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How Do Video Games Matter?

Cover of "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Ma...

This week I’ve been reading “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” by Tom Bissell. Bissell spends a lot of time looking at first-person shooters and the nuances of storytelling in open world games.

The whole point of any game is to be interactive. There is some reason for you to press a button or push a joystick left or right, whether it is to make sure the glowing Pong orb doesn’t fly away or to kill a zombie in Left 4 Dead. For various reasons, the standard video game priorities can be summed up as “Collect & Destroy”—that is, collect the things (coins, weapons, magic potions) that help you get towards a certain goal (the princess, the safe house, the next level) while simultaneously destroying anything that gets in the way (zombies, the Koopa Troopa, orange pixelated ghosts). This has made me think a lot about—at the risk of getting overly philosophical—what we want from our human experience.

Games, in general, are not about real life. Of course, like any good book or movie, part of the reason for that is escapism. If I wanted to live my life, why would I do so on a Wii? But I think the major reason is just that real life is ultimately pretty boring—desperately slow moving and depressingly uneventful. Even real-life games like The Sims have to speed up time and create obstacles like peeing your pants or setting yourself on fire. Just like in literature, we can say that it is “conflict and drama” that make games interesting. But what we seek out in real life is usually avoiding conflict and drama at all costs. As it turns out, the easiest way to get to the safehouse, is to make sure you don’t encounter any zombies at all.

At Ethicodes I’m working on the logic and needs of a game in which the player is a coffee farmer. The goal, like your average zombie apocalypse game, is simply survival. But instead of battling zombies you are simply battling the current global trade economy. By far the easiest thing to do is to avoid all conflict, but in the current agricultural market, avoiding conflict, not fighting for every penny of that sale, means starving to death. Can we make not-starving-to-death as compelling a goal as reaching a zombie-proof bunker? Our lives may depend on it.

Gabe Scelta is the Innovation Director at Ethicodes and Research Associate at theEthiopian Global Initiative. A fellow at the Emerge Venture Lab, Gabe’s deep knowledge of the technology industry keeps Ethicodes pushing the frontiers of the fair trade industry. He holds a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He lives in New York City.

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