So, I've had a fairly bad week. I'm not going to dwell on it too much, because part of what has made it so bad is that I did, in fact, dwell on it too much. Anyhow, like most people, I have my routines for when I've had a bad week. It involves a bit too much chocolate. It involves a juicy hamburger, well-done with tons of pickles and ketchup. And, naturally, it involves video games. It doesn't matter so much which game – so long as it's a good one. I played Super Smash Bros. Brawl this time. I remember other times, when the choice was Final Fantasy VI (or Final Fantasy III, as I called it then). Or Uniracers, that one time I rented it. Or Earthworm Jim. Or The Legend of Zelda. Or a few dozen other games that escape me at the moment.
I've thought about this before, of course. I've mused about it in this column, about the various things video gaming means to us. But I feel like I've missed something important, and that it helps underline so much about video gamers and video gaming in general. To be perfectly blunt, video gaming, in many ways, is extremely visceral. And to be honest, I think it's that visceral reaction is something that those that aren't video gamers by habit extremely fearful.
It seems kind of strange to think about, particularly for a dedicated fan of role-playing games like myself? Don't I often spend time hashing out what to do when playing and arriving at a situation? Don't I digest every morsel of plot a game throws at me? I mean, I actually paid attention to the plot of the first Super Smash Bros. (about a mysterious right hand playing with its Nintendo character dolls). I'll sit there and hash out strategy like I'm General Patton, and analyze plot like I'm writing a graduate thesis for a literature degree.
But this doesn't get away with the fact that video games do affect me on a very primal level. It's somewhat odd to talk about something so deep-seated. I'm not even trying to describe feelings. I'm trying to describe the basal urges that drive feelings forward. I imagine that at least conceptually, most video gamers would agree about this, too.
After all, when you fight in a video game, you do feel a bit like you're actually struggling against something. The urge to seek out every little thing is linked to the survival mechanism, like each item we get in-game is linked to our survival in real life. Fighting to save the kingdom, rescue the princess... these all trigger basic instinctual urges in us, and that's a large part of what makes a good video game worth playing.
There are a few implications to this, of course. The more distractions there are to that visceral reaction, the less able the game is at drawing people in. The most obvious instance is when the game's controls are terrible and keep you from really getting into a groove with a game. But it could be anything – disjointed graphics, bad sound effects, or even really stupid story elements. But when these elements actually heighten the gaming experience, you get the kind of game that fandoms go to war over.
However, this basal feeling is also what makes people who want to ban video games so scared. If you're not familiar with video games, you don't see how games channel the visceral urges and satisfy them through fiction and device. You only see something you don't fully understand bringing out deep-seated and powerful feelings without an obvious control mechanism. When I play a fighting game, I'll admit to letting loose some of my more brutal instincts to get a rush from the game, and enjoy myself without letting those impulses take control. But others don't see that – they only see me get into a game and a more sinister version of me comes to the fore.
In the end, there's really two sides to this revelation. One, game designers need to be able to tap into these feelings in order to make a great game – though naturally, there are many ways to access it. They just have to be careful about letting incidentals becoming a distraction. But perhaps more importantly, we need to be able to show those who don't understand video gaming that it's not a terrible situation to let a game bring out the deep-seated urges we all have. Games are built to satisfy those urges even as they bring them out – but we have to not only explain how that works, but demonstrate it as well. Yes, video gaming taps into something primal in people. But that's no reason to fear – as long as we try to understand it.
