Boredom and video games!

Perhaps this is a result of the universality of our class topic (or of the persistent question hovering in my mind during every idle internet reading and every vaguely intellectual over-coffee conversation – “Can I blog about this?”), but lately I’ve become more interested in certain aspects of the everyday. My sudden fascination with popular [leisure] culture has escalated to such a high degree that I – of all people – have been excitedly following the latest developments in video game systems. Perhaps if you don’t know me, you won’t realize how highly uncharacteristic this is, but I never even owned a Nintendo, and I’ve certainly never shown any interest in such things. I’ve come to the conclusion that video games can potentially say a lot about our culture, though – think back to Adorno, who claims that “even the most superfluous and senseless activity undertaken in people’s free time is integrated in society” (193). What does it mean that the new PS3 console is the most powerful home computer available on the market? There’s also Nintendo’s new Wii, which is operated with a different motion-sensitive wireless controller in each hand – Nintendo’s changes to user interface require an excellent grasp of hand-eye coordination (which, alas, I am without) and an acute sensitivity to one’s movement. There’s never been anything like it on the market before. What’s all this about?

Adorno might say that these new videogames encourage the development of skills required for labour – I’ve heard it said a million times that video and computer games are nothing more than [very] thinly veiled military training (I’m going to lose a bit of credibility here and cite the end of the summer blockbuster movie, Snakes on a Plane, in which a character lands an airplane based solely on the skills he gained through video game expertise). Adorno reminds us again and again that what we do in our free time “is nothing more than a shadowy continuation of labour” (194), and in the case of video games, I might be inclined to agree with him. It is perhaps for this reason that video games are beginning to get more critical attention – for example, here is an article in which the author, Ryan Stancl, applies different modes of cultural and literary criticism to Katamari Damacy, a newer Playstation game. Admittedly, Stancl does not provide us with especially deep or incisive criticism (presumably the readers of “Game Career Guide” are not as familiar with the New Critics or with Psychoanalysis as we English students are), but it’s an interesting line of thought at any rate. Stancl argues that “video games now, more than ever, need to be not just reviewed, but critiqued, because of their negative image in the press, in politics, in the general public, and quite simply because they are so ripe for critiquing.” While I certainly agree on the last point, I must say I get the feeling that, these days, people view video games in less of a negative light than they once did (or is that just me?). I often see hip and/or hip-hop guys playing their PSPs on the bus without shame or self consciousness. Once reserved for nerds, some video games are becoming not only acceptable, but maybe even fashionable. Then again, hip-hop guys might secretly be a bunch of nerds – I hear that Coolio spent a lot of time playing the online first-person shooter game “Tribes.”

If Adorno is right that our free time is determined by our labour, then we might take a more bottom-up approach and look at our leisure activities as a way of better understanding our work. There is a popular conception that video games are escapist, fantastical, and exciting; however, my limited experience has taught me that the opposite is true. My boyfriend freely admits that his favourite genre of video game is that in which you perform tedious, repetitive tasks and “watch numbers increase.” This sound remarkably reminiscent of industrial labour – or, to use a more contemporary example, of any number of clerical data-entry jobs, doesn’t it? That grumpy old Adorno might be right in his claim that “free time is shackled to its opposite” (187) in this regard – a lot of games involve the kinds of tasks familiar to the work environment.

If you’re unconvinced, allow me to turn your attention to Work Time Fun (or WTF), a game recently released for the Playstation Portable. Work Time Fun is basically a model of the workplace, set in Hell (or, I would argue, capitalist-Hell). The Wikipedia entry (linked above) for WTF describes it as follows: “The game contains over forty minigames, representing inane part-time jobs you receive from the ‘Job Demon’, that you must complete in a certain amount of time and at a certain difficulty, depending on the level.” The minigames include sorting chickens…

…and putting the caps on pens (notice the factory worker comrades in the background).

Once you’ve completed your tiresome task, you receive a pay cheque for your efforts.

Money accumulated from pay cheques can be spent at these odd vending machines where you receive either useless trinkets (“for your gallery”) or – and this is the kicker – more banal minigames.

So, think about this for a second: you’re working to make money so as to buy more work. This frustrating (yet oddly addictive) cycle of labour seems like a pretty harsh (if tongue-in-cheek) critique of capitalism. What would Adorno say? Perhaps something along the lines of: “the contraband of modes of behavior proper to the domain of work, which will not let people out of its power, is being smuggled into the realm of free time” (190) – this game literally provides the player with a proletarian work experience. It’s also reminiscent of the notion of “work-leisure” in the Lefebvre piece we read (226). Lefebvre says that a fruitful way of understanding people’s “place in the division of labour” is to study their leisure activities – “everyone tries to programme the amount of time at his disposal according to what his work is – and what it is not” (226-227). So what does it say when bourgeois university students spend their free time playing games which simulate proletarian industrial labour? As a possible answer, I’ll turn to Adorno once more, specifically to his idea of “unfreedom.” He suggests that the “freeness” of free time is not only dubious but nonexistent, as “people have been refused freedom, and its value belittled, for such a long time that now people no longer like it” (193). Indeed, it may be because video game players (a breed still somewhat mysterious to me, I admit) are so entrenched in capitalist ideology that they enjoy nothing more than spending their leisure time “watching numbers increase.”