From August 2009.
Amanda at Pandagon linked last week to this summary of a study from the journal Sex Roles, reporting that college-aged women spent considerably less time playing video games than their male counterparts. No surprise there, but the key explanation for the discrepancy is chilling:
Our findings suggest that one reason women play fewer games than men is because they are required to fulfill more obligatory activities, leaving them less available leisure time, said Jillian Winn of MSU’s Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, and one of the co-authors of the study.
To be precise, the study found that college-aged women did sixteen hours “more work” per week (chores, jobs, and so forth). As Amanda pointed out, that finding dwarfs the discussion of video games; it points to further evidence of what Courtney Martin talks about in her marvelous Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and what on this blog is called “The Martha Complex”. Young women today are increasingly likely to be over-worked, anxious, and beset by fears of failure; a growing percentage of their brothers are hooked on pot, porn, and Playstation, prioritizing “chilling out” over virtually any other waking activity. And an extraordinary number of these lads have women in their lives — mothers, sisters, girlfriends — cleaning up after them (a traditional sex role) and providing for them financially (something of an innovation.)
This time discrepancy is rooted in many things, it seems. Of course, some of it is rooted in the contemporary cultural ideal that, as Courtney Martin says, tells girls that they “can be anything” but implies that in order to do so, that they must somehow “do everything.” Over-caffeinated, over-achieving, and over-scheduled, a great many women are beset by anxiety. But it would be wrong to suggest that the problem is primarily in women’s heads. The time gap that forces so many college-aged, childless women to work a “second shift” is indeed frequently a result of direct pressure from parents and the community.
The lower the expectations for male behavior, the higher the expectations for female success and self-control. This is not only obvious and axiomatic, it has real-life repercussions in the lives of a great many young women. Many of my students come from immigrant families in which there are strict household divisions of labor; women cook and clean, men take out trash and fix cars. Given that cooking, cleaning, and laundry are daily and time-consuming activities compared to mowing lawns or emptying garbage cans, many of my female students take the same academic loads as their brothers while doing twice as much work at home. In many families, a young man is encouraged to do his homework so that he can then go out with his friends and play video games; his sister is told to help with the chores, and when everything else is done, she can then turn to her own homework.
In some families, a daughter’s academic achievement is less important than that of a son, and hence she is expected to do more traditional “women’s work” in addition to (and usually before) her studies. But from what I can tell from my students, the pressure to succeed academically falls equally on girls and boys. The difference is that the family tends to assume that sons aren’t as capable of doing laundry or handling the grocery shopping or washing up the dishes. Boys are allowed to be more single-minded in their focus on success, while their sisters are expected to perform traditional female roles as well as earning straight As. With that in mind, it’s not hard to account for an extra 16 hours of work per week.
Young women with the Martha Complex also tend to have a sense of near-panic about running out of time. Most Marthas set timetables for themselves: “I will have my degree at 22, meet my future husband by the time I’m 24, have my law degree at 26 and buy a house in the suburbs at 29.” Warned over-and-over again about the dangers of waiting too long to start a family; warned to get a good education with a good job so that they “won’t have to rely on a man”, a great many young women have one eye on the calendar, watching with a barely suppressed sense of panic as their carefully designed plans crumble beneath the weight of too much to do and too little time in which to do it. A sour economy cuts jobs and cuts college course offerings, wreaking further havoc with the precious — but whoppingly unrealistic — timetables. And while their brothers might take advantage of a slumping economy to live at home indefinitely, protesting that “since there’s no work and all the classes are closed, I have no choice but to play Halo all day”, young women grow even more frantic, often doubling up on work or taking classes simultaneously at different colleges. Helping out a struggling family and sticking to that damn timetable leaves little time or energy for video games. Apparently, on average, 16 hours per week less.
We do need to do a much better job of offering reassurance to young women, carefully noting the ways in which we as adults or peers inculcate and reinforce perfectionism. But we cannot escape the reality that we pressure our daughters more as a result of pressuring our sons less; high expectations for girls are linked to an unwillingness to hold young men to an equally high standard. The peddlers of the notion that we have a boy crisis in this country tell us our boys can’t sit still, can’t focus as well, can’t develop intellectually as rapidly as girls. As that notion of male weakness becomes ever more widespread, the hopes and dreams of families get foisted on to daughters, who are presumed to be both more compliant and more capable of following direction. The less we expect from our sons, the more crushing the burden we place on their sisters. This doesn’t mean we ought to return to beating inattentive third-grade boys. It does mean that we need to recognize that our current consensus that boys develop more slowly than girls has devastating repercussions in the lives of our daughters.
