{"id":23413,"date":"2018-06-15T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=23413"},"modified":"2019-07-25T11:27:07","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T15:27:07","slug":"playing-for-a-chance-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2018\/06\/15\/playing-for-a-chance-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing for a Chance to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Still image from a YouTube tutorial on how to build a model Victorian factory in Minecraft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m going to sound like a grandpa here \u2013video games are a big gap in my knowledge of digital media\u2014but what the hell is wrong with today\u2019s video games? Seriously, I’d rather get exclusive promotions<\/a> from gambling by Childrens Choice<\/a> site, I like to check Agen Sbobet<\/a> because\u00a0 gives me good luck every time I play, I\u2019m not really talking about getting ripped off by loot boxes, or titles that ship with major bugs left to be squashed. Those are certainly things that keep me away, but what really turns me off is what the games themselves are about. And here, rest assured, I\u2019m not talking about the violence depicted in games which, as many well-regarded studies have definitively shown, don\u2019t cause violence<\/a>. (Though, that doesn\u2019t stop the fact that I don\u2019t really find photo-realistic war games to be particularly entertaining.) No, I\u2019m just tired of video games feeling like a second job.<\/p>\n

I have never felt the desire to play any of the simulator games that are popular today, even Train Simulator 2018 which, objectively, sounds awesome. Ditto for Minecraft, even though I love building things. It all just sounds like chores. I so desperately want <\/em>to love video games. I own a PlayStation 4 and have about half a dozen games, but they just collect dust on a shelf. I played Skyrim for a long time but that was only after I rage-quit half an hour into the game and then didn\u2019t pick it back up for over a year. Why would I want to collect hundreds of flowers to make a health potion?<\/p>\n

For our anniversary I bought Britney<\/a> one of those adorable miniature Super Nintendos that just went on sale. It came pre-loaded with 21 games and we played for hours. I genuinely enjoy playing with that thing. Just last night I played Yoshi\u2019s Island before bed. (That game is so fucking adorable.) What is it about the old 16-bit games that I love that today\u2019s games don\u2019t have? I want to explore my own reactions here for a minute because I have a hunch that my own confusion is shared by many others.<\/p>\n

The quick and easy answer is nostalgia: like music, people form emotional bonds with video games that are so strong that one\u2019s sense of familiarity and comfort supersedes the joy of discovery, such that older works are enjoyed more than newer ones. I have a lot of fond childhood memories tied to video games but that doesn\u2019t feel like the whole answer. There is something about what these older games are about that is hitting me in a way that newer ones just don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my theory: today\u2019s video games are less about escapist fantasy than offering opportunities to feel as though you have accomplished something. Beating your cousin in Street Fighter II<\/em> has always provided a singular sense of accomplishment, and nothing felt quite as bitter sweet as seeing the credits roll at the end of Super Mario RPG <\/em>but the sense of accomplishment I\u2019m talking about isn\u2019t related to completing a task so much as taking on the identity of someone whose major purpose in life is doing something that has a tangible impact on the world.<\/p>\n

This all hit me as I was reading David Graeber\u2019s latest book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. <\/em>Graeber asserts that upwards of half of all workers in America and Europe toil at jobs, while well compensated, provide no net impact on the world. He argues that such meaningless employment inflicts a special kind of \u201cspiritual violence\u201d that attacks our very notions of what it means to be human. Contrary to popular ideas that people are naturally lazy and must be prodded and cajoled into work, it seems like we crave the opportunity to be helpful to one-another or, at the very least, accomplish a task that has some discernable social value. One need only look at how often people go to great trouble to find meaningful work at their bullshit job \u2014taking on work that is outside of their job description, installing software that lets them surreptitiously edit Wikipedia or moderating a subreddit\u2014 to see just how important being helpful is to people.<\/p>\n

