Chrono Question

I have spent a god damn lot of time playing, thinking, and writing about video games. This is not news. Since I practically grew up on them, the habit never struck me as anything other than natural, reasonable, and harmless. But lately I am beginning to wonder.

My experience with games went something like this:

I was born in Washington, D.C. My parents lived in Columbia, Maryland. In the basement of their townhouse was an Atari 2600. Every now and then I would get my hands on a joystick and play a game of Ms. Pac-Man or Megamania, but I do not recall either of them developing into an all-devouring preoccupation. (My being two years old might have been a factor.)

I learned to read at an early age. When I was three years old, my parents got me a picture book about volcanoes. I could not tell right from left, but likely knew more about the Mount St. Helens eruption than at least half of today's U.S. population.

Some months later, my parents got me a children's astronomy book. I could not tie my shoes, but could tell you about the choking density of Venus's atmosphere, identify the Galilean satellites and describe the most prominent characteristics of each, and knew about Uranus’s titled rotational axis.

Some months after that, my parents bought me a picture book about dinosaurs. At age four I was aware of the distinction between the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods and could give examples of the dinosaurs that lived during each of them, though I am sure I mispronounced their names.

When I was five years old, my parents bought me a Nintendo Entertainment System. On Christmas day I chose to foul my undergarments rather than take a five-minute break from Duck Hunt to use the toilet.

So much for an interest in reality.

One particularly interesting aspect of the video game phenomenon is their continuing presence in the lives and minds of the generation that was first exposed to them. I remember seeing all kinds of toys in my friends' rooms and basements. Ninja Turtles action figures. Nerf weapons. Archie comic books. Skip-its. Hungry Hungry Hippos. Mighty Max playsets. Hot Wheels race tracks.

As the Mario generation (which, for the sake of convenience, we will describe as gamers born between 1980 and 1990) aged, it is unlikely that most of them continued building massive Lego fortresses and staging epic cross-universal showdowns between their G.I. Joe and X-Men action figures into their teens and twenties. But the video game consoles remained constant. I would be interested in learning the statistics of console owners who stopped playing video games altogether once they began, but in my personal experience, I have known very few Nintendo or Super Nintendo owners who have eliminated video games from their lives after playing them consistently for a time. In almost all cases, the video game console was the one childhood toy that never got put away. When the Nintendo got old, the Super Nintendo replaced it. When the Super Nintendo got old, it was replaced by the Sony Playstation. When the Sony Playstation got old, it was replaced by the Dreamcast, the Xbox, and the Playstation 2.

What we have now is a not insignificant slice of the populace whose most consuming interest during its developmental years was video games. A large multinational subculture today describes themselves as "gamers" and talks of the wider "gaming community." Growing up as a gamer myself, it did not seem unusual to me that I and my peers might decide that the characteristic that most defined us as human beings was the time we spent by ourselves in front of a television screen with a controller in our hands. (Do you suppose there were groups of adolescent television enthusiasts who referred to themselves as "watchers" during the 1950s and 60s?)

But lately I am starting consider what this actually means. The proliferation of video games is a phenomenon that has not been examined thoroughly or honestly enough as of yet, though progress is being made.

I am not suggesting that life should not be pleasurable. I am not saying that children should spend every hour of their lives being dragged by the wrist between school, piano lessons, SAT prep courses, and soccer practice. Nor am I saying there is anything wrong with a professional or student returning home after an exhausting day and unwinding with a game of Halo or Persona. (I myself have been very partial to Hydorah as of late.)

When I was "studying" at a summer university program in Japan several years ago, one lecturer discussed the need for societal "pressure valves." Living and working in any nation exerts a certain degree of stress on the populace; and Japan in particular, owing to its work ethic, corporate structure, and deru kugi-wa utareru culture. What I got out of this lecture is that if Japan were to suddenly enact a zero-tolerance ban on video games, pornography, and alcohol, their famously-low violent crimes rate would immediately spike upwards. (Please do not ask for specifics. I was very hungover and my notes are terrible.)

