The Idea of Playing with Perspective

INTRO: Just as a precursor, this is a short essay I wrote about what video games mean and the definition of Playing with Perspective. For those who don’t know Playing with Perspective is the radio show that I’ve started with a good friend of mine, but it's so much more than that. It’s a game-centric college radio show, all about analysis and perspective hosted by KMET Radio and The Metropolitan State University of Denver. Besides this, it's a way of thinking and a way of approaching games and defining them as art. I hope you find something to enjoy in this piece, or find some kind of food for thought. Just as an aside you can listen to Playing with Perspective every Tuesday and Thursday from 6:30-7:30 P.M. mountain-time streaming from http://mymetmedia.com/listen/. Thank you for reading.

Playing with Perspective. That’s a title that denotes a multitude of different meanings. It isn’t a title that was chosen at random, and its purpose is to frame the tone and intention of an entire show but can also mean different things to different people.

Video games are a medium that has advanced to a startling degree over the decades since their advent. They are something that was integral to my childhood and my development. Having two divorced parents that went through a malicious custody battle for years was traumatizing, games were dually my escape and my savior. I learned morals and the way to treat people, partially from the stories and experiences I gained in video games. 

To this day video games as an art form and an industry remain something that stokes a fiery passion within me.  A passion for many things; the stories we can tell, the ways we connect and bring people together, the bonds we can form over games, the beautiful music we can produce for games, and the ways we can bring all of these aspects together in the world of interactive media.

 Growing up everyone had that job that they wanted to do, that thing they wanted to be. Some wanted to be a fireman, an astronaut, a police man. Except me, I was the child that never said they wanted to be anything. With that in mind going into college I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do, I was listed as biology major initially. I spent a year floundering, just completing my classes and going through the motions. As jobs started happening in my life and things started moving forward I was at a loss at where my life was going, with no idea what to do.

There’s no way to pinpoint for myself the moment I made a career choice, for it was in fact more of a gradual process. The puzzle pieces just started to fall in place at some point. There was a magazine called GameInformer that I had subscribed to since I was 10 years old, I had always enjoyed writing and performed best in English classes in high school, and of course I had a deep love and admiration for video games. Everything clicked and I realized being a video game journalist was an actually obtainable thing I could do.

As the process began and continued, I realized more and more that journalism in general was what I needed to do and a plan began to evolve for me. The way I experienced entertainment began to evolve as I did more and more, and immersed myself into the gaming industry and journalism school.

Fast forward to now and these experiences have lent themselves to the creation of Playing with Perspective.  

Video games are art, that’s an indisputable fact in my mind and the mind of many others. They can teach people things, and bring people together with a common bond unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Just look at the fact of how people have come to socially identify themselves as ‘gamers’. However, video game culture and industry has many issues we need to struggle though. We have cultural issues, racial and gender issues, immaturity issues. We are an art form and an industry still in its infancy.

We regard games as art except for when it goes terribly wrong, and we rely on the fact that when it does we can explain it away as, “Well it’s just a video game.” We rely on this when we do something wrong or offend someone, and that makes me feel very uneasy. We need to embrace both the good and the bad in games, and have a platform for discussion and improvement of both. 

Video games and the culture around them can achieve so much, but it can also go wrong on so many levels. This is something we need to acknowledge. As a culture for people who play and understand video games, and for people who know nothing about video games, maybe we all can start playing with perspective.