Select Your Player
Gaming is a polarising activity that many believe is a useless waste of time. However, as Massive’s resident gamer, I’d like to defend gaming’s honour by clarifying the functionality of gaming and addressing the anti-social stigma placed upon the gaming community.
“We’ve been training our whole lives for this moment,” my friends joked with me after Bloomfield’s 1pm presser.
I was sitting in my tiny Mount Cook apartment, panicky and coming to terms with the reality that I’d be trapped inside for weeks, potentially months. But my friends reassured me that as lifelong video game enthusiasts, the prospect of sitting on a sofa in front of a TV for an interminable stretch would be a breeze. After all we have each other, in a time where non-video gamers don’t.
Bounding through the grassy plains, diving into oceans, and chatting away to our hearts content. These are all luxuries in a day of gaming, all happening while others scrape for an ounce of human interaction inside of their about-to-burst-bubbles.
Underlying our wariness and fears of video games is realising for too long they’ve been viewed subconsciously as ‘junk’ entertainment. Like a digital equivalent of hamburgers and fries, they’re alright as a treat in regulated doses, but too much is bad for our mental and physical health.
The past year has started to shed gaming in a different light. Far from being a meaningless waste of time, or less preferable form of entertainment, video games, as we have come to realise, offer us an unparalleled creative phenomenon. The ability to forge new worlds and new friendships, explore complex concepts like loss, sorrow and love, or getting lost travelling in far-off lands, is a treasure like no other – especially as we get to do it from the comfort and safety of our own homes.
But even sitting alone for hours, gamers aren’t necessarily isolated. In many cases, far from it. With the rise of social media, gamers have mastered the art of building communities in and around virtual worlds. Gamers don’t just compete with strangers on the internet, but forge genuine, enduring friendships.
In this age of long-haul social distancing and mental-health strains, gamers have long had a tool that’s now bringing some relief to those who’ve never picked up a controller before. The explosive growth of gaming during the pandemic has shown that many have found a new outlet for much-needed connection in isolation.
New Zealand’s premier videogame developer, NZ Interactive Games, grew an astonishing $120M during 2020’s Covid-19 lockdown. This growth can be pinned down to new communities putting their predisposition about gaming aside - even the weird outdoorsy types started picking up a controller and contributing to the sector’s growth, you know, those people who enjoy hiking and mountain biking – couldn’t be me.
So now that most of the country is out of strict lockdown, will gaming continue its uprise as a viable source of social interaction?
To me, this depends on the community. The gaming community is one ravaged with racism, misogyny, and homophobic tendencies, all amplified by the safety of hiding behind a screen. This is a part of gaming I cannot and will not defend.
With more eyes on gaming now than ever, an opportunity is provided to the community to take steps away from this tough-guy façade and create a welcoming entrance for those picking up gaming for the first time – if they want these stigmas to shed.
While there is no quick or immediate fix, other than not being racist, homophobic or misogynistic, gamers can take steps to being better people without losing their love for the digital world.
Gatekeeping from within the gaming community is a factor which I believe adds to the already negative stigma. Games like Sims, Minecraft and Roblox are crazily popular videogames that have acted as pathways into gaming for many newcomers. My bet is you won’t catch a diehard gamer admitting these are ‘real’ videogames as they don’t hold the degree of difficulty or complex storyline to qualify.
Don’t listen to these ‘gamers’, if you want to spend three hours torturing your Sims whānau, or chopping down pixelated trees with your bare knuckles, do it to your heart’s content!
Despite the countless hours of fun and sentimental interaction gaming provided over lockdowns, for many there’s still a lingering sentiment that playing video games is a guilty pleasure – especially so if you’re a grown up. But play is one of the most fundamentally important activities that we can take part in.
It’s not just the preserve of childhood. As we continue to live life in shifting alert levels, finding new ways to play – and not feeling guilty about them – is one of the best things that we can do to nurture our own wellbeing.
Wellbeing is a concept that was around well before our country went into isolation, and gaming is a tool that has always created social avenues for gamers and enthusiast alike. There is no reason, if the community wants to be more inclusive, that gaming can’t shed its negative, antisocial, waste-of-time stigma and become a mainstream channel of social interaction, learning and most importantly, fun.
Pick up that controller, open that laptop, and select your player.