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?
[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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
[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.
