Video Games, Family, and Commercialism

During class on Thursday, many of my classmates reported on their relationships with their parents, and how their parents had variously questioned the value of video games until something that my classmates told them from CVGS altered their perspectives. Obviously, this wasn’t everyone’s experience, but I would imagine the sort of archetypal “parents don’t understand the value of studying video games” experience was fairly widespread. As a person who has never frequented video gaming, though with a father who designs slot machines for a living, I think I’ve had a fairly opposite experience.

To be clear, I wouldn’t categorize my dad as a “gamer” by any stretch of the word, and I would imagine that some people reading this have much more video game-interested parents than I have (my retro review blog post largely hinged on the fact that my parents weren’t familiar with many video games since 1982’s Galaga). Nevertheless, his line of work has brought him to understand how gaming can be a science worth studying, if only due to its value as a moneymaking endeavor. My dad isn’t a totally cynical capitalist, but his industry certainly is, and I would say that he’s the reason I’m majoring in Economics. He didn’t force me to, but at the common UChicago crossroads of major indecision at the end of Second Year, I ultimately went with the thing I knew my parents would be satisfied with. Incidentally, my mother is a therapist and my other major is Psychology, so I clearly default to their interests when failing to define my own.

When my father first heard that I was taking Critical Videogame Studies, he was concerned mostly that I would be behind the curve. As far as he knew, my Fortnite-loving younger brothers would be much better prepared for such a class. He was interested to know what was discussed, though, and by the week where we covered The Return of the Obra Dinn and Braid, I enthusiastically had data to report. What shocked me was that video games, for lack of a better word, could feel so cinematic. Growing up, I knew logically that “art games” existed, but the games I did play were largely triple-A Nintendo standards like New Super Mario Bros. and Wii Sports. Between those games, my father’s experience working in a gaming-adjacent industry, and my brothers’ interests in Counterstrike, Fortnite, and other highly financialized MMOs, I saw games as a moneymaking proposition. I loved movies- which, yes, often are built to blockbust, but also have a famous awards ceremony of which many films are made in pursuit.

It’s a little simple to say that CVGS taught me that art games existed, but I think it’s completely fair to say CVGS made me take video games seriously. More than that, though, since I already was looking at gaming through my father’s financial lens, I think it’s really really interesting to consider the divergences between “commercial art” in film and “commercial art” in gaming- and especially how a structure of constant transaction has been imposed on each of these in recent years, via streaming services and microtransactions respectively. That’s the question I’m leaving this course wanting to explore on my own time.

In the end, this class has opened my mind to not only video games but all sorts of new media. I still love movies, probably even more than video games, and my dad’s economic lens and pressure-to-major-in-economics still linger. However, this class has given me a whole new dimension with which to apply that lens. And, in so doing, it has given me a whole new means to relate to- and challenge my relationship with- my father. Maybe the real game was the family we met along the way.