Boys can sit still, focus, and work. And in order to create a more balanced adolescent culture; in order to create a more egalitarian world; in order to reduce the pressure on our daughters we must raise the expectations on our sons to the point that all of our expectations are equal. Until we do that, the anxiety epidemic will claim more victims.
“Amanda at Pandagon linked last week to this summary of a study from the journal Sex Roles, reporting that college-aged women spent considerably less time playing video games than their male counterparts.”
Women-in-college is not the same as college-aged women. The study looked at the former.
Heh, well, as an avid gamer geek, I will say- uh, let’s not knock the dudes here, but rather address the women and the apparent compulsion they have to not allow themselves relaxation time. That I don’t see necessarily as men’s fault, at least not in whole. I mean, I think gender roles suck, and sure enough, some people shake them and some people don’t, and yes, culturally women do often feel as if they have got to be perfect and stress out over it- in every way- from looks to keeping a perfectly clean….dorm room? But I am not gonna blame the Play Station Fella’s for this- nor just men. Much of this stuff can come on down to women from the other women in their lives too- if Mom set an example where she did ALL the chores and looked good while Dad chilled in his jeans and watched the game- and she was just TOLD this is how it was- there is a shared blame for that. It would be my opinion that women need to be told it is OKAY to relax and do things they enjoy, so HOW does THAT happen? Any suggestions?
I mean, I pretty much do all the cleaning in my house, not because Mr. E wont, but hell, he works 12 hour days a lot and brings in more money than me, and well, I LIKE shit to be clean and in order, and it has to be done to my specs- but hell, I can get that done in a few hours and whatnot, which does leave PLENTY of time for me to get serious with my gaming….
I have to completely disagree with Mr. Ren here. The problem isn’t that women have too little video-game time, the problem is that men have too much. I’d venture to suggest that the optimum amount of time men spend playing video games, in a spiritually healthy society, would be zero.
Re: a growing percentage of their brothers are hooked on pot, porn, and Playstation,
I must confess that as much as I dislike Mr. Schwyzer’s views, and find them outrageous, I’m greatly indebted to him for this colourful expression ‘Pot, Porn, and Playstations’, which I hope he doesn’t take a proprietary view towards. It sums up the moral vacuum and cultural decadence of our time better then I ever could.
I wonder if there’s another dynamic at play as well – something I see in the youth group at church. Parents are much more protective of their daughters – I see them schedule their daughters for far more activities and fill more of their time than they do their sons. The girls are trained from a very early age to stay busy – they learn busy-ness, dashing from place to place. (In some ways, they are mimicking their mothers who dash from place to place, task to task, eternally swamped with activities.) By contrast, parents seem much more casual toward their sons’ time – less protective so less concerned with structuring it. I know this is close to the idea about expectations, but it’s also a little different; protectiveness, the belief that daughters are more vulnerable and therefore need to be kept more engaged, more busy, more occupied lest they go astray.
Sadly, my brother and I fit this concept stereotypically well, but with a twist ending. He was allowed to do essentially anything he wanted with little or no expectations, while I was expected to get good grades, help my mother with chores on our farm, and do extra curricular schoolwork. He claimed to be unable to even boil water, so no one bothered to make him do it. He would even brag that if he did the laundry bad enough, my mother would never make him do it again (which was true, after the first couple of times she didn’t). It was always obvious that my parents had high hopes for their son and would often talk to others (even in my presence) of all the things they imagined he would go on to do and how proud he would make them. As a ‘good Christian girl’ I was told that marriage and children would be the epitome of my existence.
The irony is that today, my brother is unwed, unemployable, and still living at home. I became estranged from my family, have worked steadily for all of my adult life (even during college) and am currently in a graduate program pursuing my doctorate. I also like video games.
My point in this anecdote, however, is that in our case, it wasn’t a question of my parents having high expectations of me (they didn’t) or low expectations of my brother. My brother was raised within a dream of his own exceptionalism, but met reality and summarily hit the ground hard and gave up. Everything had been easy for him, so he thought it should continue to be. (His words, he “deserved it, after all.”) I was raised to find a man to care for me and then accept what came my way, and to think of it as a gift. I didn’t. That life was no gift.
