When I'm not writing about videogames or movies, my actual day job is being a substitute high school teacher. Writing about videogames and teaching hardly ever has any overlap, so it was certainly strange when I got a call to go and teach a Communications and Technology class on Monday. Apparently, the school I was subbing at offers a unit on videogame creation for people who aren't necessarily technologically literate (i.e., they don't know how to do serious coding), which offered a really interesting insight into the types of games that a group of fifteen-year-olds think they can make, as well as what kind of games they're interested in.
I can't recall the name of the program they were using, but it was essentially an expanded, PC version of the game creator in WarioWare D.I.Y. There are a number of assets that can be simply dragged in and dropped, and simple scripts for behaviour that can be toggled using a checklist. This means that of course there's a finite number of different types of games you can make using this setup, but I did see some opportunities to extend the program as well. For instance, sprites can be edited or completely changed, and the music can be imported from anywhere (so long as it's a MIDI file). This could give the entrepreneuring designer some flexibility to make something really neat, given enough passion and time.
I asked the kids how many of them would consider themselves gamers. I'd say about 75% of them said that they were. Of the remaining 25%, they were the sort to play a lot of flash games, so the games they were designing were clearly influenced by those sorts of games; lots of Bust-A-Move and Arkanoid clones here. But the weird thing is, there was a huge disconnect between what the self-proclaimed "gamers" were playing and what they were designing. There could be a number of factors for this, but the vast majority were making arcade-style shmups in the vein of R-Type or Contra, whereas when they head home to play their XBoxes (they ALL had XBoxes – it seems to be the console of choice for fifteen-year-old males), they play games like Call of Duty, Halo and Madden. Is it simply a case of, "well, I'll never be able to recreate anything like that using this program?" Or maybe their only exposure to the types of games one could make using a 2D game generator are arcade-style games from their youth? Bear in mind that fifteen-year-olds were born in 1995. The games from their youth are literally things like Half-Life and Resident Evil 4 and the like, so the arcade influence is weird to me.
I think what it might be is this difference in perception in young people, and it's this that most fascinates me: whereas I might see games like Madden and Call of Duty as inferior to the more retro-style games that I usually go for, I still see them all as games. But after this experience, I honestly believe that a lot of people of that generation see the umbrella term "video games" as arcade games, as Mario games, maybe even as Final Fantasy games (if they're of a certain type). But Call of Duty and Madden aren't given that kind of label, because they're so socially accepted by that kind of high school culture.
I'll sum this up with a discussion I had with a student at a different school. He was a bit older, maybe eighteen. He said to me, "you look like you play video games," and I said, "sure?" He then went on to question me about what kinds of games I play.
"Call of Duty?"
"No."
"Madden?"
"Nope."
"Halo?"
"Never even once."
"Well, then, what else is there?"
And that's sad to me. There's already such a rich tradition of video games, the fact that the only ones that this kid could name were ones that you LITERALLY can't escape from due to their annual iterizations (and I'm guessing the Halo reference is more to do with the fact that Reach had just came out) is too bad. He then asked me to name my favourite game. I thought I would try to avoid being obscurantist (because clearly he would have never heard of Loom or Chrono Trigger) and said Super Mario Galaxy 2.
"Oh, a kiddie game, then."
And that view is even more unfortunate, as Super Mario Galaxy 2 is one of the most balls-ass hard games I've ever played, especially in the latter half of the game. Even the first few levels are probably ten times more difficult than Call of Duty (at least, its single player mode), but then again, multiplayer is king. (Side note: only one of the grade 12 kids in the room were happy when I said Super Mario Galaxy 2. Seriously, if you're reading this, you have a Wii, and you haven't bought that game yet… give your head a shake!)
This brings me back to the video game making class. What were the "gamers" doing when they were off-task and not working on their own games? They were playing a multiplayer-driven Flash FPS. It's clear then: what they're playing is a means of social acceptance. If a bunch of people are doing it, then it's OK for me to do it. But those "kiddie games," the video games of old: they're single player experiences that offer no social validation, and are therefore worthless. Sad times ahead for the videogame industry if this is indeed a pervailing attitude.