The chocolate factory.

In this tentative series, I'm going to explore how videogames and particularly online social/multiplayer ones are both better and worse than we like to think. It doesn't start from a joyous place, and I can't guarantee the end will be a happy one either, but I'm not here to sell ad space, so live with it.

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Metaphorically and not, the 'civilized' world is sinking in its own waste, and trying to keep its collective nose above the stench by slurping the goop faster than it excretes it — you'll thank me for that image later. Wherever people aren't saturated by pointless crap, they're short of essentials, while a few places such as the US of A manage the incredible feat of routinely combining both, overfeeding toxic slurry to their poorest until their brains melt whilst their bodies inflate, until they can't afford even the most basic physical or mental exertion.

That was just to get the preamble out of the way, because I don't feel like making the full inventory of the many ways we are dooming ourselves. I'm sure there are many different and valid definitions of what civilization means, but a population of mindless blobs tube-fed by hyperactive stepfordian gerbils for the benefit of sociopaths most likely doesn't meet your standards more than it does mine. If we can agree on that, let's move on.

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What I really want to talk about here is videogames, and most specifically MMOs, but not only. I'll use games because they're part of the question, and because that's a convenient vehicle for me — if the notional "10k hours of practice makes you proficient in any given trade" holds any truth to it, I'm probably some kind of 3rd dan black belt in gameology.

Here's my problem : I do love games, making and playing them, it's been a large part of my childhood, as is likely true of you too, reader, and an even larger part of my adult life, and yet I don't feel so good about that, lately. 

Designing and playing simulation, strategy, RPG and action games, on tables and on screens, has shaped my outlook on most things, from personal relationships to politics and from work ethics to parenting. On the balance, games have done me more good than harm, by a wide margin, and I count myself lucky for the help gaming and game making have been in turning me into slightly less shit of a person over the years.

Because of this, I find myself with a bit of a conundrum : when I look at what's on offer these days, at what's most likely to end up on people's phones, tablets and computer screens, I can't help but feel slightly uneasy advocating the idea videogaming is not junk food for thought, because in truth, it mostly is.

This is an apt comparison, too, because what makes junk food junk food is not that it's pizza, or meat sandwiches, or fizzy cold drinks, it's that it's those things, only made from the cheapest, most addictive and fattening, sugary, yet least nutritive crap the companies can find, with a single objective : leave you hungry and craving for more, no matter how much you gorge yourself.

In that regard, MMOs stand out as the worst culprits among videogames, because most of them are predicated on exploiting your frustration. Much like fast food, they need to offer something reasonably attractive to get you through the door, then keep you wanting for just a little more so that you stay and pay rent (subscriptions), or shell out for extras (Freemium). 

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I could make the easy and common comparison with crack or meth instead of food, for sure, but it really wouldn't be an apt analogy. The worst aspect of the whole affair is this : food and games are not unmitigated evils, they're essentials, and when done right they can play a big part in making our lives better.
If crack cocaine is a nasty virus, essentially sprawling death incarnate, games are the gut bacteria that help you process stuff (otherwise wasted or toxic), unless the wrong sort of bacteria start to proliferate in your system, and things go bad.

Metaphor overload yet ? Me too ; let's back it one step and stick to the food-games thingie.

We're omnivorous apes, and there is an argument that it's been a defining trait throughout our history, for not only did it allow our ancestors to colonize environments otherwise inhospitable, hadn't they been adventurous enough about what constitutes food, but it also favored the quick and smart learners, and contributed to boost our specific inference engine. Our weird regimen also led us to develop technologies like food making, which paved the way for chemistry, pharmacology and in the arts and aesthetics department, at least in places, cuisine.

Many other animals play, among them all mammals (afaik), at least in their young age. 

Playing is a low-cost way of learning basic skills and behavioral rules, of socializing and honing one's abilities. Those individuals who are more eager to play are more likely to end up 'good at life', and thus most of their descendants (that's us) are primed to be aroused by preset signals, when it comes to food and play.

The more is known about us as a species, the easier it gets to exploit these traits — once evolved to keep us alive and fit — to now trick us into doing stuff that isn't beneficial but in the shortest term, like scratching itches purposefully designed to get slightly worse every time we touch them. 

Much of business, economy, and culture presently revolves not around the satisfaction of needs and urges elicited by our accidental and environmental circumstances, but around engineering the precise type of frustration or anguish that will trigger our feel of want for a designated object.

So what ? Everybody does it.

True, and if you agreed on the premise that our world is turning to crap because we've made churning and eating shit a competitive pastime, you may feel a little uneasy about that.

Games are a special case among other mass market artefacts because they're powerful behavior prescriptors, and because playing is nearly as integral to our condition as eating. We simply can't go (far) without eating and playing, and what we choose (and get) to eat and play affects our sanity and capacities, among other things.

In a weird fit of mental acrobatics seldom observed outside tea-party rallies, the same gamers and game makers who will tell you how big of a deal gaming is in their life and world outlook will simultaneously and reflexively dismiss the potency of games as mind-altering devices of any harmful consequence, which is at the very best oxymoronic.

My contention is that, for better and worse, videogames are more powerful magic than the industry cares to admit, and that game designers have no excuse for their shirking the corollary duty to use this power responsibly — which doesn't entail being defensive, nor knee-jerk over anything controversial.

On a brighter note, the more we know about games and how to make them, the more good they can potentially do. If TV, the titular village idiot in the popular fiction family has finally managed to bring us stuff worth watching voluntarily in the last two decades, I want to believe videogames are not cursed to eternal mediocrity, and MMOs can aspire to better things than making professional human traffickers feel woefully inadequate at ruining people's lives.

Inevitably, I'll be talking about stuff that will rub some friends the wrong way, because of unpleasant things to contemplate, and also because Jack Thompson, but it's all for the children, and also the worthy cause of feeling OK with what you do.

Speaking of which, next episode is about how videogames really cause mass shootings, and stuff. 

Nah, just kidding — almost.

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[Sorry, no pretty pics on this wall'o'text : I suck at iconography, plus I don't have the time for it. Suggestions are welcome however, and I'll update the article if warranted.]