B and I were discussing yesterday how remarkable it is how often we run into WoW players in our daily lives. One might say that the population is large enough to make it an inevitability, but eleven million out of six billion shouldn't be such a frequent distribution, especially when only about three million of those come from the US.
The truth is, though, that "gamers" are no longer really in the minority. That's the ultimate aim of the gaming industry, of course, as it is of any industry - to expand their potential customer base ad infinitum. But cultures don't have that same impulse. Cultures in general struggle with two conflicting desires: the wish to expand, and include others in whatever defining characteristic or pursuit is endemic to the culture, and the wish to be exclusive, to feel special. All members of a culture or community need to feel that being a part of that community is an asset. They need to feel that it lends them some kind of unique trait, and the purpose of the history and storytelling traditions of such cultures is to outline those traits and ascribe them value. Every story you've ever heard does indeed have a cultural component at its root, especially those that have been passed down through generations. Tall tales are an easy example in America. My tries-not-to-be-Texan beloved tells me that when he was young, he was told the story of Pecos Bill, who wrangled and rode a tornado. Such a story, part of the oral tradition of a culture not necessarily restricted by state lines, serves to outline virtues that culture values and ascribe them to a heroic figure native to that culture. In short, the underlying message of such a story is always, "We, the people of this community, are so, and so, and this way. We act like this, we think like this, we have these good qualities." The effect, when the story is retold, is to make members of the community proud to share that heritage. Similar stories may be cautionary tales, intended to outline differences between members of the community and outsiders - "We are like this, but definitely not like that."
I've gone badly off the rails here. The point is that communities and cultures have the impulse to expand, to acquire more members, but also to define boundaries and make membership a special privilege, an exclusive club if you will. (Which you will.) We see this very clearly in any minority group - minorities wish both to have their concerns addressed, to have their aims and beliefs shared by the wider population, and to remain distinct from that population so that members still feel honored to be included.
The community of what one would call "gamers" is an oddity in this case. It has those same desires, but in fact the ultimate success or failure of the community, and the policies by which it comes to that point, are in the hands of people not necessarily a part of the culture - as if, for example, the primary campaigners for women's suffrage had been men. In this case, those who have the power both to expand and exclude - namely the leaders of the industry, men in charge of policy at Nintendo, Activision, Microsoft - are very often businessmen rather than what we know as gamers. Now, a businessman is interested primarily in expanding his clientele. There is no percentage in being exclusive from a business standpoint. Making the benefits of the community widely available and accessible to the mainstream buying public is a sound financial decision.
It may be that this is the very best thing for the success of the gaming culture. Where, like many other cultures, they might inevitably exclude too many people and dwindle to nothing, that choice is taken out of their hands. Let me simplify: imagine a club at a grade school. The members of the club of course wish their club to be large and successful. They wish to know other people who share their particular interests and qualities, whatever those may be. But they also wish to be special. They wish to have the right to deny membership to anyone they dislike. This sounds childish when phrased this way, I realize, but it's not really. It's a natural impulse of any community. Now imagine that a teacher is placed in an advisory position over the club. It is in the hands of the teacher to recruit and screen new members. Suddenly the club's population soars. Why? Because what you might call a "foreigner" - someone outside of the community - was placed in control of the decision to expand. That person retained the club's impulse to be large and prosperous, but because that person was not part of the club, they had none of the impulse to be exclusive. A club in charge of its own decisions in this regard might eventually die, with no more members than it started with.
Where "gaming" culture is concerned, we are rapidly reaching the point in terms of market penetration where people who were never before part of the culture are included by means of the technology. Nintendo caters to those who are not familiar with games' interfaces by producing a system that operates in a manner they're used to - a controller that resembles a remote. Games become more "mainstream" every day, very often to the disgust of longterm users, early adopters or "hardcore" members of the community. The community itself is often unhappy with new arrivals or the changes made to their pastime in order to attract outsiders, but because the decision is out of the hands of gamers in general, the community as a whole prospers wildly. It's not at all unwise to conclude that before the decade is out, what we now know as game systems could be serving a multitude of other purposes and thus be as ubiquitous as televisions are now. By that point, the culture no longer has any defining characteristics, because it has swollen to include so many diverse populations. One can no longer assume that to call someone a "gamer" presupposes a selection of other physical and mental attributes - pasty skin, social maladjustment, liberal attitudes. Once the technology becomes universal, everyone is a gamer, and therefore no one is. It is the ultimate goal of every culture, and at the same time, it is the death of a culture.
Perhaps, then, the best thing for any community hoping to spread its beliefs and interests is that they appoint a leader from outside the community. Certainly it would be an unpalatable choice... but isn't that always the way? In the same way that the man who does not wish to be king is often the best king, perhaps we - as a people - do not have the distance from our own goals required to effectively reach them.
Labels: Evolution, Games, Rants, Technology
posted by Rivaine # 3:03 PM 
