Video Games and the Grown Man - Breaking Away - Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family, and Other Manly Advice (2015)

Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family, and Other Manly Advice (2015)

PART I

Breaking Away

5

Video Games and the Grown Man

Does growing up mean that you stop playing video games? Not really. In fact, the Entertainment Software Association (a trade group for the video game industry) claims the average American gamer is thirty-one years old—and getting older. The ESA says its survey of gamers indicates that the largest cohort of gamers in the country is those thirty-six and up. The common view is that slacker Millennials do nothing but play Xbox all day long, but the reality is that you’re more likely to catch Dad playing Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto IV after Billy and Sally go to bed. At least we hope it’s after the kids go to bed.

According to the ESA, today’s gamers are almost evenly divided between men and women. You’re less likely to get the evil eye from your wife or girlfriend if she too likes slaying orcs or waging online war against n00bs in online multiplayer Assassin’s Halo of Duty servers. Of course, you might find that your significant other prefers different video games than you do. If you like Walter Mittyesque escapism, you might not find it playing as Sonic the Hedgehog or Donkey Kong. But, if nothing else, the data tell us that a lot of middle-aged people are still playing console games.

I grew up alongside video games. I was four when my dad brought home a Pong game that attached to the back of our TV set. My brother, sister, and I would play for hours—or, since I was the youngest, I mostly watched them play for hours.

A few years later my parents bought us an Atari 2600 for Christmas. I remember all the big games, from Pole Position to Pitfall, with fond memories. That console consoled me when we moved from Oklahoma to a small town in New Jersey that actually banned kids under the age of sixteen from playing arcade games. For two years, I had to make do with the console versions of Dig Dug and Frogger (behold the hardships of a suburban kid in the 1980s).

From Intellivision, Colecovision, Nintendo, and Super Nintendo to Sega Genesis, Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Xbox, and Playstation, I played them all. I played computer games too, starting with Zork and working my way up through MicroLeague Baseball, X-Wing, Sim City, Civilization, the original Fallout, and Baldur’s Gate I and II. I loved video games. And yet I hardly play them at all now.

I was well into adulthood before games started losing their charm for me, and honestly it wasn’t some sort of newfound maturity that caused video games to lose their luster. It was the bugginess. I had been looking forward to playing Fallout: New Vegas for months, but within a few hours I realized I was playing a game that wasn’t ready for release. As a naturally curious guy, I began reading up on how a game this buggy was let loose on the public, and I found that this was far more common than I thought. I also learned about the business model for all of those smartphone-based games: get a small number of saps to pay out real money for imaginary items. The state of the modern gaming industry started to remind me of a carnival midway. Both seemed designed to separate you from your money as easily as possible. I started to feel like a chump for supporting the system.

That realization definitely spurred a cutback in my gaming purchases, but I was still playing. While my younger kids were playing Minecraft, I was playing Skyrim. My youngest son, James, would play his Lego Batman game for thirty minutes every night, and after I put him to bed I’d break out Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The Day I Gave Up Gaming (Mostly) was a rainy afternoon, and there wasn’t much point in going outside to do chores in the downpour. Instead, I happily parked myself on the couch and picked up the Xbox controller and started up a football game. It was a college football game, and my created character, a Doug Flutie-esque five-feet, seven-inch quarterback named Mac Edwards, had earned the starting job at Tech. I was three games into the season (playing seven-minute quarters) when my wife walked into the room.

“Having fun playing with yourself?” she asked with a smirk as she breezed by with a load of laundry.

As it turns out, that was the moment my relationship with gaming changed. It wasn’t the sting of her one-liner that got to me. It was the fact that it was true. Here it was, a Saturday afternoon, and instead of playing with my kids, or helping with the laundry, or reading a book, or any number of halfway productive things, I was playing with myself. Yes, I was absolutely destroying the secondary of every team I was facing, but really, who beyond me cared? I had a sense of accomplishment while actually accomplishing nothing. From my perspective, I had worked my way up to starter, had taken my team into the college football rankings, and had thrown some unbelievable touchdown passes over the past ninety minutes or so. But anybody looking at me would have just seen a dude on a couch. And in reality, that’s all I was.

It wasn’t enough for me to be annoyed at the gaming industry. I had to be annoyed with myself to make a change. I put down the controller that day. I’ve picked it up a few times since, but mostly to play games with my kids. Every time I sit down and fire up a game, I get this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that reminds me I could be doing so much more with my time. It’s not that gaming is bad; it’s just that it’s rarely the most worthwhile thing to do.

When I first had my Epiphany on the Couch and dropped video games entirely for a few months, I felt pretty self-righteous and sanctimonious about it. It’s not like I picketed GameStop or even removed all consoles from my home. In fact, I never really changed my opinion about my kids playing video games. It didn’t bother me to see them bouncing around playing Dance Dance Revolution or exploring Hogwarts as a Lego minifig. I had similar experiences as a kid, after all. What I didn’t have were any memories of my parents playing video games. On some level, I came to feel that gamers who were adults, especially parents, were stunted in some way. I, having had this amazing epiphany about being a dude on the couch, thought that no dad should be a dude on the couch.

