Who studies video games and why?
– Who was united by the Video Game Research Center at the Moscow Game Center, Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University?
– Moscow Game Center is a community that unites Moscow video game researchers under one brand. My colleagues and I took it to St. We founded it after attending a conference of the Computer Games Research Laboratory (LIKI) of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg State University. We saw what they had done and realized we wanted to do it differently. Thus, the Moscow Game Center was created on the basis of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. Lomonosov.
Participants of the Moscow Game Center are philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, philologists and religious scholars. We examine the history of games, the role of games in culture, as well as their specific characteristics and functions from the point of view of the humanities.
– Why study video games from a humanities perspective?
– There has been a scientific discipline like game studies in the West and Europe since the early 2000s, in our opinion – “video game studies”. The purpose of this discipline, like any other humanities, is to systematize knowledge about something.
Video games have been an important part of culture for nearly 50 years. According to the latest data, about two billion people around the world are somehow engaged in the consumption or production of video games, that is, they are associated with gaming culture. If we ignore games, we severely limit our understanding of culture as a whole.
Why are video games so addictive?
– Have any major discoveries been made in 30 years of video game education?
– It is not possible to say that there is one fact or one study that changed everything. But the thing that I will highlight most is that we have at least decided on the basic concepts. For example, we now understand why we love video games in general.
– Why is that?
– According to one of the most successful explanations, video games make a special type of media the ability to evoke a sense of self-determination (self-sufficiency – ed.) in a person. That is, video games allow a person to feel how three important psychological needs are fulfilled: autonomy, competence and belonging.
Everyone wants to feel that they determine their own life – that is autonomy. Everyone wants to feel good at at least one thing – that’s competence. Everyone wants to feel their skills are valued by others – that’s ownership. All this needs close video games.
– All these needs in life can also be closed. What attracts people to games?
– As a matter of fact, there is a sense of self-determination from daily activities in real life, but let’s say it is transmitted by a very thin layer.
Progress in life is felt very slowly, and bonuses from it quickly lose their relevance.
For example, how does it work for scientists? I wrote an article and sent it to the magazine, but it comes out in 1-2 years. After this time, you don’t care anymore because you’re exhausted and because you’ve already written something new, most of the time you think that your article is wrong.
In video games, it’s the opposite. We get such conditions of existence in which senseless actions are practically reduced to zero. Every action has a meaning within the game system, so we feel like we are not wasting our time. This is where games outperform real life.
– Ironic. After all, video games are often considered a waste of time.
– Because such a paradigm is ingrained in the culture of modern society: there are “important” things like work and family, and there are “unimportant” things like TV shows and video games.
But the paradox is that a person may go to work and feel like he’s wasting his time, then come home and play games and feel like he’s wasting his time in a useful way.
It looks like it’s doing something important and then leaves the game on the rise with some sort of sense of accomplishment.
– Was the “life substitution” function originally laid in video games?
– This feature appeared at the dawn of the gaming industry, but by accident. In the beginning, video games only had a recreational, “relaxing” function. In the United States, arcade machines have been installed in shopping malls so that people can take a 15-20 minute break and resume their work. That was until 1978, when Space Invaders, the first record-breaking game, came out.
It may seem insignificant, but this trivial thing has had tremendous consequences. It turns out that people are ready to stand by the machines for hours and put in quarters (25-cent coins – ed.) to break records and prove to everyone around you that you are the best. A year later, Asteroids comes out, one of the first games to not only set a record but also be signed with your initials. It was a complete blast.
Why is there so much violence in games?
Video games, especially shooting games, are often criticized for being violent. Why is killing such a popular model in games? Is this some kind of exploitation of the primitive hunter instinct?
– Maybe it has something to do with instincts, but it has not been proven. But it has been proven that people like to do something understandable. And murder is the ultimate goal. Hitting, pushing, shooting… All these patterns existed even in the first video games.
However, it is disastrously important not to forget the context here.
The game motivates a person to kill not only anyone, but the enemy. In the vast majority of games, violence is justified by the plot: the enemy is bad and you are good. But you have a gun too. These images are so deeply planted in modern culture that a person immediately understands what needs to be done with a gun.
– So the passion for violence in human nature has nothing to do with it?
– A lot of attention is drawn to the brutality of the games, largely thanks to the media and activists. If you look at the rankings of the most popular games in history, you will see that there are no more shooters than games of other genres.
For example, Minecraft and Tetris, where there is no killing or a third option, are among the most popular games in history. Super Mario Brothers. – also a cult and mega popular game. There is no murder in it.
Anyway, contextually we don’t know what happens to the Goombas when we jump on them.
– What about the notorious GTA V, where the player is motivated to kill random passers-by?
No, they do not motivate.
The player has a choice, but no one tells him that killing everyone to the left and right is a good thing. And then, GTA is not a simulator of indulgence, but a satire on modern American society. The developers talk directly about it. This is how the game should be perceived.
Whatever video games do in terms of violence, they usually have a meta message that it’s bad. The developers themselves explain to you that you need to kill because everything is wrong in the game world and this should not happen in the normal world.
Let’s get some Last of Us. There are many scenes of naturalistic violence that are very well dramatized and most importantly criticized. Many war games criticize war. When Call of Duty sends the player to fight, the game says that killing isn’t the best thing a human can do nowadays, it’s a tragedy.
– So the games were unfairly ruthlessly criticized?
We gamers and researchers should criticize developers’ ethical responsibilities for their content to always remain controversial and within cultural norms. It’s just important not to forget the context.