Gamer's Lament

I'm interested to see how my opinions will change tomorrow through the TLT conference, but looking over the day's events, I saw that three School of Music professors I had in the past are doing a lecture on video-gaming and real-life preparation.

I've been thinking about this for a few days now.  I remember when I was in elementary school, and video games were a thing a lot of guys did, but never really talked about much.  It was a geek thing.  Girls didn't like it, so guys would play it sparingly and rarely mention it.  But when a discussion would start, geekisms would take over.

We've seen a dramatic change over the past 15 years.  Walking through South Halls this afternoon, nearly every room was blaring with the sound of video games of every kind: the latest Madden, N64 Mario Kart, Atari.  This is an all male floor, granted, but it was unthinkable before that we'd live in a world where video games weren't just geek food, but items of social engagement.

Or art!  One thing we've overlooked greatly since the dawn of the game is the art behind it.  Sonic the Hedgehog, in it's heyday, was bright, vivid, and fast.  Final Fantasy 7 proved that video games could have amazing scores and phenomenal story lines.  The Wii has started a group of games created specifically to be aesthetically pleasing.  It's amazing that video games have finally come so far, and while I'm excited to see the whole new era it's ushering in, I take pause to remember the niche group that once surrounded it.  Before it became a part of mainstream mass media.

But unlike other forms of mass media, video games don't seem to really be overrun by money-making schemes.  (Or at least not very often).  We can blame E.T. for this.  And this is why video games may offer the greatest chance for the emergence of new art and social engagement in a way that many other modern forms of mass media, even social networking sites like Facebook, simply can't.  Between Microsoft's utilization of video and audio chat during gaming to the Wii's unique, active approach, we are not only seeing the dawn of gaming as part of the mainstream, but as way for people to express themselves (and not just by killing zombies).

In conclusion - I am so hyped for this conference tomorrow.