”

But we used to figure all that stuff out playing in the abandoned school near my house—and at least we got exercise, too.
Aaron: But now you can run the scenario 20 times without having to build any buildings. And videogames don't obviate human development. People will still be people. There will always be adolescent angst, for example. What changes is how kids deal with it. But whether they're playing Doom or going to a punk-rock concert, they're still dealing with it. Videogames are the new bowling league. The place may be a virtual world, but the interaction is not. Now, people like you are concerned that videogamers won't be able to form real relationships. And that was a real concern when Nintendo started to explode in the early 1990s. But people are finding that as the technology gets better, games don't displace real life, they are just another medium through which these things get played out. They're using the media in a way they'd use any other.

[RottenFoxBreath]

you know im stalking you,right..its my lifes work to second post your topics..pmsl.!

[mattso]

Can you condense it please?

[GullyFoyle]

Can you condense it please?

No.
First it is already condensed. Second if I choose what to post maybe someone else misses what interests them. Third when I posted on political blogs everyone wanted short and snippy and would NEVER follow the link to the original story.
How are you expected to capture nuance and depth in a miniquote?

[gadgetguy]

But since it's all about gaming, I found the whole thing uninteresting. I only read it to see how it ties in with video. The tie between video games and movies is old news (think "Tron"), so I guess the plug for Charlize Theron is it.

This year the line between mainstream Hollywood entertainment and gaming blurred even further. Not only are movies being made into games, but wildly popular games like Doom are being made into movies (albeit not great ones). "Aeon Flux," a sci-fi action story, morphed from a 1990s MTV animated series into a live-action film with Charlize Theron and back into 2-D as a new videogame.

Edit: Nevermind, the thread has been moved from 'News' to 'off-topic' now.