Given some time, shopping for video games with one's
parents is going to become one of those essential childhood memories. I know
that I cherish such memories. During my own trips to video game retail stores,
I occasionally get a glimpse into what
the whole process is like nowadays. I've seen all sorts of experiences, ranging
from the nagging kid whose parent buys a game based off a cartoon, to the
encouraging parent purchasing the latest Mario for their grateful child. But
sometimes, you see something different.
Browsing in the Electronics section one time, I overhear
a mother and son in the Skylanders toys. For the uninitiated, Skylanders is an
action/adventure series of games which contains a huge library of playable
characters. You gain the ability to play as new characters by purchasing the
action figure of that character and using a peripheral to plug the character in
the game.
In the store, I actually saw in passing the son placing
an action figure on the demo booth to see the character in action. He was
seriously deliberating. Eventually, he goes to his mother and says he chose
that character. And this is where it gets interesting. The mother takes one
look at the character and says, "This looks like a big guy. Don't you play
the fast guys?" to which the son responds that he wants to try a slow-but-strong
character for once. They went back and forth for a bit, including one time when
the kid tried a big character at a friend's house and said he didn't like it,
leading to the kid saying he wanted to actually take it seriously.
What struck me about this exchange is that the mother and
son were genuinely discussing strategy and logistics about the game. Normally,
we'd come to expect the mother to sigh "okay," drop the toy in, and
be on with her day. But here, she actually took the purchase seriously and
wanted to talk it through first. Not as the credit card-holder trying to stave
off a purchase, but as someone who understands what the purchase means to the
child. She knew enough about the game to talk about it on the same terms as her
child.
I was floored to hear this. I don't know if this is
increasingly common now, but during my youth parents did not try to understand
video games. The norm was that video games were not something that required
further understanding. They were in the same league as simple toys. It's funny
I say this so firmly because one of my parents was a subversion of this norm.
My mother, much like the Skylanders mom, actually stopped to look at what I was
playing and rationalize the bright colors on the screen. She knew what
"characters" meant to video games. She understood what a "hit
point" was. She saw how to recognize who the player character was without
needing me to tell her. She knew what a power-up was and could alert me to when
one pops onscreen.
Hearing the Skylanders talk made me think about a
discussion I had before where I tried to make the argument that video games are
just as complex and conversation-worthy as any real-world sport. Naturally, the
other person had all of popular culture on their side and I had to concede. In
light of overhearing this conversation, I'm thinking popular opinion is
starting to sway the other direction. Now that video games are on the popular
culture radar, my argument for the complexity of games has more ground to stand
on.
Lastly, and just as importantly, even I could understand
the conversation I was overhearing. Not because I've played Skylanders, but
because I've played games in general. Games have a lot of things in common. In
this case, the kid was used to characters that moved fast but could not defeat
enemies quickly. This new character would move slow, but defeat enemies with
less hits. He is swapping out the advantage of speed for the advantage of power
and perhaps other capabilities.
Thinking on that last point, I have come up with a term
for how general video game knowledge allows someone to understand a game they
haven't played yet. "Gamer networking" is what I've come up with so
far. That is, networking with an emphasis on video games. In this day and age,
"networking" mostly refers to a person socially engaging others to
build a "network" of friends and acquaintances. People often network
by emphasizing things they have in common, such as what movies they like,
sports they follow, what they do for a living, and so on. This way a person can
have a big network to be well-connected in many places among many types of
people.
Gamer networking is interesting because video games are
so complex. There are entire genres of games, and each game in each genre can
be radically different from each other. And yet, video games all come from the
same roots and therefore contain a lot of similarities as well. For instance, Final
Fantasy is a very different game from Bioshock. However, both games have in
common that the players attack enemies in order to win. In both games, the
damage that players deal to enemies is quantified. In both games, the amount of
damage can be increased in some way. In both games, the benefit of increasing
attack power is taking less time to defeat regular enemies and being able to
keep up with the more difficult encounters. Therefore, if a player of either of
these games mentions a time for opportunity in which they increase their attack
power, the other will know right away the basic benefits of that increase. And
yes, players of both of these games will be able to join a conversation on
using heavy characters in Skylanders.
Gamer networking is not just for people who freely
identify as gamers. People who network over sports have discussions of a very
similar sort. And then there's the fact that non-gamers have stormed the scene
as casual and social gaming grow. Let's take one of the most prolific games of
the modern era, one that every person reading this blog has either played,
played secondhand, or heard about. Yes, folks, even players of Angry Birds can
get in on the action. Angry Birds is a game more different from Skylanders,
Final Fantasy, and Bioshock from each other, yet the concept of "more
power" exists there as well.
Though Angry Birds does not emphasize defeating enemies,
you still use force to knock down buildings using your birds. The individual
birds cannot power-up, but using special birds is satisfying and mostly
essential for getting the best results on stages. The Big Brother Bird in
particular goes along with my point because it is a straight upgrade from the
standard red bird character. It may not be as precise as the red bird, but precision
is less of a factor when your bird can just demolish whatever it touches. It's
not exactly the sort of quantified power in the other examples, but it is a
relative increase in power all the same. Kind of a stretch, but the connection
is there.
Just watch the first minute to see the big guy tear it up.
You see, the more you break down a video game into
relatable problem-solving tasks, the more easily someone can understand it. The
less a person knows about games, the simpler you'll have to get. Getting someone
on your level requires effort and patience, but it is worth it. I've had long
conversations with people who have no prior interest in games but every good
intention to understand what they can, and all because I worked my way up.
It seems that we as gamers also have the progress of
technology on our side. The more people come to rely on bright screens and
dealing with user interfaces, the less foreign video games feel. In fact, video
games may turn around and help us in the real world of situational awareness
and problem solving; but that's a topic for another time. Either way, the
Skylanders mom provided a good window into what could be when it comes to
public knowledge and attitude surrounding video games. Perhaps in the future,
more complex games will work its way into global culture; and not just a split-second
of Call of Duty or an offhand app reference.
So, what about you? What experiences have you had in
gamer networking? Ever tried explaining a game to your parents? Invited your
friends over for some game time and had some banter? Or maybe you've butt heads
with another game online about the superiority of one character or another. I
know we've all done it, and I want to hear it. Until then, game out.
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