But now I do feel the pressure to ‘do everything’ because I have internalized the idea that, if I fail, it is because I didn’t do enough.
Hector:
Uh, I’m not a Mr. I’m female. As for how people spend their free time, I am of the mind so long as they take care of the things they need and are supposed to do; work, kids, take showers, keep up their living spaces and such, pay taxes, well then- if they are adults, they can do as they please. If one chooses to spend all their free time playing video games, that is their choice and not really anyone else’s place to tell them differently
I agree with Hugo’s main point that the less responsibility we give men, the more women have to pick up the slack, which is bad for everyone. But, seriously, I’m tired of this persistent meme that, whenever someone needs an example of a slothful or unworthy activity, especially in reference to men, video games are the go to for that. First off, plenty of women play video games too. Secondly; there is nothing wrong, at all, with playing video games as long as it doesn’t become a habit that negatively impacts other areas of your life, and for the vast majority of gamers it doesn’t.
Hector, what exactly do you mean by a “spiritually healthy” society, and what about it would leave no room for video games?
Re: Uh, I’m not a Mr. I’m female.
Sorry for the confusion. I didn’t actually read your post, past the first half-sentence, so you might have made your gender clear later on, and I simply didn’t notice.
The original paper unfortunately doesn’t give a complete time breakdown by gender, but so far as I can tell from what they report in the result summaries, it’s interesting to note that:
The 16h difference between male and female students appears to be almost entirely accounted for by female students spending more time on paid work, implying that homework time was about the same for both groups.
The difference in reported “free time” is much less than 16h, about 4.5h. The time men aren’t spending on paid work is apparently being filled by something else they don’t regard as “free time” activity.
Time spent gaming was uncorrelated with GPA. Perhaps people “know their limit” when gaming, spend time gaming they wouldn’t have spent studying anyway, or gaming is positively correlated with academic ability, so those doing more gaming can “afford”, in a sense, to take a higher hit to their grades.
Why is this always so surprising? In every study they do of women, men and housework, it shows without fail a huge gap between men and women just on numbers of housework hours. I have been reading these studies since the mid-1970s. If women are getting paid 77 to 75 cents on every male dollar, we have that to deal with as well, and if we are black women the gap is bigger. So pay is an issue, hours are an issue, and the whole set up of a het household is the issue. It’s why women should never live with men, or clean up for them EVER. Men need to step up and do all the extra work, they need to pay women 25 cents on the dollar in corporate reparations since these statistics became available. I do my own reparation: I pay women $1.00 for every .75 cents I pay men. I do this in restaurants— waitresses get more, men who don’t do 110% will always get less. When women calculate every dime given to male supremacy, every hour they are used by men in the home, the potential of this household revolution is huge. In Iceland, about 90% of the women went on strike in 1975, and we need to be doing this in the US as well. What are your male hours vs. your wife’s hours? — keep track Hugo, and give us a full report of what day to day equality really looks like. The personal is the political, and I’m willing to bet the stats pretty much match the national averages.
I love math for the very reason that is documents inequality…. at board meetings I time the number of minutes women and men speak, and come up with monthly charts. Men don’t like it when the clock is ticking, and we are keeping tract of every second they talk. We need to do the math on everything!
Re: Perhaps people “know their limit” when gaming,
Many American youths don’t seem to ‘know their limit’ when it comes to overindulgence in drugs, sex, alcohol, sugar, fatty foods, and television, so I doubt they know their limits when it comes to video games. In general, it’s a bad idea to assume that people are good judges of what is good for them.
“In general, it’s a bad idea to assume that people are good judges of what is good for them.”
That is a very dangerous statement. If it is assumed that I am unable to ‘judge what is good for me’, who gets to? The government? religion?
The issue of excessiveness has more to do with indulging in something to the point of harm, to oneself or to others. Having a drink is not the problem, drinking until you fall over in the street and neglect your family is. Playing a video game is not a problem, playing video games to the detriment of managing a functioning life is.
Yes, people have the capacity to make bad decisions, but that doesn’t mean the answer is to have something else step in and do it for you.
