There’s a weird stigma that goes with teaching games. And no, I don’t mean the “do you think people are addicted to video games” question that I get every time I do a talk somewhere. Fun stats for that, though: 3 million people are “allegedly” addicted to video games (based on study statistics) but 9.2 million people are addicted to heroin (according to things like arrest records and medical reports). So if you ask me if someone is addicted to games, a person is three times as likely to be addicted to heroin, and no one thinks they can ask that question glibly at the end of an academic talk.
The stigma I’m referring to is the fun factor as it relates to rigor. This cuts two ways, and I want to illustrate both with stories.
My book, and my dissertation research, and a few of my articles, all come from a study I did over the course of a little over a year in 2010-11. I wanted to research collaboration, learning and identity formation in World of Warcraft raiders. So I found a raid group that was forming, got their consent, and spent four-to-six-hours a night three (sometimes four) nights a week with them for nine months. I also spent time during the day grinding for supplies, and I had to level a whole set of 9 characters (so I could be a utility player) up to maximum level then get the best gear for them. “Oh, you must have had so much fun with your research” some people say or “you’re just talking about the time you spent playing games.” Raiding and researching at the same time was hard work. You can ask my wife– then girlfriend– Julie. I don’t think I neglected anyone, but the research took a toll on me. It was sometimes fun, yes, and I loved my participants, but it wasn’t “fun.” It was work. It was rigorous. Anyone who thinks it was just a person playing a game for fun completely demeans the discipline and the rigor of the sort of research a person like me conducts.
But this same mentality extends to students. I teach a writing for games class. I designed it from the ground up, but it’s not unique– several programs offer such classes. One of the things I do is also not unique to my class: I have the students write for Dungeons & Dragons. Every semester many of the students do well with the assignments, and some legitimately love it. But there are always a few who protest having to learn to play D&D.
I said to one, a semester ago, “Did you take English classes in high school?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have to read Shakespeare?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“No.”
“Did you do it? Did you learn from it?”
This is the stigma. It’s a game, so it should be “fun” in the minds of many students. That’s not the point, though. I have all of my students play Depression Quest when we talk about Zoe Quinn and Gamergate. Depression Quest is not fun. It’s not meant to be fun. But it’s useful for someone trying to learn how games work.
Confession time– my example up there is also a bit of a dig I take at my original home discipline. I have degrees in English, and during my senior capstone, we got to each select three things for the whole class to read. I begged to be allowed to use one of my picks as a blackball instead of a selection. I blackballed Shakespeare. If anyone is curious, I chose Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, The Wasteland by TS Eliot, and Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu. They let me blackball Willie and still pick my 3. It was a nice moment. No one would accept my suggestion of The Prince as a reading, though.
Here’s the crux of my argument: I know the value of the Shakespeare’s work, but I don’t LIKE it. I read it, even in grad school, and I wrote about it and I admire the craft. I understand why he’s important. But reading Shakespeare is not “fun” for me. That’s not the point. That’s not the point of studying Milton or William Carlos Williams or Toni Morrison or the Brontes or Virginia Woolf. It doesn’t matter one bit which of those people I love and which I hate. My visceral opinion of their work is like my buttocks– everyone has one and few people care to see yours on display.
Games can and should be fun, when they’re in their optimum form. That’s why many classes us The Last of Us, for example. But not every game is fun for everyone, even when a game is universally praised (like Pacman— some people hate Pacman, somehow). If we are going to study games as an art, as constructed, as designed, as engineered, it doesn’t matter if you love or hate a game. What matters is that you can do the intellectual work of understanding how it works and what it is meant to do.
And that’s a stigma game studies hasn’t gotten past just yet. We’re getting closer every day, but until it is as rare as a film studies person being accused of just watching Netflix all day, game studies scholars and students studying games need to push a little harder against the counter narrative that all we do is play games. It’s degrading to our craft.