Then football season started. Not on my Xbox but in real life. And I realized I really wanted to be a dude on the couch, particularly on those Saturday afternoons when I could watch college football. Suddenly, I had a bit more empathy for those grown men playing video games. Why, they’ve probably had a hard week at work. All they want is to relax for a few hours. Who are they hurting, anyway? Some guys golf, some guys watch football, and some guys play video games. Everything in moderation, right?

So fire up the PS8 or whatever it’s up to now. Just do it when you can. Don’t neglect your wife, your kids, your dog, your job, other hobbies, and the college football season. You’ll soon find that real life is more rewarding than virtual life every time.

There are some aspects of gamer culture I will not pretend to understand, Cam.

First, I spend hours upon hours of my workday on a computer, writing, typing, editing, and so on. So just how much of my free time do I want to spend staring at a screen and pressing buttons?*

And if I really feel like I spend way too many waking hours typing on a computer, why did I agree to cowrite a book in my limited off-hours?

I’m not denying that video games can be fun. I think the last time I played a video game without my kids was at your house. And about a decade ago you introduced me to “Civ,” which is the sort of game that you start playing at 7 p.m., get really into it, and look up and realize that it’s midnight … two days later.

I admit it’s easier to be a video game un-enthusiast when you’re terrible at them. Every time I pick up a console, my characters seem to become intensely suicidal and run directly toward the dragon or monster or oncoming gunfire. And that’s while playing the Madden NFL game. Don’t ask me how. Somehow I managed to press X, up, triangle, and B simultaneously, which triggers the game’s AI to decree the owner has decided to relocate the franchise … mid-play.

Despite the statistics Cam cites, in some corners of society there is still a stigma that a grown man playing a video game is juvenile. Maybe that’s unfair or outdated, but if you’re going to make the choice to keep playing video games well into your adult years, you had better be ready to dispel those perceptions.

If you’ve got your act together in the rest of your life—a job and career path, healthy relationships, a supportive circle of friends, a reputation for reliability and responsibility—the snickering about video games ought to subside faster.

But if you don’t have those things, look out. Here’s a hint: if you want to change the “perception” of something—like, say, yourself—you have to change the reality of it. In fact, “perception” means to see things accurately.

Maybe the stigma around playing video games is unfair, as there are a lot of hobbies that can drive a man off on his own, hiding out in his man-cave: painting, woodworking, writing, some musical practice. But with all of those hobbies, a guy ends up creating something from that solitude. Even if you’re a bad painter, at the end, you’ve got paint on a canvas; you’ve created something. To reverse our president, “You built that. Somebody else didn’t make that happen.” Some people will appreciate and respect that.

With video games the absolute most you can “create” is a high score, right? I suppose you can invite people to tour around your amazing castle in Minecraft or something. But it’s a common view that online diversions like Second Life are for people who don’t have much of a first one.

Most video games are a virtual simulation of actually doing interesting things.

A friend introduces you to two guys. One man is an actual service member or veteran. The other holds the world record in Call of Duty. Which man are you more impressed by? Whose hand are you more eager to shake? Who would you rather be?

Real life experiences beat video game experiences every day of the week and twice on Sundays. For example, would you rather be a great player at Madden on the Xbox, or actually go out and play flag football with some guys? Okay, you’re not going to tear an ACL playing Xbox. It’s the difference between telling the story later of how “I burst up the middle, grabbed the flag, and sacked him” and “I pressed the correct buttons to sack him.”

Yes, there’s an issue of cost for a lot of these experiences. But let’s assume for a moment that you’ve got a decent amount of disposable income.

Would you rather play Formula One or Asphalt, or get some buddies, go to a go-kart track, and zip around for an hour or so?

Would you rather be an excellent player of Street Fighter or some other fighting game, or take a karate class?

Would you rather be a great player at Grand Theft Auto, or actually be a successful car thief? Okay, wait, maybe this exercise doesn’t work for all video games.

The point is video games, fun as they are, are simulations of actual experiences. And you shouldn’t settle for just a fun, active, exciting virtual life. You’re capable of more. To quote every wise mentor character in every adventure movie ever, you’re destined for so much more. And whatever it is you’re destined for, it’s not going to happen with you sitting on the couch, leaning left and right with the console in your hands.

Separately, how much time do you spend playing video games? Per day? Per week? That’s time you could be improving yourself by reading a book, like one of those classics you should have read but never did, or learning something—you know, like a foreign language, or about history or even politics.

Maybe more to the point, if you don’t have a serious relationship, recognize that when you get one, you’ll have less time for video games. If you don’t have a child, recognize that when you get one, you’ll have way less time for video games. (Once they get a bit older, you’ll see video games return to your life, except you’ll be watching little Lego men run around, or Dora the Explorer, or something like that.)

