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Video Games Are Totally Cool, Seriously
by Chris Remo, Oct 24, 2005 3:00pm PDTIf you've been gaming for a long time, and I suspect many of us here have, you've probably noticed that popular opinion regarding video games has changed quite a bit in the last several years. They've gone from being seen primarily as the pasttime of kids and dorks to a being a fabulously popular mainstream form of entertainment whose enjoyment is not only acceptable but seemingly a requirement for various classes of entertainers and assorted millionaires. Max Steele examines this transformation in The New Mainstream: How Hip-Hop and Geek Culture are Revolutionizing America's Pop Culture, drawing lines between Netscape's Mark Andreessen, middle-class America, and hip-hop culture.
The 1990s Dot Com Boom, in other words, ushered in an unprecedented era of wealth creation among young, technologically-savvy knowledge workers. Before Netscape, people who wanted to be wealthy thought about careers like lawyer, banker or doctor, or for the glamour-conscious, model, star or athlete. After Netscape, people who wanted to be rich had careers like "online pet food delivery platform developer."He presents an interesting argument, one which probably has some truth to it. Games are certainly fun, I think we would all attest to that, but their explosive growth in popularity seems like it demands a more sociological explanation than millions of people suddenly realizing how fun they are. After all, even now, only some games are truly considered "cool."
Comments
It is funny how now - if you are not good at games you are ridiculed (I have seen kids making fun of kids for not being good enough...these were the "cool" kids too -
I shudder to think what the not cool kids are doing right now
But then I found this paragraph:
"Which leads to the current bizarre case: Games are now cool because middle class teenagers are emulating hip hop moguls who are adopting the trappings of wealth which are defined by Silicon Valley millionaires who like games and tech."
I'm a geek for the technology, not the money, and there's the difference.
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The thing is, when I say to someone I'm a gamer I almost always get a less than enthusiastic response. At least if you say you're a movie or music lover they might think you're a bit too into it but they understand what you're talking about. Games are still too foreign to so many people I guess it'll get better as more gamers grow up, but it really is still an area of entertainment so many people know fuck all about and view as an oddity. Hell, I know a surprising number of guys who hardly play games. And the industry worries about making games acceptable to girls - shit, you haven't even done a proper job with the guys yet!
OK, this got long, thanks for reading. :(
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Yeah, but tell that to the people renting all the crappy movies at Blockbuster weekend after weekend. It doesn't matter that they're 'cool', it's just that gaming has become a more legitimate weekend waste of time for the average Joe. Let's face it; there's nothing quite like sitting next to your buddies in your living room with copiuos amounts of beer blasting the crap out of each other and talking smack.
Remember they aren't "playing video games" they're "playing Madden" or at least that's how they justify it ;).
Well, those kids did grow up, but gaming didn't disappear. Now we are young adults and middle aged, we are the society that likes gaming. There was no shift of mind, no metanoia, there are just new people with new ideas where there were once only old.
I would wager that those who thought of gaming as childish and nerdy probably still do, because they are now in retirement (or close to it) and unable or perhaps unwilling to see things from our perspective. These people, who used to make up "society," are now being pushed aside as Generation X and Y move up to take control of our culture, and in so doing have brought their ideals with them.
Thoughts on gaming haven't shifted, the people in society with those thoughts, have.
The 2nd most visited link by employees on the Weblog was Yahoo!, which was funny as hell, and the first most visited was sexshare.com, but I figure that was from spam in html-enabled email.
Lotsa rich people worked there back then, you'd see gold Porsches and Hummers in the parking lot, and everyone played games, but now you see a lot of Acuras and Nissans, and no game playing at all except for the one Mac user who is so excited that they finally have UT 1 out for the Mac that he would stay and play it after work.
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seems like you're saying netscape is rich, middle-class are in the middle, and hip-hop culture is for poor people, but you're probably not.
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