There’s also the very real dynamic—for women who don’t live in a coastal Feminist Paradise(TM)—that in order for employers (or even college professors) to sit up and take notice of a woman’s skills (and especially a *young* woman’s skills), she needs to do more and be flawless while doing it. For all the blather about young men and their video games, there are still more employers who perceive young men as leadership material, but not women. Women simply have to bring more to the table, whether it’s on a resume or curriculum vitae.
It’s also important to note that young men have greater opportunities for socializing at work, whether with peers or higher-ups. Women don’t always get those “invites”, or have to negotiate their way through multiple cultural landmines when they do (both of the above by an exponential factor when entering a de-facto “men’s” occupation). So…that extra “busyness” (as other posters have pointed out, is in the form of paid work) is a work-around to ameliorate the drawbacks to competing in traditionally sexist arenas. If schmoozing isn’t an option, achievements and hard work can take its place.
“Martha” (an analogy I’m totally unfamiliar with, btw) isn’t functioning in a vacuum. She’s doing her damndest to make the most of what she has to deal with. This hasn’t changed since I was a kid, Hugo—not in the greater nonfeminist world. I was told in no uncertain terms–and not just by women, but men too–that I’d basically have to have more going for me if I wanted the same opportunities as the men (usually phrased “you’ll have to be twice, three, ten, *x* times as good as the average man”). And yeah, this is the advice I’m giving my daughter, because it is still true.
The problem isn’t low expectations for young men. The problem is that far too many people still have low expectations for young women, unless they’ve proven themselves by going above and beyond the standard.
La Lubu, good point. The reference is Scriptural (though it also owes a hat tip to Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale). I explain it in my first Martha post:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2007/03/12/fourteen-marthas-not-one-mary-a-retreat-report-and-a-long-meditation-on-girls-pressure-parents-and-people-pleasing/
La Lubu is absolutely right about employment and college. Women do have to be better.
I’ve discovered this by accident over the years many times. One time, I discovered that I had done double the production of my male colleagues before I got the same promotion, another time, I found out they promoted some men early who hadn’t done it by the book. They gave an idiot an entire regulatory class to teach… he had no teaching experience, I had had classroom experience for over 10 years. His entire class flunked the test, and only then did the branch manager say I could teach the class — 100% of the students passed when I taught the class.
So men can be total bums, they can be average, they can goof off in school, knowing full well that patriarchy will take care of them.
What I advocate is women NOT taking care of men or doing ANY housework at all. Just stop doing it. Ideally, women should not be living with men, because just being in the house with them will increase your work load. There has to be an extreme change.
I wasn’t aware that the coast is a feminist paradise. I work with a bunch of men who are probably the most sexist, clueless on earth. They hire about 93-94% white men for jobs, almost 98% of the support staff is female. Hmmm.
We have a male dominated supreme court that thinks women at Wall Mart aren’t a class, and that the company didn’t discriminate against 1.5 million women employees, but what happens to the women at Wall Mart when they get home in the evening or after their shift is up? Do they have to cook dinner, clean and “take care” of husbands or boyfriends?
The coasts are no different from the interior. Men, if you go to church, stay out of “leadership” position and DO ALL THE SUPPORT work— clean the church, cook the food for the fundraisers, take out the garbage, polish the floors, don’t let women ever make another pot of coffee again. Don’t force your penis inside a woman’s vagina ever, unless you intend to take care of the child 24/7. Do all the work, and the aftercare, after your paid job, refuse all promotions if you see women getting left behind, refuse all raises until the women get paid first. Step to the back of the bus white men and clean up the mess you have made. Let women do the fun work, teach the college classes, write the books, play the oboe… you set the dinner on the table, and handle all the support staff work for the next 40 years, then we’ll evalulate your progress. DO ALL THE SUPPORT HOUSEWORK, extra studying. It’s not about video games, it’s about male supremacy, and male ignorance of women’s situation… oh and never ever let a woman take YOUR LAST NAME ever! Men take women’s last names. Shine my shoes too while you’re at it, and don’t expect a tip ever. If your a straight white man, do all the sh– work all the time every time without question. Just do it and shut up, stop commenting on these stupid studies that say the same thing endlessly…. yeah, men are lazy slave owners, so what else is new?
