“A Whole New World…Is What We Really Want—We Just Don’t Know It Yet”

By: Shelley Jane Graff 

                New technologies are often met with extreme skepticism and harsh criticism; after all, change is threatening, and we as human beings find comfort in that which is familiar to us.  We love to wax philosophic about how advanced we are, and how everything’s going to change.  It seems like things are always just about to be ‘different.’  Rarely does it seem like they actually are.  Corporate agendas reign supreme and increasingly society resembles something out of George Orwell’s 1984, in which a totalitarian government lives up to the self-fulfilling prophecies that it manufactures for its own self-interested reasons.  Call me cynical, but I believe that if you follow the flow of money—you will reach reality lickety-split. 

                The video game industry is a notoriously volatile and risky business, and many things have been blamed for the massive amount of bad video games that exist today—fragmentation, lack of development time, the typical up-front costs of production (making breaking even the industry “ideal”), and the list goes on.  In his book, Hollywood Gamers, I commend Dr. Brookey for adding another potential culprit to this list.  This notion has been progressively fetishized in recent years for the “potential” that it has, when the simple fact of the matter is that it may just be the inevitable result of a handful of corporations owning an entire industry.  I am talking about digital convergence. 

                Digital convergence is (and has been) occurring whether we like it or not.  Yet, Brookey suggests that as a result of convergence and the movement towards such centralized market control, the gaming industry is bound to produce more of the same.   He writes, “My analysis…offers a possible explanation: in the context of convergence, the design of games accommodates interests other than those of quality game play.” (P. 138) Brookey reminds us that incredibly powerful forces exist behind these industries and it would be poor business to advance game play merely for its own good—yet simultaneously these products “speak” to us about the world that we live in and our place within it.  Game play progression’s most influential advocate has become the game player: the true agents of change have become none other than us. 

                [Word Count = 339 words total] 

(Video: Comedian Kumail Nanjiani discusses the conflicted feelings that he has about today’s video games, primarily, concerning the choices made by the designers of the popular video game franchise--Call of Duty.)