Culture Clash

(December 2003)

Your Public Needs You

Why do we care what nongamers think?

The gaming industry is growing fast, specializing more, and increasingly being brought to the attention of nongamers. The so-called "nongaming public" is a diverse group, ranging from complete outsiders who still think of video games as Pong-like (when they think of them at all), to those who don't play themselves but are for whatever reason aware of industry vagaries. As consumption statistics prove time and again that video gaming is a serious entertainment art form, the casual observer may wonder why an industry poised to define the future of mediated interactive entertainment would devote much thought or resource to the appeasement of nongamers.

According to the ESA, 50% of Americans play or have played video games. That's probably more or less true in all "wired" nations. The other half of the culture either doesn't know what it's missing or is genuinely not interested - which naturally doesn't stop them from voicing their opinions when it comes to hot-button issues. Ignorance is dangerous, and though nongaming press is becoming less sensationalistic in its reporting, it remains famous for making electronic games the scapegoat for a spectrum of bad human behavior. Nongamers are woefully undereducated about the societal purpose and role of games as art, entertainment, and education.

Why does it matter that the industry remain on good terms with the nongaming public? Would it not be sensible to spend more time and effort producing better games than waving olive branches at nongamers? All that money, the lawsuits, the crossfire interviews, the time taken from making games, all to maintain a shaky-at-best relationship with a market segment that will never purchase our products - a segment that in fact openly vilifies them and those who make them. Do we need the chilly, grudging approval of these suspicious nongamers?

Industry groups and publishers the world over have devoted enormous resources to dealing with the nongaming public, and with very good reason. The approach is twofold: gaming advocates first try to reach out to nonconsumers and educate them. Failing that, their not-inconsiderable resources are devoted to protecting the industry through litigation. But again, why do we bother? Because we know what would happen if we didn't.

There was another industry that started out as a "kid's thing" and grew into a billion dollar business. It also was completely misunderstood and slanderously misrepresented by those who weren't fans of its product. But rather than devoting some of its tremendous (at the time) resources to educating the public and improving its image, it just hunkered down and tried to weather the storm, based on the not-implausible logic that if the threat were ignored it might go away. The result of that complacency was the Comics Code Authority and the near-collapse of the comics industry in the mid-1950s. If a misunderstood industry, especially one that sells even a fraction of its product to children, doesn't do everything in its power to maintain positive relationships with nonconsumers, time and again the result has been restriction and censorship.

Love of play, like love of anything, grows organically. Movies and television were not immediately and blindly accepted by one and all the world over. It would be unfair to expect nongamers to instinctively "know" what is good and rewarding about gaming. Universal adoption of the medium as a valid entertainment art form will take time, chiefly for those generations that didn't grow up with games. Nongamers consistently exposed to attacks on our industry are more likely to shy away from exposing themselves to the medium. And that is precisely why industry groups and major publishers work so hard and spend so much to educate the public.

Gonzalo Frasca makes mention of the Fatwa called against Salman Rushdie in the wake of The Satanic Verses. The assault on Rushdie's novel is a classic example of the danger posed to any medium from demonization at the hands of the deliberately ignorant, which is a fancy way of saying that the Ayatollah never read the book. Meanwhile, individuals who have never played video games are perfectly happy to pillory them in the mass media, fueled by self-righteous indignation over the imagined crime of "being dangerous to kids". Since study after study reveals that the vast majority of people who purchase video games are 18 years or older, the opposition's case is shoddy to begin with.

Yet despite this, the industry does need to make itself known to the nongaming public. Whether or not any nongamer becomes a gamer based on the industry's awareness and education campaigns is irrelevant. Our mere presence in their minds will ensure that both sides of the debate are granted equal credence. The alternative is to suffer as the comics industry did: to act untouchable rather than openly and willingly policing ourselves and engaging in ongoing awareness projects is to condemn the video games industry to oversight and censorship by nongamers.