@SheilaG – I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the reason people at your board meetings don’t like you timing them and producing charts about how many seconds they talk is because it’s unbelievably rude and damaging to healthy group dynamics. Such behaviors usually lead to dysfunctional boards and meetings. And let’s be honest, you seem to believe in making positive changes and then choose exactly the kinds of tactics that will guarantee people think you’re a complete nutter and ignore you. It’ll go down in institutional history “Oh do you remember when SheilaG used to time what everyone said ha ha ha.”
And let’s also take a look at the effectiveness of your timekeeping as actual, applied effort at effecting change. Does everyone in the room have equal skill, experience, knowledge and training? If not, the less skilled, experienced, knowledgeable and trained persons would speak less than their peers. Does everyone in the room have an equal stake in or knowledge about the topics of discussion? As for example, if your discussing say the budget and the financial people are three men, then obviously they’ll speak more. Or, maybe, just maybe, the men are speaking more because they feel more strongly or maybe the women are speaking less because they are new to the board. Simply keeping track of who speaks and for how long is downright cute but not really an accurate measure of what is said and by whom.
Ah. Exchange during Army basic training, where I was waiting for my turn on the firing range between me and my Airborne Ranger drill sergeant:
Him: , what I don’t get is what you’re doing here. You, and and
Me: (bewildered and wary, because I had thought he thought I was a good soldier based on some previous episodes, but You Never Knew with drill sergeants) Huh?
Him: I don’t get why some of you girls are doing this, especially you three. Some of the other girls, okay, but you three, any man would be happy to just give you whatever you wanted.
Me: (doing my best to hide my horror at the suggestion I think he’s making, since that isn’t a reaction you’re allowed to have to anything a drill sergeant says to you in basic training) Uh…I don’t think I really want to be a prostitute, drill sergeant–
Him: (rolling his eyes) I didn’t mean that. I meant marry you.
Me: (relieved that I’d misunderstood him, and wanting to explain to his obviously genuine bewilderment while not offending him!) Well…I want to give things to myself, drill sergeant…
I didn’t really have the philosophical or feminist background at age 18 to explain what I did mean, but Holly’s post brought that all back.
And that drill sergeant did think I was a good soldier…for a girl. In line with La Lubu’s post above, after spending my entire adult life either as a soldier, an engineering student and a professional engineer, the sad fact is that I have always had to be better than my male colleagues, simply to be considered equal to them. They expected it, and I expected it, because I had long ago internalized that if I wanted to play boys’ games, I had to be more than just a girl–and if I didn’t want to be “some of the girls, yeah, I see why they HAVE to do this work but YOU” then I had to be a super-girl as well. But not in a way that conflicted with being a super-boy.
Meh. One of the more annoying themes in my life, I must say.
the sad fact is that I have always had to be better than my male colleagues, simply to be considered equal to them. They expected it, and I expected it, because I had long ago internalized that if I wanted to play boys’ games, I had to be more than just a girl–and if I didn’t want to be “some of the girls, yeah, I see why they HAVE to do this work but YOU” then I had to be a super-girl as well. But not in a way that conflicted with being a super-boy.
OMFG. This, this, this-this, this-this, THIS!
SheilaG, I was being a bit facetious when I referred to the coasts as “feminist paradise”…but it really IS more feminist on the “blue” coasts of the US than it is even in the “blue” sections of the rust belt. I mean, objectively so. There are more women who’ve made inroads into predominantly male workplaces on the coasts than in the middle. That’s huge, because that sets the stage for generational change.
I would like to thank Jebedee for finding the original study. This is not the first time I have disagreed with Hugo’s interpretation of published work.
There is a jump presented here from “men have more free time than women” to “men are lazy” that just doesn’t make sense (for what other interpretation of the statement “[T]heir brothers might take advantage of a slumping economy to live at home indefinitely, protesting that ‘since there’s no work and all the classes are closed, I have no choice but to play Halo all day’” have than to suggest laziness in men?).
Additionally, Hugo appears to be presenting a straw-man version of an actual issue surrounding ADD diagnosis in boys verses girls. Going back almost a decade (here’s an early article: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-10-09/features/0210090015_1_adhd-stephen-hinshaw-boys ) there has been serious concern that more boys are diagnosed with ADD than girls because ADD tends to present with hyperactivity in boys but in girls it tends to present with daydreaming and zoning out. The result is a shift towards potentially over-diagnosing, and consequently over-medicating, young boys. This is a serious issue that, for better or worse, many MRA groups have taken up. Perhaps in his rush to dismiss MRAs, Hugo seems to want to replace actual debate with the statement “the current generation of men are lazy because some of my students are lazy.” This is neither helpful nor responsible.
