Last night I took a break from playing the latest expansion of World of Warcraft and browsed the news headlines where I came upon an in-depth article about how tech is changing the lives of our children. Three generations of people answered the question "what did you do as a kid to have fun?".
Some of the answers included things like berry picking, games of hide and seek, and making forts. The younger generation had a common answer - VIDEO GAMES! But they all also added something that was missing from the older generation answers. The full answer was Playing Video Games WITH FRIENDS
Of course the article tsk tsk'd about the decline of youth and the horrors of a video game culture. The same arguments that non playing oldsters have used for decades to bemoan the decline of our very civilization brought about by the gaming culture.
After I heaved a heavy sigh shaking my head at the clueless people portrayed in the article, I thought about my experience wit the WoW expansion drop. The excitement! The laughter! The fun! Pitting yourself and your character against the forces of evil intent on yet another assault on the worlds of Azeroth.
But the fun and excitement weren't experienced in a vacuum. They were shared with thousands of people online and dozens of guildmates in Discord. We were a world united against the forces of evil that danced across our collective screens.
You see, here's what I think the older generation is missing when they bash gamers. What gaming teaches us.
We learn how to co-operate to achieve a common goal. We don't know what the person on the other side of the chat and game window looks like, we may not even know their gender. We certainly don't know how much melatonin they carry in their skin. We might not even know what country they are from.
Yet we form alliances, we form friendships, we form relationships with people from all walks of life, from all parts of the world in our drive to beat back the evil bosses and minions. We celebrate together in victory. We pick ourselves up and try a new strategy when we are defeated. We help each other overcome adversity and challenges.
Isn't this the true path to world peace? Yes I know, not everyone works with their ingame cohorts, there will always be those who corpse camp, and cheat and are only concerned about their individual stats and rankings. But my generation (yes I AM an old fart) has always talked and sung and preached about the brotherhood of man and accomplishing world peace and looking past the color of someone's skin or their sexual orientation or all the inconsequential things that make them an "other" - someone other than us.
Yet for all the words, all the marches, all the sermons, the world outside of gaming seems just as fractured and hate-filled as it always was. Could it be that those mind altering video games can subtly change the people who play them? And not in the way the doom and gloom sayers would want us to believe, but in a better, more positive way?
By interacting with the online players we get a glimpse of their world, their daily lives, their culture. The first step to peace and acceptance of "others" is understanding. It's really hard to hate a group of "others" when your interaction with that group includes a heal tossed your way at the right time, or their pet tanking the boss as you recovered from the last hit.
I'm not saying that gaming will result in world peace, the end of poverty, and rainbow unicorns flying through the sky. But it sure seems to me that the alliances and relationships we form in the gaming community are a big step up from the hate spewing groups and the counter groups standing against them - both sides wanting to do nothing more than bash each other's brains in with an axe handle.
I feel sorry for the non-gamers of the world who have chosen to be left behind from the gaming experience. The sense of community, of sharing, of accomplishment. Learning to work together to reach a common goal and solve problems. The sheer joy and excitement of exploring new worlds, beating a new boss, solving a new puzzle. Those are things the detractors say they want for their kids but don't seem to see that it already exists. In the World of Azeroth and all the countless other games from Call of Duty to Fortnight to EA Sports.
The only thing that has changed between older generations and the generations of gamers is the expansion of the experience. We're no longer tied to making friends just from the pool of people in our neighborhood or our school, now we have the entire world - both the "real" one and the ingame one to choose from.
There are many positive things we can take from the gaming community, but this shared experience that crosses borders and cultural differences might very well end up being the most important - both for the world itself and for us as individual gamers.
Images used from ingame screenshots