Others though, rather than find something to actually do,<\/p>\n

\u2026escape into Walter Mitty-style reverie, a traditional coping mechanism for those condemned to spend their lives in sterile office environments. It\u2019s probably no coincidence that nowadays many of these involve fantasies not of being a World War I flying ace, marrying a prince, or becoming a teenage heartthrob, but of having a better\u2014just utterly, ridiculously better\u2014job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Graeber then relays a story about a man who would zone out at work only to imagine himself as \u201cJ.Lo\u2019s or Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Personal Assistant.\u201d There is, of course, a flash game called Personal Assistant<\/em><\/a> that looks fairly popular based on the thousands of five-star reviews. As our jobs provide less and less meaningful satisfaction we turn to the make-believe of video games to experience actual productive labor.<\/p>\n

I have had the good fortune to make a living based on a few odd jobs that I find deeply satisfying instead of taking a job that pays well but has no discernable psychological or societal benefit. I write about interesting topics, teach smart students, and do research for clients that I care about. This, more than anything else I surmise, is why I don\u2019t find most games worthwhile. That, and the lack of couch co-op games. That definitely sucks too.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you love your job and also love video games. That\u2019s totally possible. There\u2019s lots of reasons to love anything. I\u2019m just trying to put my finger on a feeling that I have about the difference between today\u2019s popular games and older ones. And yeah, I know there\u2019s lots of indie titles, but there you need the resolve of an aficionado. Someone who enjoys trying out, judging, and curating the lesser-known offerings in their chosen field. I just want to love the popular stuff, I don\u2019t want to go hunting.<\/p>\n

This argument may be surprising to long-time readers of Cyborgology <\/em>because it sounds a bit digital dualist \u2014I love my real <\/em>jobs instead of the virtual <\/em>ones on the screens\u2014\u00a0<\/em>but that\u2019s not what I\u2019m saying at all. The problem here isn\u2019t that video games are competing in a zero-sum game with \u201creal\u201d jobs or that people are playing 2k <\/em>instead of a pickup game of basketball. The problem is that we have a society and an economy that is bereft of meaningful, waged work and so people have to find wages and meaning in two different places.<\/p>\n

For all the talk of how \u201caddicting\u201d phones, social media, and video games are \u2014what with their ability to release dopamine in the brain and all\u2014there is startlingly little said about why people look to those things in the first place. I don\u2019t like the addiction metaphor at all, but even if we accept it, the notion fails for the same reason that \u201cjust say no\u201d anti-drug rhetoric doesn\u2019t work: addiction is not a matter of simply being exposed to something and getting hooked. Those who get chemically addicted to a substance might have been made dependent while recovering from an injury, or they self-medicate a psychological condition, or they live a hard life that needs numbing. In all of those cases it is unproductive to talk about drugs the way that digital mindfulness people talk about screen time<\/a>: as an issue of personal responsibility and discipline. What we need is a more holistic reckoning with how we are expected to earn and spend money and time.<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to why I enjoy my SNES more than my PlayStation. The games on my PlayStation \u2014or any popular modern gaming platform\u2014 are meant to fill a need that my work already fulfills. I spend my whole working day completing meaningful tasks and I\u2019m also privileged enough to have a house to work on that provides more tangible rewards. The spiritual and psychological needs that many modern videogames are designed to offer are already fulfilled for me by other tasks. The SNES feels more like genuine escapism and play than the (meaningful, interesting, and rewarding) work of Minecraft<\/em>, Call<\/em> of Duty, <\/em>or Train Simulator 2018<\/em>. All of which is to say if anyone has a visually stunning, turn-based RPG available for the PS4 that they\u2019d like to recommend I\u2019m all ears.<\/p>\n

David is on Twitter<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to sound like a grandpa here \u2013video games are a big gap in my knowledge of digital media\u2014but what the hell is wrong with today\u2019s video games? Seriously, I’d rather get exclusive promotions from gambling by Childrens Choice site, I like to check Agen Sbobet because\u00a0 gives me good luck every time I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1512,"featured_media":23414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[2257,19972,1005,10688,33,18460,12131,3661],"class_list":["post-23413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-addiction","tag-david-graeber","tag-employment","tag-gaming","tag-health","tag-mindfulness","tag-nostalgia","tag-video-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2018\/06\/maxresdefault.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1512"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23413"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23983,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413\/revisions\/23983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}