Though I’ll probably get morally chastised for agreeing with this, it’s probably the only solution to the problem being described. The PPP guys aren’t going to start taking up these duties without a carrot, even if you try and apply a little stick. Probably they’ll just go undone, but that’s probably preferable anyways (Men doing chores just because their mom/girlfriend/wife thinks they should want the outcome is only a recipe for making everyone miserable.)
Hector: A true sign of arrogance and ignorance is saying out of hand you disagree with someone when you’ve read not even a complete sentence…on top of mistaking their gender.
Brian, et all: The stop doing house work is nice in theory, unless you share the living space. Be it a man who does no chores or a slob of a roommate or what have you, that ONLY works if you can stand living in filth and clutter too. I for one cannot.
Brian: But the real problem isn’t whether the baseboards get scrubbed. It’s that one person is leaving the other an unfair portion of work that should be shared. That is disrespectful and is, in effect, saying “I am willing to steal time from your life for my own benefit.”
I agree with Ren on this one. I don’t remember which cousin or cousin in law it was, but one of my female relations got made at her male only household and stopped cleaning, cooking etc. The guys basically shrugged and said, “We can do our own laundry,” and that was it. In about three weeks my relation simply could not stand it another second and went into a frenzy of cleaning, washing, scrubbing, cooking. It won’t work, it doesn’t work because it’s a simplistic solution to a complex problem (I’ve also slept with enough men who a neatniks to know it’s also not nearly as gendered as you might imagine).
It comes back to what I was saying somehwere in these discussions about communication. We gotta talk to each. Nothing works if we don’t communicate. What if lots of women are sweeping, mopping, dusting, disinfecting, wiping, cleaning because they thing they have to because their husbands expect it and their husbands don’t expect it. Communicate, communicate, communicate and then do it some more.
If I may interject: I agree with Asmo here. Video games are consistently and quickly referred to whenever a “waste of time” is needed. I’m rather tired of that. It bothers me that, as a default, video games are considered a negative thing, and at best they are a neutral “waste of time”. They’re regarded in a similar light as soap operas or trashy romance novels or the Transformers movies. Mindless entertainment that should be limited and, as Hector said above, ideally not partaken of at all.
That’s not ok.
Sorry for the divergence here, but I’m really not qualified in any way to comment on feminist discourse. I am as gender-equality-is-great as they come, but my perspective is biased and inexperienced, and I’d likely be shouted out as naive and misinformed. So I’ll stay quiet on that. But I do know a decent amount about video games. So, that is what I will talk about.
Regarding video games as by nature a waste of time or just sort of neutrally tolerable is a terrible mistake. If, as Hector said, the ideal amount of time spent on video games in a spiritually healthy society is zero, then they are inherently harmful or at the very least not beneficial.
If this is the case, one might as well say that we should also spend no time reading books, or considering paintings, or watching movies, or pondering philosophical questions, or attending plays, or inspecting our own existence. If we should spend no time playing video games, then we should spend no time with the other arts as well.
Art is a pursuit that is both vital to our personal and cultural health. Cultures cannot exist without art. Art provides us the greatest insight to the existence of others – both current and historic – as well as helping us understand ourselves. Art is vital to us.
The problem at hand here is twofold: one, that video games aren’t regarded as a legitimate and thoroughly worthwhile form of art, and two, that most mainstream video games are really bad art anyways. Yeah, there are parts of them that are artistic, such as level design, the music, the emotional investments and inductions, the artwork, etc. but as a whole, Modern Warfare 2 is not really any more artistic than, say, Transformers 2. It’s entertainment, and should probably be treated as such.
The first part, as mentioned above: games aren’t considered art. Well, the ambiguity, subjectivity, and complexity of what someone considers art is a problem that we won’t attempt to get into. However, let’s instead use the more analytical definition: Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect. Yes, that’s from Wikipedia. It will serve our purposes for now.
