Where Have All the Gamers Gone?

The recent spat between TV host Bill Maher and fans of the late Stan Lee over comic books and their place in a "mature" society has raised a broader question: does being a gamer geek mean you don't participate in adulthood?

The recent spat between TV host Bill Maher and fans of the late Stan Lee over comic books and their place in a "mature" society has raised a broader question: does being a gamer geek mean you don't participate in adulthood?
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Photo courtesy of Pixabay.​
[h=3]What's Adulthood, Anyway?[/h]One of Maher's criticisms was that being an adult is now so uncommon that "adulting" is now something to be proud of. What constitutes adulting likely varies significantly, but one of those key indicators that economists like Erik Hurst worry about is participation in the labor market. Hurst's paper focuses on the parallel effects of young men not getting jobs and the rise of game play. The concern is that video games are getting better, more interactive, more imaginative and are therefore outpacing the enticements of the real world:

On average, lower-skilled men in their 20s increased “leisure time” by about four hours per week between the early 2000s and 2015. All of us face the same time endowment, so if leisure time is increasing, something else is decreasing. The decline in time spent working facilitated the increase in leisure time for lower-skilled men. The way I measure leisure time is pretty broad; it includes participating in hobbies and hanging out with friends, exercising and watching TV, sleeping, playing games, reading, and so on. Of that four-hours-per-week increase in leisure, three of those hours were spent playing video games! The average young, lower-skilled, nonemployed man in 2014 spent about two hours per day on video games. That is the average. Twenty-five percent reported playing at least three hours per day. About 10 percent reported playing for six hours per day. The life of these nonworking, lower-skilled young men looks like what my son wishes his life was like now: not in school, not at work, and lots of video games.

This is the jab Maher was making about modern U.S. society; that by focusing on comic books, adults aren't "adulting" enough -- getting a job, voting, getting married, etc. Hurst makes the same argument:

...I am concerned about how this will play out in the long run. There is some evidence that these young, lower-skilled men who are happy in their 20s become much less happy in their 30s and 40s. They haven’t accumulated on-the-job skills because they spent their 20s idle. Many eventually get married and have kids. When this happens, living in their parents’ basements is no longer a viable option. Playing video games does not put food on their tables. It’s a bad combination: low labor demand plus the accumulated effects of low labor supply makes economic conditions for these aging workers pretty bleak.

This is not a new argument. Robert D. Putnam positions the decline in participation of "adult" activities as the loss of social capital, the necessary underpinnings for a society to function by the give and take of social networks. His example, in his essay "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital" uses the fact that Americans are increasingly bowling without joining a league as evidence that social capital is eroding. Even in 1995, Putnam pointed the finger at video games:

There is reason to believe that deep-seated technological trends are radically "privatizing" or "individualizing" our use of leisure time and thus disrupting many opportunities for social-capital formation. The most obvious and probably the most powerful instrument of this revolution is television. Time-budget studies in the 1960s showed that the growth in time spent watching television dwarfed all other changes in the way Americans passed their days and nights. Television has made our communities (or, rather, what we experience as our communities) wider and shallower. In the language of economics, electronic technology enables individual tastes to be satisfied more fully, but at the cost of the positive social externalities associated with more primitive forms of entertainment. The same logic applies to the replacement of vaudeville by the movies and now of movies by the VCR. The new "virtual reality" helmets that we will soon don to be entertained in total isolation are merely the latest extension of this trend. Is technology thus driving a wedge between our individual interests and our collective interests?

Maher, Hurst, and Putnam are all arguing that because gaming is more appealing and doesn't appear to be similar to the older forms of social connection, it must therefore be isolating. But is it?
[h=3]A Counterpoint[/h]The same concerns about young men entering the workforce have echoes in waxing and waning of Dungeons & Dragons's popularity. Tabletop gaming has largely been a communal activity, and therefore the "bowling alone" phenomenon is an existential threat to a game that relies on other people to play. Those concerns rose to the forefront when the industry contracted -- first, because there were too many disparate settings for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, then because there were too many open game licensed books that were of low quality for 3.5, and then because the 4th Edition of D&D was so different from previous editions while Pathfinder's popularity surged. In all three cases, the concern was that tabletop gaming's social currency had eroded because everyone was not playing the same game together. And yet, here we are in the middle of a golden age of tabletop gaming.

What changed was that social networks shifted. Whereas before, gamers had to find peers to play with -- a model that pivoted largely on all players of the same age being stuck together for four years in high school and later college -- the Internet expanded gaming's horizons. Barriers broke down as to how to play, thanks to streaming; there are more people than ever to play with, thanks to digital platforms like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. Jane McGonigal argues that gamers are redefining what constitutes a "community" in her book, Reality is Broken:

Gamers, without a doubt, are reinventing what we think of as our daily community infrastructure. They're experimenting with new ways to create social capital, and they're developing habits that provide more social bonding and connectivity than any bowling league ever could. As a society, we may feel increasingly disconnected from family, friends, and neighbors--but as gamers, we are adopting strategies that reverse the phenomenon. Games are increasingly a crucial social thread woven throughout our everyday lives.

