On location at the Panera bread here in Charlottesville, VA. Random place for me to be sitting by myself and blogging, but everyone knows that sitting in a Panera makes you a better writer, so I hope you all find this entry eloquentish. First of all, I realized I had to turn off my YouTube playlist in order to write this, because I am just awful at doing anything thoughtful while music is playing.
Anyway, to the point. A few sites online define "stereotype" in a similar fashion, so I'll just borrow from Google: "A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing." The key here, in my mind, is "widely held"; as much as we avoid it, we all experience instances where we generalize a concept or idea, but the difference is that when we generalize, it is inherently our own personal opinion. The "popularity", for lack of a better term, of a stereotype is often what makes them so feared and antagonized. Notice, as well, that stereotypes are not defined as necessarily "negative", though "oversimplified" does imply that idea a little bit.
That last point is why most stereotypes don't bother me. I don't care if people think I'm smarter than white people. I don't care if people think I play a lot of video games (because I do). I care a little when people assume I have an accent or that my name is pronounced in an odd fashion, even when my name is spelled "Jon", but for the most part, racial stereotypes don't bother me. Today, a stereotype that hits closer to home was embodied very clearly in a recent commercial for KFC:
Seems mostly harmless, right? I think that's part of the problem I have here, and I also have a problem that somebody reading this might think "Oh, Jon just needs to grow up."
I am bothered by the stereotype that video games embody immaturity.
I know: there's more to this commercial than just that message. The younger man clearly lives in his parents' basement, which has held a long negative stigma over time. His living space seems a bit unclean and unruly, and rather than sitting in a real chair, he's just using the stool to his drum set. Yes, the commercial seems to want to point out that it's the food that's "immature" here, and that the new KFC bites are a mature kind of chicken nugget, but the commercial is carefully crafted around that idea to push that this younger man is clearly an immature character here, and the video games are clearly an embodiment of that idea.
I've recently become a huge fan of an internet series called Extra Credits, where a group of workers in the game industry get together each week to present very intelligent and thoughtful lectures on video games. They explore topics that both analyze the content of the games themselves, as well as presenting very mature connections that video games have to our culture. The presentations are well-written and presented in an engrossing and entertaining manner. Here are a few links to some of my favorite presentations. I highly suggest watching at least one of them, particularly if you're gonna continue with me through the rest of this entry.
On the way that games can help us consider a new way of thought:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/enriching-lives
On the ways that games can help us learn more:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/tangential-learning
On propaganda in games:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/propaganda-games
I'll make my point short here, as Extra Credits does a much better job of reinforcing these points through video than I ever could in writing, and I'd rather you spent your time watching them anyway. As we grow, the things that are considered "grown up" in culture tend to evolve. Some things remain the same: table manners and classical music, just as a few examples. Games have evolved, massively, since they first became a mainstream product roughly twenty years ago. We have video games that tell grand stories, games that put you into extremely realistic worlds, and games that can challenge your mind and your ability to reason. Just as these games have evolved, we have to evolve our perception of them. Long ago, they may have been made and marketed for children, but with the flux of top-level "Mature" rated games, that has certainly changed. On the other side, games aren't just about sitting and shutting your mind off, shooting every terrorist you see. If you don't believe me, go play Portal 2. Braid. Heck, even Bejeweled.
Video games should not embody immaturity anymore. We should not give up on games and shrug them off, supposing that they are somehow beneath us. The industry has come too far for us to take so much credit away from what they've done. I'm aware that as someone who plays a lot of video games, I could very easily be biased here, and in no way am I implying that video games can't have a negative effect on our lives, but movies, music, and books all carry that same power, that same level of art and blood and sweat and tears, but we don't shrug them off as inherently "immature".
My hope is that if you carry these stereotypes about video games that you would start to work on breaking them down and giving them their fair due, just as I hope you'd do the same for anything else.
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