Art is, for all intents and purposes, an interaction between the art and the viewer/reader/whatever-er. The goal is to tell a story, to set a scene, to create an image that has an effect on the person who ends up partaking of your art. To inspire sadness or joy or introspection or political thought, or to give them a new perspective, or to simply engage them in an aesthetic experience. The best art is not static – it is not something that is just… there. It’s not just to be observed or read and then put away once you’re “done” with it. The best art is the kind that engages you thoroughly, that allows you to immerse yourself in it and lets you discover or experience things about the world, yourself or others.
Video games are, by nature, interactive. They are incomplete without a player. Without delving too deeply into quantum physics, a painting exists in the same state with or without someone observing it. A video game needs and relies on a player. Interactivity and engagement are bored immovably deep into the core of the medium.
Now, what about the second thing? Most common landmarks of video games – Halo, Call of Duty, Mario franchise, etc… well, they’re really not that good of art. They are art, they’re just bad art. Great entertainment, but bad art. The best of video games are the ones that nobody really sees, the little experimental flash games that sometimes barely deserve the classification or the independent games that aren’t relying on millions of sales and expensive marketing campaigns to break even. Games like Sleep is Death, But That Was [Yesterday], or The Void.
This isn’t to say that more expensive, larger titles can’t be valuable or worthwhile. The most obvious example here is Shadow of the Colossus or Ico, but what Team Ico does with their time and money is, unfortunately, not terrible representative of what the rest of the industry does. It is an industry, after all. It’s got all the problems of money-focused development, sequelitis, and franchising that Hollywood does, but ten times over. It is also a young industry, and has not had time to truly develop its standards yet, and will continue to evolve and mature as time goes on.
So yeah. In the end, “normal” video games like Call of Duty, Halo, etc. are probably just entertainment, and that’s all they’re really trying to be. Yes, everything in moderation. Yes, spending 10 hours a day playing Black Ops probably isn’t healthy or helpful to anyone. But to dismiss an entire medium – one of the most powerful and valuable ones that humanity has ever encountered – because most of them are pretty bad at being art – is a terrible mistake.
Video games are amazing. Imagine what it’d be like if they were any good.
This is a great article, with some good comments too. Lisakansas, like with La Lobo, this really turned a lightbulb on in my head as resembling my attitude and experiences uncomfortably closely:
the sad fact is that I have always had to be better than my male colleagues, simply to be considered equal to them. They expected it, and I expected it, because I had long ago internalized that if I wanted to play boys’ games, I had to be more than just a girl–and if I didn’t want to be “some of the girls, yeah, I see why they HAVE to do this work but YOU” then I had to be a super-girl as well. But not in a way that conflicted with being a super-boy.
This study is fascinating and has brought up points I’ve never considered. However, I have to admit, I also believe there are other – more simple – explanations as well that should also be considered.
For instance, what’s the difference between gaming, watching football all evening, or grabbing beers with friends? I wonder if the issue isn’t so much “gaming” as it is – more free time and less fire under their ass to succeed in other areas of their life.
My question is, why does it seem the sense of “urgency” to accomplish goals or dreams and the “responsibility” to do so, is waning?
Early in our marriage, my husband and I often fought about his gaming. To be blunt, I thought it was immature and terribly unattractive to watch a grown man getting worked up over video games. He’s now a bit too busy to even think about gaming, but he’s always said it’s about competition and nothing else. He has a drive to compete and win – and if he isn’t playing sports or watching a good game, then he wants to satiate this desire to be competitive.
I also think that the obsession with gaming isn’t a entirely different then spending hours on social media sites or on the Internet in general. Culturally, there’s no doubt we’re shifting towards less time in our reality and more time an alternative cyber realities – which is whole other bag of worms.
That doesn’t denote the points made here, in the study or in the comments – but I do think it’s another explanation to this phenomenon.
@Mythago – you can frame it that way if you wish, but someone who doesn’t care if the baseboards get scrubbed or not isn’t going to perceive it as for their benefit (and probably not for anyone’s benefit). Whether they should or not. So their calculus will always be different.
Re: Hector: A true sign of arrogance and ignorance is saying out of hand you disagree with someone when you’ve read not even a complete sentence…on top of mistaking their gender
Er, aren’t you folks the ones who are always saying that gender isn’t real? If that’s the case, then it shouldn’t matter if I mistake you gender right?