The point is, video games serve a practical function in society. They are a mollifier. When the overworked, underpaid, and resentful Borders employee comes home and shoots people in Call of Duty, he is releasing tension that might otherwise manifest itself in his professional and social life. He is less likely to take out his existential frustrations on customers or coworkers, march into a crowded McDonalds with an uzi, or drive a dynamite-packed SUV into a government building. (Though video games have occasionally been suspected of encouraging violence in younger and more impressionable players, the reverse is almost certainly true for adults.)

This is certainly relevant to the broader "New Media and Society" issue, but we will not be looking at the Big Picture today.

One aspect of the Mario generation that strikes me in particular is the amount of intellectual and academic energy it expends towards coming to a deeper -- in some cases transcendent -- understanding of video games: what they are, what they mean, and how better ones can be made. It has created a large body of music and art rooted in video game tropes and aesthetics. It has begun reading games through the lenses of critical theory. Some very interesting and meritorious work has been produced, but one must bear in mind that it indicates a generation (or two) whose creative and intellectual focus has been riveted on their toys. If as many people spent as much time waxing Aristotelian about Parker Brothers board games, it might seem somewhat absurd.

The "are video games art?" question has become a very hot topic over the last decade or so. Gamers become absolutely livid at the suggestion that their distraction of choice is not worthy of being counted as valuable as the more established and "higher" distractions, such as books or film. I think a lot of the people wrapped up in this debate are missing the point. I subscribe to the classic (and increasingly unpopular) view that the substantiality of the content being delivered is more important than the means by which it is delivered. There are a lot of very intelligent and artfully-designed video games, and there are a lot of really fucking stupid books and movies. If I had to weigh the artistic merits of Secret of Mana and The Da Vinci Code, I would say the overall advantage goes to the one about the kid who travels from place to place by getting shot out of a cannon.

But I do not believe video games have yet produced anything that clears the bar set by the greatest works of film and literature. (They probably should not be expected to, but for now let us assume they should.)

My personal "high art or low art?" litmus test is a question of lasting influence. If we look at my bookshelf, I can pull out a couple dozen books, open them up, and point to specific chapters and passages that have actually changed my life. After reading and considering them, my perspective was altered to such an extent that I had to subsequently alter my behavior. As far as I am concerned, that is the distinction. "Low" art keeps a person occupied. "High" art effects a transformation.

(Of course, this is all subjective. In the first Superman film, Lex Luthor says: "some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe." But I suspect War and Peace has facilitated exponentially more revelatory experiences than a Dubble Bubble wrapper, or Space Invaders for that matter.)

I can think of very few video games that, in my personal experience, fall under this definition of "high art." I have great times playing games, but rarely walk away with much else to show for the experience and time spent. Not that I am complaining; I do not play video games to enrich myself. I play them to entertain myself.

What worries me is the suspicion that fewer and fewer people are able to tell the difference.

I sometimes worry that video games are being given a kind of eminence they do not entirely deserve, or are earning it for the wrong reasons. They are very nice, fun, designed by incredibly clever and creative people, and admirably fulfill their function as another mollifier for the masses. But do they have any value beyond that?

Rather than drag this out any longer, I will just wrap this up with a question that occurred to me recently:

One of my favorite parts in the SNES game Chrono Trigger is the Fiona's Villa sidequest. In 1000 A.D., you pass through a stretch of barren desert on the Zenan continent. Traveling back to 600 A.D., you visit the same area and come across a dying forest, which a young woman named Fiona is struggling to save. With a little elbow grease and some help from the dutiful Robo, you defeat the subterranean monsters decimating the landscape and assist Fiona in replanting it. Returning to 1000 A.D., you find that a thriving forest has replaced the desert, and a shrine built in honor of Fiona and Robo rests on the site of her old villa.

Chrono Trigger fans hold a special place in their hearts for this quest. It is a lovely lesson in how acts of righteousness and kindness can trigger far-reaching and lasting changes in the world.

But I wonder: of all the people who played and praised this sequence -- and judging by sales data, we can assume at least 2.36 million human beings on planet Earth have played Chrono Trigger at some point in their lives -- which do you suppose the greater number of them are more likely to have done later on:

1.) Gone outside and planted a tree themselves?

2.) Sat indoors and played another RPG?

I wonder.