My video game problem

Libraries are flush with volumes of postmodern anthropology in which the minutia of our daily interactions are analyzed and dissertated by academics. Indeed, the vast wealth of cultural currency that we exchange on a daily basis is fodder enough to keep IKEA selling bookshelves for as long as books are printed. Ironically, one of the most curious and diverse arenas for culture-sharing in college social life occurs in a venue that may prove to help in the undoing of both culture and literacy.

Video games are a powerful and engaging media that cross barriers of language, geography and culture with very little lost in the translation. That is to say, platforms, games and the manner in which they are enjoyed are all relatively similar throughout the world. Portland State’s own small corner of this world is located in the basement of the Smith Memorial Student Union.

Viking Bowl is a campus recreation center complete with bowling lanes and billiard tables, as well as arcade and console video games. On this particular Friday evening, Viking Bowl is host to dozens of PSU students, many of whom game until the doors close at midnight.

One’s ears need not strain in order to hear several different tongues being spoken at any given time. Many international students relax with their peers, casually playing a game of billiards. Kanye West serenades a group of students while they bowl as Green Day provides the soundtrack for a student trying his hand at the new game in the popular “Halo” series. Two Chinese students goad each other relentlessly over a hotly contested game of “Street Fighter” on Viking Bowl’s classic arcade machine. A large group of young girls bowl and enjoy each other’s company, giggling like children. All around there is movement, laughter, sharing and fun. Viking Bowl might be the most absolutely positive campus venue for cultural cohabitation. It is a safe harbor for international students, nerds and students in need of respite from dormitory existence. It is a good thing.

It is the gaming aspect of this culture that is most interesting, however. Though there are multiple gaming consoles available, they are only being used by individuals. Video games are indeed a very unique form of media, in that they communicate nothing. No message is sent, and none is received. They are inert cycles of interactive entertainment, a media ouroboros. They are only one part of an increasingly visual media existence that threatens our ability to communicate by threatening the classical means of communication. The more heavily our consciousness relies on images and entertainment cycles, the less need it has for the printed word. The negation of the printed word could lead to a world with a 24-hour cultural cycle much like that of our present news cycle, rather than any usable cultural history.

Yet a look around the room is all that is required for hope on this particular Friday evening. For amongst the many patrons of Viking Bowl, but a few are enjoying a quick turn at the console now and again. All around there is laughter, billiards and bowling. Students from every corner of the world are engaging in the kinds of cultural exchanges that have preserved civilizations for thousands of years—games, conversation, friendship and courtship, people speaking of home in a far-off land or hearing stories of some place they will never see in their own front yard.

There is only one person who is not participating in this exchange, one person who sits quietly, listening, observing and writing. With a world of culture and a room full of bright, happy, intelligent people enjoying each other’s company, he sits and contemplates whether the world has crossed a threshold. He thinks about Huxley’s “Brave New World” and wonders if civilizations of the past have smiled in the face of their own downfall. Mostly, he wonders if media is any better at escaping its own nature than humanity. After all, this destructive media that communicates nothing has brought together dozens of people on this Friday night, and they are all engaged in interpersonal communication. Only one person is communicating with no one on this particular Friday evening at Viking Bowl. Perhaps the problem with communication is a more personal one after all. ?