In the past I often wondered if there is video game aversion for those who’s daily jobs are often made into video games – most likely soldiers, for example. It seems to me the last thing I would want to do is play a game that reminds me of being under fire, shooting people and the like.
My friend who plays a lot of X-box live indicated to me that this is not the case, that many vets of Iraq play the first-person shooter games and really enjoy them.
But Violet is a video game about being a graduate student. I shudder to think about the people who designed it. You write, you negotiate relationships, you do research. All that good stuff. I’m sure you even talk to students as a TA.
I think I’ll take the desert warfare game, I like my escapism.
It makes me wonder though about the development of video games as literature. Something I’ve been thinking about since the release of Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The form of video games, like film and novels, seems a great way to explore human attitudes, motives and language. This was the defense by the programmer of SCM RPG when it was tossed from a video game competition. He said that if he had written a dramatic piece about Columbine or a novel from the perspective of the perpetrators he would not have been publicly criticized.
This indicates to me the power of video games as literature.
Now who is going to create the first debate oriented video game? Maybe I should learn some coding. . .
Comments
One response to “Someone's Job is Someone's Escape”
If video games are literature, then they are akin to the Choose Your Own Adventure genre. The interactive participatory form of video games changes the relation one has to the narrative. You are never even given the illusion of being the observer. A reader’s participation in literature is to absorb information, collate it, form ideas, and opinions. I have yet to hear of a book where the reader is required to write the text as he reads. I am interested to hear how exactly video games would work as literature, or how they already do. Or is it the truth that anything narrative is literature? In that sense, what isn’t literature?