I saw this, Patronizing the Player, on Kotaku…and my day got a little brighter. Really, nothing like a good laugh to make your Monday better.
What’s this guy’s argument? Basically games aren’t teaching you about life. They aren’t hard enough. They don’t teach about failure and that “In the real world, hardly anybody wins, let alone you or your kids”. God, that’s good shit. Some more:
Some of us are never going to be anything more than shit-scrapers, because that’s how most of the world works. A tiny, tiny fraction of a percentage of us will be heroes, kings, and demigods. If games can teach us anything, they can teach us how to correct past mistakes by learning from failure, and to rise up from mediocrity when the odds are utterly against us.
Now not only are games too easy, life is too hard and you aren’t going to win. That’s fucking hilarious.
Ok class, lets break it down a bit and find out exactly what Tony Walsh’s (the post’s author) problem is.
First, it appears Tony has a pretty damn bleak outlook on life. I can’t really know for sure, but his comment above about hardly anyone winning in life are quite amusing. So games should teach us that life is sucky, you’re not going to win and won’t be one of the special ones. Awww, that’s so cute. Now we should define our life based how well others are doing. We should be looking over at the next guy and determing, well he’s got more of this or that and hence he’s winning life and I’m not. What a load of shit. Anyone that defines their life by how others view it and looks around to determine if they are winning or not is already fucked in life.
Second, this mini-rant is mainly about MMOs… So the point is that MMOs make everyone special and hence aren’t teaching them about how to fail and that some of us have to be shit-scrapers in the game we pay to play? Really? So, Mr. Walsh, will you be one of those guys? Will you pay a monthly fee to pay to be a nobody that makes shoes? Or the guy that does the finances of the shoe store? It’s a game. A fantasy environment. It’s supposed to be about pretending to be something you’re not. Not about playing a boring job online. Now I won’t argue about whether WoW actually succeeds at this, but I will argue it’s trying to make a game that’s fun to play, that you get to be a god and you get have fun. Not trying to simulate being accountant or a lawn man or whatever (I just use those examples because they are boring to me. If they aren’t boring to you, insert your own boring type of job).
Games, in general, should be about fun. For me, failure can be fun. I LOVED MechCommander 1, but damn me if you didn’t have to fail a lot to win in that game. That doesn’t work for everyone. Know what’s great? They don’t have to play the game. If you aren’t enjoying it, don’t play it.
This argument about failure teaching you something is extremely valid, but to argue that games are too easy and giving false impressions, espcially MMOs, is complete bunk. WoW requires time AND skill if you want to compete in that game. Yes, there is definitely a time component to WoW and I don’t like it, personally, but it’s not what drives the game. And it DEFINITELY wouldn’t be solved by adding other functions in the game that required most of us to play non-heroes role.
Also, if you’re looking for games to teach kids life lessons, you’re probably already looking in the wrong place. Life lessons are learned from…life. From the people that raise you, from the experiences that shape you, from the world around you. Not from video games. Just like all of the talk about kids learning to be violent from video games, which is crap, expecting to learn about life and how to succeed or fail from video games is fucking insane.
What Would Matt Do: I’ll try to stop laughing. It’s going to be hard.