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Nabeel Hyatt (who was kind enough to leave a comment here the other day) quoted the Chief Creative Officer at EA Games yesterday:
Bing Gordon (chief creative officer at EA) where Bing said something that has stayed with me: “virtual worlds will be a rite of passage for every teenager”.
(An aside – funny how the CCO doesn’t actually rate a mention in the list of ’senior officers’ whilst all the accountants do. Anyway…)
Now I’m with Joseph Campbell on this one. Rites of passage, or the lack of same, are a yawning gulf in our sad sack excuse for a society (yes, it’s been a bad day). And my knee jerk reaction to the idea of video games being a substitute is one of horror. But thinking about it in more measured terms, I’m not so sure. If the goal of a rite of passage is just that – a passage from one state of being to another – why should we turn up our noses at the idea of a virtual environment providing the means? Think about the rites of the Aborigines or the Ancient Greeks (or many others). They might be bloodier or more in tune with a sensibility still very much geared to Christianity in the West (and how about the anodyne dress-up games of confirmation or first communion, anyone?) but the means and goals are still those of creating an environment for expressing a mystery, a sense of touching something beyond oneself and being transformed. For a kid who’s never seen the countryside and for whom the last tiger will probably be hunted down well within their lifetime, World of Warcraft may well be the only option left.
Better that than Millsbury, right?
Filed under: spirituality | Tagged: social networks, teens, video games, virtual worlds
Great reading on your blog by the way. I’m the father of a two-year-old so I’m known to worry now and then myself (http://kadenhyatt.blogspot.com).
Ultimately I do not think we should worry about virtual worlds, per say. It can certainly be more engaging and enlightening than passive mediums like television. Just as in the real world, exploring a place can be a very important experience, as long as we are careful about what kinds of places they are exploring.
Maybe I’m being dense this evening, but I’m not getting how virtual worlds provide rites of passage. I checked my favorite source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rite_of_passage
and I don’t see how gaming could be “a ritual that marks a change in a person’s social or sexual status,” or includes any of van Gennep’s three stages (well, I can see separation, but since it’s repeated every time you fire up the game then it’s not much of a mark of change).
Maybe Gordon meant that virtual worlds would be a rite of passage in that younger children don’t go there, so they mark a stage of maturity?
Thanks Nabeel – I’ll definitely have to go and pay your less (I’m assuming) business focused blog a visit! By habit and inclination I’m inclined to agree in the long term – but that doesn’t mean that our attitudes shouldn’t be critical in the best sense.
Hi Henitsirk – well, as the article in the Washington Daily comments, it’s not necessarily a boy thing. Perhaps a more approachable analogy would be the things that one goes through in High School? But I do wonder whether anyone’s done any research on the common tropes of bloody re-enacted violence that both many initiation rites and video games have in common – the missing, crucil component (provided by massive multiplayer games) is the social one as opposed to the formerly solipsistic nature of first person shooters. The experience of a networked game with real people as opposed to AI or bots is genuinely very different. I’d like to find time to expand on that but dudelet’s just waking up!
I wonder whether the violent, bloody parts are necessary? I’m thinking about other rituals like first communion, bar mitzvah, and quineceanera (can’t get the tilde on that one). Those definitely have the social element. And I’m still not convinced that MMPG’s have a truly social element. Yes, you’re working with real people, but in a completely mediated way. In the same way that we’re having a conversation about this right now.