Are Maher and co. right, are we all "bowling alone"? The answer may be that's just how it looks to outsiders. If the recent success of tabletop gaming is any indication -- a game predicated on community interaction -- our community has merely shifted. Gamers, as McGonigal points out emphatically, "are NOT gaming alone."

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
 

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Michael Tresca

Michael Tresca

pemerton

Legend
If "bowling alone" is a proxy for declining social networks and the communal trust/social captial these underpin, it's hard to see that on-line gaming via Roll20 or similar is a substitute for that.
 

Sketchpad

Explorer
I would have to disagree with Maher, Hurst, and Putnam. As an avid tabletop gamer/comic collector, I adult just fine. I'm married to a fellow gamer (whom I met via the old Wizards Community), have two kids that play games (who are 20-somethings), and spend time every week with a 10 person gaming group who also adult just fine. In addition, I know several people outside my group that are adulting gamers and/or comic readers. The insinuation is a bit insulting. Particularly when one could point to any fandom and make the same accusations. Maybe they should try to play a game or find a comic to read?
 

AriochQ

Adventurer
Same song, different day. We heard the exact same arguments with the rise of television. I am pretty sure when the first caveman invented the wheel, the caveman next door boycotted it since the increased mobility would lead to an erosion of cave community.

The real question of one of isolation. Does gaming lead to an increase in isolation? Clearly table top games do not lead to isolation. They increase social interaction in almost every case. Video games used to be a solitary activity, but that hasn't been the case for many years. Most video gamers I know play with other people. So, that is also a red herring. I think it comes down to people being stuck in a tribal mentality. "My tribe doesn't play games, so playing games must be wrong" being dressed up as pseudo-science.
 

jdmcdonnell

First Post
In my humble opinion, anyone who considers sleep and exercise to be "liesure activities" is actually doing a little too much adulting and will someday end up truly regretting the life they have lived.
 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
An interesting related point is that of "Third Place". It's someplace outside of work and home that you can go to and be recognized and accepted. The bar fromt he show "Cheers!" was a great example, but one that's begun aging out. One of the parts of a Third Place is that it's not related to either home nor work, so you can go there to get away from either.

Do FLGS fill this role? I don't think universally. They may for some, possibly only on certain nights a week. For others they can game happily without going to a FLGS regularly for any social interaction.

With games run at homes and online it's a different social dynamic. It's a set group, and a set schedule. And that group probably isn't particularly large - defiitely not as large as a bowling league.

MMOs in guilds, similar for other games,and really anyone with a regular discord/teamspeak crew they hang with might be getting more of that Third Place need fulfilled then tabletop gamers. They aren't "bowling alone".

This isn't saying tabletop gaming isn't social - it definitely it. It's just exploring the related topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
 

5ekyu

Hero
Same song, different day. We heard the exact same arguments with the rise of television. I am pretty sure when the first caveman invented the wheel, the caveman next door boycotted it since the increased mobility would lead to an erosion of cave community.

The real question of one of isolation. Does gaming lead to an increase in isolation? Clearly table top games do not lead to isolation. They increase social interaction in almost every case. Video games used to be a solitary activity, but that hasn't been the case for many years. Most video gamers I know play with other people. So, that is also a red herring. I think it comes down to people being stuck in a tribal mentality. "My tribe doesn't play games, so playing games must be wrong" being dressed up as pseudo-science.
I have seen references to one of the earliest confirmed written essays being a sumerian rant about "kids these days are too soft" etc.

My brother and dad and friends have played golf and talked golf together regularly for decades. I have GMed with folks and talked gaming as long or longer. Now some of that for both is more online.

It's no different. You can substitute bowling, pool, darts etc. Or chess or Go. Or poker. Or bridge.

The one common denominator and takeawsy - attacks and rants based on badwrongfun are not limited to rpg edition/system wars and they always provoke.
 

I have to wonder why games (board, video, ttrpg, etc) are childish things. But watching sports (also games) is not. Why is playing a round of golf not considering childish? The word "playing" is right there. The difference between a childish activity and an adult activity is for the most part arbitrary. Some people shop for clothes by imagining what they will do while wearing the clothes. How is that different from a four year old playing dress up?

These attitudes are just a form snobbery. What we sometimes call "your fun is wrong" around here.
 

UngainlyTitan

Legend
Supporter
I have come to the belief that Maher's attack is not on gamers but an attempt to invalidate the opinions of a generation that are starting to get politically active and hold views that Maher does not like.
Its about politics and the fact that brush Maher is using to tar the millennials with, has no tar, is beside the point, as long as the audience believes him and thus continues to not listen to the points being raised.
 

D351

First Post
Three friends who I know through tabletop gaming helped push my car down the road to my house through snow this past week. The millennials are as alright as the boomers' economic system will allow us to be.
 

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