Again, if they really give you a sense of enjoyment that you can’t get from anything else in life, go ahead and play away. But you can’t stop people from judging you on how much time you commit to games. Here’s a student at American University, quoted in a New York Times article in 2006:

“He said he was thinking of trying to cut back to 15 hours a week,” she said. “I said, ‘Fifteen hours is what I spend on my internship, and I get paid $1,300 a month.’ That’s my litmus test now: I won’t date anyone who plays video games. It means they’re choosing to do something that wastes their time and sucks the life out of them.”*

How about we try to do some scoring in real life?

What Would Ward Cleaver Do?

That’s easy: read a newspaper, a magazine, or a book; go golfing with the guys; play basketball with his sons; tinker on projects around the house or garden; play cards with—or go out with—his wife and friends. He was a grown-up.

Put Your Phone Away

We may look back one day and realize that Millennials were the first cyborg generation. Yes, their parents were the first real wired generation, but the Millennials were the ones to go wireless. Younger Millennials have grown up with Wi-Fi, smartphones, and the ubiquitous availability of information at the push of a button (whether the information is in fact accurate is, of course, a bit of a crapshoot). Okay, smartphones, smartwatches, and the Google Glass might not be exactly the same thing as being half robot, but really, the only thing missing is the biotic implant. Imagine all the information that you’d lose if your smartphone died tomorrow and tell me you’re not using computers to supplement your own brainpower and capacity.

Millennials aren’t just the first generation to have grown up with the option of constant connectivity, many Millennials are actually constantly connected. A 2015 survey by the American Press Institute found that 51 percent of Millennials surveyed described themselves as being always or mostly online and connected. By contrast, just 10 percent of Millennials said that they were rarely or never online.* Frankly, we’re surprised the number was that high.

I didn’t grow up in a wireless world, but I was an early adopter when it came to getting online. By the time I was thirteen I had a personal computer in my room, complete with a dial-up modem, and with a few clicks of my mouse and a painfully long wait to connect, I was hooked into a much larger world. Okay, at the time it wasn’t that large. In fact, the World Wide Web was pretty boring. Mostly I would hang out on a local Bulletin Board System in Oklahoma City, where I made a few online friends. Every now and then a few of us would meet up at (I’m not kidding) a laser tag place called Photon, where we would run around blasting each other in an arena filled with artificial fog and bad synth music. No, I wasn’t a nerd. Why do you ask? Just because I played Photon and even went to a couple of BBS meetups that were hosted, of course, at our local science museum?

By the age of sixteen, I become online friends with a girl my age in Alabama. We quickly moved from chatting online to sending actual letters to a few quick phone calls (long distance was expensive). Eventually it culminated in a road trip to Alabama to hang out with her and her friends for a weekend.*

This was actually one of the rare times I violated my mom’s trust growing up. She knew that I was visiting some friends in Memphis. She just wasn’t aware that I was driving my 1973 Dodge Dart another three hours east to meet a girl. Looking back, I’m reasonably sure she actually would have been okay with it, but I wasn’t about to take the chance at the time.

Six years later I met my wife online, and about seven years after that I took a job hosting an online talk show. I’m pretty pro-Internet, and would, in fact, encourage everyone to check out National Review Online and NRA News’ Cam & Co.

But even the techies are warning about our unhealthy dependence on the Internet. In his 2010 book You Are Not a Gadget, author, programmer, and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier warned that “anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks, and lightweight mashups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned interpersonal interaction.” In 2014, philosophy professor Evan Selinger sounded the alarm in Wired magazine that “Today’s Apps Are Turning Us into Sociopaths.” Selinger worries that apps like BroApp—which sends automated “sweet” texts to your significant other so you don’t have to—might seem fun or appealing, but warns that “the more we outsource, the more of ourselves we lose.”

Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that by 2029 we’ll have reverse engineered the human brain. We’ll then have “software algorithmic methods to simulate all of the human brain’s capabilities, including our emotional intelligence.”* Kurzweil believes that computing power will also have grown exponentially, so that artificial intelligence will constantly improve itself, quickly outpacing human intelligence. This is known as The Singularity.**

Ray Kurzweil & The Singularity would be a great name for a band.

What happens when The Singularity occurs? Maybe we all really become cyborgs. Maybe computer overlords enslave the human race. Maybe the world becomes a utopian paradise. Who knows?

But the sad fact is plenty of people are already being controlled by their machines. We all know at least one person like this, right? They’re the ones who can’t have a conversation without breaking eye contact every five seconds to check their phone, look at Twitter, or continue a political argument with a stranger online. Working in the media, I know a lot of people like this; it’s encouraged. We think we need to be engaged online all the time. But I also know, from experience, that it’s better to put the phone away for extended periods, to work, walk, and play outside, to be fully focused on the person in front of you, to be part of a real community. You can say it’s a 24/7 news cycle and you have to practice “brand engagement” by constantly tweeting and posting, but you don’t; not really. No one needs you 24/7, except your family—and they deserve your full attention.