There has been a trend in entertainment lately that escapism is being replaced with false reality. We are seeing this in television/movies and video games as well.
I hate it.
What’s escapism? It is entertainment that immerses you and makes you forget about the outside world… for a couple of hours.
What’s fake reality? It is entertainment that creates an alternate you or designed to make you ‘feel good’. Escapist television shows used to have family sitcoms where you’d have this dashing family or non-family sitcoms like cop shows, businessmen drama, and so on. There were heroes in those shoes. Even in family sitcoms, the heroes were a family member showing virtue that won the day. Contrast that to Reality TV. Reality TV is just a bunch of idiots pulled off the street, scripted to make them look even more ridiculous, in order for viewers to feel good about themselves. Escapist entertainment doesn’t entertain such people anymore.
Video games used to be escapist. They tried to immerse you with better graphics, better sound, better content. There is still better graphics and all, but that is more done through hardware upgrades than anything else.
Today, video games seem more orientated to delivering a False Reality. Worthless people can feel worthy of themselves. The best example I have of this is World of Warcraft. WoW started off escapist, but the Endgame became a False Reality. People would waste tons of hours just to get a rare mount and then sit on it in a capital city. That’s an example of a worthless person gaining false worth. People who have value in society would never waste their time in such a way.
Social media is nothing new. We’ve always had telephones, mail, and then email and websites to contact each other. But what social media does allow is for people of no social value to believe they have social value because they have a website or forum following or twitter following.
There has been a major change in society with the rise of a new social class, people who have no value to society. Before, such people were identified as having no jobs. Even though there is an economic depression, why do so many companies have record profits? It is because they removed so much of the bullshit jobs, the value-less jobs. There is much hiring going on, but it is for people who have skills of value. Engineers are in high demand as are technical skills. However, you have a huge amount of people spending a fortune on a degree that offers no value like Poetry Degree. Businesses don’t want that. Value-less jobs, value-less degrees all create people of no value to society.
Observing such people is revealing. While someone who does have value, they merely work hard, sleep, buy some silly entertainment in the few moments they have in between, and do it all over again. They feel very comfortable about being who they are. The value-less person does not feel comfortable about being who they are. They suffer from an inner despair. Their poetry degree says they should have value, but reality says otherwise. They become attracted to actions and entertainment that give them a False Reality. Reality TV makes these people feel happy about themselves.
It’s never good to generalize, but many of the people who play World of Warcraft religiously tend to not have a life that is valued by society. Many are unemployed, underemployed, or suffering some crisis. Look at all the BS achievements we have everywhere in games now. Someone obviously likes these things or else they would not be everywhere. I think the people who do like achievements are people who lack achievements in their own real lives.
Children are value-less to society but that is OK, they are children. They haven’t had a chance to do anything yet. Kids treating their entertainment like a Fake Reality has always been the case. What’s disturbing are the massive number of adults doing it. But I don’t see engineers behaving this way. Or business builders. Or anyone that society says has value. The adults I see doing this are on ‘funemployment’ or have a value-less degree.
It’s been so common for people to divide the Gaming World into two parties: the Hardcore and the Casual. I wish for people to try dividing the Gaming World in another way: the Valued and the Value-less. Notice how different their entertainment is. Notice how their game playing habits are also very different.
When I look back at Old School Gaming, you had two worlds of the arcades and PC gaming. Arcades appealed to blue collar workers doing something fun after work (kids too, but they came later), and PC games appealed to engineers (have you SEEN those early 80s PC games? They are entertainment for engineers). Aside from kids, there were no value-less people playing games in large numbers that I can remember.
One significant change is that game developers used to be in touch with the blue collar class people. Game developers also used to be engineers. They made games thinking, “I wonder how long I can do this until I have to get a REAL job.” They knew video games were just silly stuff.
People who have grown up with video games do not perceive it to be ‘silly stuff’. It is ‘Serious Business’. And they became a game developer by getting a ‘Game Developer Degree’ (!). They eschew the blue collar class because their work is ‘too coarse’. They’re not engineers because that is too much math. In a sense, they become ‘value-less’ to society. Sensing this despair, they try very hard to become ‘valued’. They try to make ‘The Great Work of Art’ that will atone them of all their value-less.
I believe many of these value-less people have wormed their way into gaming today. I think they are the ones who are driving the ‘games are art’ nonsense and trying for games to not be about sales. The Japanese argument that ‘Japanese game developers shouldn’t be like the West’ is founded on the incorrect premise that Japanese games became popular due to culture instead of their engineering. A red flag of a value-less person is someone who thinks ‘culture’ is of value (instead of something like engineering).
Shigeru Miyamoto became these worthless game makers’ icon because Miyamoto was not an engineer while people like Gunpei Yokoi were. But Miyamoto actually had a worthwhile degree of Industrial Design. He certainly did have a technical understanding. Everyone who works at Nintendo is required to have a technical background especially of the hardware. However, this myth-like Miyamoto-the-Hipster or Miyamoto-the-Artist prevailed in their minds to give them license to continue to be value-less.
Above: Look and read what they did. This is all very technical work. The biggest challenge with video games is ‘how do we make the computer do X or Y?’
The entertainment a person consumes does tell us much about that person. The Game Industry was shocked that Skyrim sold so well despite it not having facebook or twitter integration. Perhaps it is because some people desired escapism over Fake Reality. Why do so many games have achievements? Perhaps it is because people don’t have real achievements in real life.
“Are you saying Fake Reality games shouldn’t be made?” I think games that sell should be made. But these Fake Reality games selling is telling us a disturbing rise in a social class.