Play’s Republic

The British Board of Film Classification (“We are not, as some people seem to think, a Government funded or controlled body”) has just released a smattering of findings  about “Playing Video Games.”

Beyond a cursory visit to their website, I’m not familiar with the BBFC, but (if the material described in the press release is any indicator) the findings seem more like market research than the result of disinterested scholarly inquiry:  Why would a “ratings board” seek to understand “what impact games players think playing has on them”? (my emphasis)

The rhetoric of the findings is both interesting and counterintuitive.  For example, at times they take the “play as Freedom” tack:

people play games to escape from every day life and to escape to a world of adventure without risk which is under the control of the gamer, unlike the real world;

and link that to the language of “play of the Self.”

Games provide a sense of achievement and are active, unlike television and films which are passive. However, games are better at developing action than building character and as such gamers tend to care less about the storyline than making progress in the game;

And also:

[Gamers] appear to non-games players to be engrossed in what they are doing, but, they are concentrating on making progress, and are unlikely to be emotionally involved;

In other words, games are ultra-violent, but it is shallow ultra-violence, and therefore poses no threat to Reason and the Rational.  Ultimately, this is a rhetoric of Progress… which is why it smacks so much of potential marketing fodder.

The element of interactivity in games carries some weight when we are considering a video game. We were particularly interested to see that this research suggests that, far from having a potentially negative impact on the reaction of the player, the very fact that they have to interact with the game seems to keep them more firmly rooted in reality. People who do not play games raise concerns about their engrossing nature, assuming that players are also emotionally engrossed. This research suggests the opposite; a range of factors seems to make them less emotionally involving than film or television. The adversaries which players have to eliminate have no personality and so are not real and their destruction is therefore not real, regardless of how violent that destruction might be.

I’ve not read their full report, but if the absurd logic of that last sentence is any guide, this document is not going to add much to the discourse.