On episodes 64 and 65 of Hypercritical with John Siracusa, the topic of games appreciation resonated with me as both an intellectual curiosity and on a personal level.
Siracusa’s general thesis is that games represent a different type of art which can only be appreciated by someone with a minimum level of skill. For dance, visual arts, and literature, appreciation can be taught through focused observation. A person can appreciate Shakespeare without being able to write, can watch So You Think You Can Dance and love it with no dance training whatsoever. Gaming, not so much.
The most used example in the podcast is Portal, a game whose wickedly humorous antagonist might appeal to a huge audience. However, most will never get to experience the game because they lack the skill to even navigate an FPS, let alone solve puzzles, complete jumps, and enjoy the environment and dialogue all at once.
I found this to be intriguing. How many times have I tried to show a game to a non-gamer type—someone who might really appreciate the content—only to have them hit an insurmountable wall with some control or systems detail that I take for granted? More often than not, the obstacle is incredibly basic to a person familiar with games (like not running straight into walls) rather than, say, completing a complex, late-game puzzle.
Siracusa’s second point has to do with parents of a certain generation and their inability to see gaming as anything other than child’s play, especially the type of gaming that requires a physical skill set.
For this sort of parent (mine included) there are two issues, the first of which is the physical skill-set. They watched their children acquire those skills on a completely opaque device marketed only to children. Parents of that generation are more unlikely by the day to ever master the skills themselves and thus continue to marginalize the medium.
The second reason, Siracusa tries to articulate by using Rock and Roll as an example. I’m not sure this is the best comparison. In fact, the reason that John’s parents (and mine) may never accept gaming as an adult interest is precisely because they have no point of comparison. When they were children, the things they did became (some more slowly than others) things they once used to do. By the time they were adults, their childhood pastimes had evaporated. So, when their own children grew into adulthood, they expected the same progression.
With the combined cognitive thickness of both physical skill and lack of comparable childhood-to-adult interests, people much older than Siracusa himself could foreseeably remain impossible candidates for games appreciation indefinitely. Hopefully though, the current generation of parents will be able to share these experiences with their children even into adulthood. If this is the case, appreciation of gaming as an art form (or even an artful entertainment form) will become much more widespread.