Sometimes you can tell from the first half-sentence how silly a person’s argument is, and it’s not worth your time or your intelligence to read the rest.
And in this case, the half sentence in question was:
“Heh, well, as an avid gamer geek, I will say….”
which was enough to tell me that I disagreed with the rest of your post.
Hector,
How do you plan on ever having anyone accept the points you are trying to get across when your posts are made up of thinly veiled insults and admissions that you don’t care what others have to say?
“Sometimes you can tell from the first half-sentence how silly a person’s argument is, and it’s not worth your time or your intelligence to read the rest.”
That goes both ways Hector. I find many of your arguments to be silly and ignorant as well but I take the time to read your responses and address your argument. This is another example of the purpose of discourse I posted in an earlier reply to you. If you want respect for your voice in this exchange, you must give it.
Yay shared experiences! Now we must find a fun happy one to share, ’cause that one isn’t so much.
Hector: Well, actually, I don’t have too many issues WITH gender-I’m female, and rather happy with that actually. Solid Gender Roles bother me, because they are, in essence, stupid. I mean, yeah, I’m female, but terrible at baking cakes and stuff- yet you put a wrench in my hand I am a mad genius….but solid old school gender roles say women cook, men fix cars, and well, shit like that just doesn’t work for me (and frankly, I think ALL humans should know how to at least change a tire!)
Mike, Holly, ect….
No need to worry, Hector did not hurt my feelings or anything, he just proved himself to be rather….typical…one of those folk who makes a ton of judgments and assumptions ’cause he figures he need not listen to anyone or exchage ideas with those who he deems to be lesser than himself. Hence, arrogant and ignorant..and my statement non-relevant because I am a “gaming geek”…which I am. I’m also a gym rat, history buff, self proclaimed hick and I like to draw….but hey, the arrogant and ignorant are nothing without their assumptions and dismissals and stereotypes, right???
And sure enough, I actually READ what Hector says, agree with it or not, and that has allowed me to come to the conclusion that Hector thinks he is aces and better than everyone.
@SheilaG
If your a straight white man, do all the sh– work all the time every time without question.
Oh Sheila, haha, no…
Brian: what they “should” care about is that the work is shared fairly. If one person doesn’t perceive baseboard-scrubbing as a necessary task at all, then that’s a separate issue.
“But we cannot escape the reality that we pressure our daughters more as a result of pressuring our sons less; high expectations for girls are linked to an unwillingness to hold young men to an equally high standard. The peddlers of the notion that we have a boy crisis in this country tell us our boys can’t sit still, can’t focus as well, can’t develop intellectually as rapidly as girls. As that notion of male weakness becomes ever more widespread, the hopes and dreams of families get foisted on to daughters, who are presumed to be both more compliant and more capable of following direction.”
This seems pretty speculative. It might be that girls tend to be both more ambitious and anxious than men. Seems like a simpler explanation.
In any case, if someone’s in college they should start setting their own goals. If you’re trying to live up to someone else’s expectations at that age, you’re not living your life, you’re living someone else’s. That’s a much bigger problem, imho, than anxiety and lack of leisure time.
“But we cannot escape the reality that we pressure our daughters more as a result of pressuring our sons less; high expectations for girls are linked to an unwillingness to hold young men to an equally high standard.”
BTW, who is this we? It seems to imply everyone has the same parenting style. That everyone is guilty of this biased style of upbringing. As if there is no diversity on this issue. Is that really the case?
@Ren – if this is the same Hector who used to post around here with just the first name (and he sure writes like the same guy), believe me, he’s not better than anyone else. By a long shot.
As if there is no diversity on this issue. Is that really the case?
I suspect it is not.
Hugo, bless him, often writes in hugely broad generalizations. This is one of those times.
Re: ’cause he figures he need not listen to anyone or exchage ideas with those who he deems to be lesser than himself.
Yup, you figured correctly. I am not a believer in the modern liberal-democratic conceit that all opinions should have a place in the public discourse, or that all viewpoints are worthy of respect. We don’t let the five year olds decide what to cook for dinner, after all, and neither should we let those viewpoints which are morally and intellectually childish- and I mean to condemn both cultural liberalism and capitalist conservatism with the same contempt- have a respected place in civilised discource.
Hector: Heh, you make me laugh. At least yer good for something!