ENGL 1337: Games as Lit.

We people of the last few generations have had the privilege of growing up with a new and exciting artistic medium.  Over the last three decades, video games have grown from entertaining pastimes to full-fledged interactive stories, taking storytelling places no other medium could have ever dreamed.  The children of the twenty-first century have seen it become possible to be a part of a story, which is, as Yahtzee put it, "a development as artistically significant as the moment Picasso realized which end of the brush was which."

Unfortunately, this is not the version we have been told. 

As we have grown up, video games have been subject to everything from misunderstanding to blatant demonization.  At the very least, these generations have grown up being told that video games are wastes of time.  Sure, maybe it’s okay to spend a few minutes here and there, but too much time playing Halo will rot their brain or turn them into serial killers. 

And kids that pose like this only
help them.  Seriously kid, we're
trying to gain respect over here.

The result is that, even while video games have amazing artistic potential and value, it is squandered on people who will only get out of them what they put into them, and all they put into them is an expectation of a good, if valueless, time.  This is not the fault of the people, but the fault of the way they have been raised to view the medium of video games.  The artistic value of video games is something understood by a precious few parents, and as a result they look upon their child’s gaming pastime as a waste, and use no subtlety making sure the child understands this. 

To make matters worse, schools do the same thing, but possibly even on a larger scale.  The academic community tends to be slow in accepting new ideas, and the acceptance of video games as an artistic medium has not broken this long-standing tradition.  As a result, we see schools disallowing portable game systems from their grounds and constantly preaching the value of reading over playing those useless video games.  They then join the parents in complaining about how their children spend all day playing Call of Duty with their friends instead of reading the latest Newberry Medal winning novel. 

The guarantee this book is about nature and history, and is
the exact same as the last Newberry book your child read.  

But if video games are an artistic storytelling medium, what is keeping children from learning from them in the same manner?  Why can someone play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and yet only talk about the battles, the cool swords, and that impossibly tough library puzzle, never mentioning the story’s strong message of the dangers of coveting honor and glory or the way the romance is developed through nuanced dialogue in gameplay? 

Unfortunately, this culture brings it upon itself.  By painting video games as a wasteful pastime unworthy of any level of attention, parents and schools encourage students to play them as nothing more than that, effectively negating any value they may have by teaching children to ignore it. 

Instead, what if video games were incorporated into the school system?  What if schools were to meet children where their attention is already focused, present to them the values of something they already enjoy and use it to make them better, well-rounded people? 

The video game, not the recent okay
movie/terrible adaptation. Seriously,
couldn't the story have been similar?

This would not look very different from the current model of book reports.  Children in a class are assigned a particular game to play.  The aforementioned game, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, stands as a good example for jr. high and above.  I do not want to spoil the story (spoilers are manufactured personally by Satan in the pit of Hell), but anyone who's played it can tell you the prince’s character journey is one worth communicating and exploring, and the game itself portrays it well.  It is often praised as one of the best-written games ever made.  The gameplay ties into the story well, and the prince’s character development is deep and interesting, developed largely through thoughts and monologues while the player explores the ruined kingdom.  It would be easy to assign an essay with a prompt to explore the prince’s progression from a spoiled, glory-obsessed child to a mature man who takes responsibility for his
                                                         mistakes. 

Instead, many who play this game do so with the expectation they will be able to kill monsters in awesome ways, and they get that.  Many players even skip cutscenes whenever possible to get back to the gameplay.  They gain nothing from this experience but six to ten hours of virtual parkour and combat.  But if schools were to teach children of the narrative value of video games, teach them to play Prince of Persia and other games and pay attention to the subtleties, the characters, and the overarching themes, would this not cease to be an exercise in entertaining futility and become a worthy artistic pursuit? 

The negative portrayal of video games that children are given is not teaching them to use their time well, it is teaching them to ignore artistic value in a medium that is quickly becoming a cultural staple.  This is harming the artistic sensibilities and personal formation of entire generations, and cannot be tolerated.  Rather than resisting change and development, school systems must turn to the study of video games as a narrative medium and instill in children an appreciation not only for battle tactics and a positive kill/death ratio, but for interactive storytelling and the value that can be found therein.

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