From Call of Duty to Candy Crush, video games are one of the most diverse forms of media. Some games have well-written, touching stories, while others have no story at all. Some games are incredibly popular and culturally dominant—others fly under the radar but inspire a small, devoted fanbase.
One of the big concerns people have about games is how participating in games changes the effect of their content. For example, does violence in a game affect players on a deeper level than violence in a movie, because you have to actually press a button to trigger it? Or, is playing through a politically charged storyline more impactful than reading a similar story in a book?
Whereas movies and TV shows put viewers in the position of just “seeing what happens,” video games enable players to help determine what happens. To a certain extent the experience players have with a game is customizable. For example: a player could play a Grand Theft Auto game with the goal of driving as safely as possible—following every traffic law, avoiding pedestrians, and so on. In this way of playing, hitting someone with a car might feel like a terrible accident, instead of the dark comedic thrill the game designers may have intended.
Most of the time, however, what game designers enable is what players will do. This means some of the most important conversations about gaming literacy center around the question, “What experience did this game’s designers want me to have?” And depending on the game, the answer at any given moment might be anything from “use creativity to solve a puzzle” to “simulate murdering 20 police officers.”
Given that, again, all media is a construction, and not just a reflection of reality, discerning players should be able to recognize what assumptions about reality come through in a particular game’s design. But perhaps even more than that, a la Marshall McLuhan, understanding the medium of video games may be just as important in discussions of how games form us. The medium of how video games are played can also impart certain messages, such as:
- The decisions we make matter—because games require making choices.
- It’s possible to accomplish/complete things—an important mindset for real life.
- And, there’s grace for failures—exemplified in how most games let you retry after you fail.
In a sense, these beliefs represent the core of discipleship. But it remains an open question for each player whether conclusions like these will be applied to real life, or only cycled back into another game.