Rising Star Blog

... playing video games on my new badass 46” LED TV and my housemate walks in. It is 5am and I am up playing some game that is probably made for kids. I’ll just interject here with some background noise and say that my housemate isn’t a big gamer - he likes shooting games and Scene It!, almost exclusively, and thinks most games are a waste of time. I’d say he is the prime target for those Ant and Dec Nintendo adverts, but he thinks they are a bunch of idiots, so maybe not.

Anyway, he sees me sat there in the early hours of the morning, dead eyed in my bathrobe, forlornly strumming a guitar controller, and wonders what the hell is going on. As you would. Here is an approximate breakdown of our conversation:

Him: “Soo... what you doing?”

Me: “Getting my XBox gamer score up to 10,000.”

Him: “Why, what do you win if you do that?”

Me: “Nothing.”

Him: “So why are you doing it?”

Me: “Because it looks cool.”

Him: “What are you playing?”

Me: “Easy Peasy Rock Star Junior in Space - it’s dog awful”*

Him: “Soo... if it’s awful, why are you playing it?”

Me: “To get achievement points.”

Him: “Do you win anything for getting them?”

Me: “No.”

Him: “So you’re playing a game you don’t even like to get points for something that doesn’t even matter?”

Me: “Yup. Pretty much - watch me nail this solo... ahahahaha!!”

Him: “You’re playing it on easy”

Me: “Yeah... uh... so I can complete it quicker - I normally play it on hard.”

Him: “Aren’t games supposed to be enjoyable? You look like you hate that thing.”

Me: “It’s a small price to pay in the quest for E-peen, my friend.”

Him: “E-peen?”

Me: “Yeah, you know, my virtual penis. That’s what a gamer score is.”

Him: “...”

Me: “What?”

Him: “You’re really weird, do you know that?”

Me: “Yeah, I’m pretty aware of it, thanks.”

After that my housemate went on a tangent about how games are great and all, but they are a massive waste of time, and there are much better things I could be doing instead. I argued that I’m a games journalist, that my 8 hours work/play/sleep ratios have been taken up by 18 hours of work/play and minimal amounts of sleep, and that this was WORK, it was RESEARCH. And in reality, there’s not that much I could be doing instead. Going shopping is expensive, the internet has killed my lust for TV by giving me the attention span of a gnat, and the gym is... really far away. I guess I could cook? Yeah, I could cook but that seems like a lot of effort and only fills up two hours max anyway, unless I was cooking some Heston Blumenthal masterpiece, which is unlikely when your cooking skills mostly extend to turning on a kettle and pouring the contents into a Pot Noodle. Computer games may be a waste of time, but they are the best waste of time I can think of. Which got me thinking. What does one actually achieve by playing video games? Are they really a complete waste of time?

Apparently not, according to popular science author Steven Johnson. In his book Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter Johnson argues that popular culture, particularly video games and TV, is making us smarter (hence the title I guess). In the case of video games, their very structure stimulates the rewards centres of our brains to produce opioids, which is a spacey word for the brain chemicals that make us feel good. You see, the appeal of video games is all tied in to our brain chemistry, as Johnson explains:

"If you create a system where rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you'll find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they're made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks. It's not the subject matter of these games that attracts – if that were the case, you'd never see twenty-somethings following absurd rescue-the-princess storylines like the best selling Zelda series on the Nintendo platform. It's the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen. No other form of entertainment offers that cocktail of reward and exploration."

This explains Xbox achievements, games like World of Warcraft, and all those social networking apps (hello Farmville!) that have gotten over 60 million people hooked. They work by placing a golden carrot in front of you (or in most cases, multiple golden carrots) in the form of quests, loot, and achievements, so that you play the game to win the prize and get the happy chemicals running through your brains.

So there you have it. Games aren’t a waste of time, they’re scientifically proven to make you happy! Whopee! Now, you can’t really say that about Heston, unless you really like (and I mean really like) looking at bald heads. So that leaves me 1-nil up on my housemate with the cool points.** Oh yeah!

 

* Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

** Says the dead-eyed girl in the bathrobe.

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