What do we all want out of life? The amount of answers to this question could easily vary from person to person, it’s pretty insane. Your answer could be simple, one word like money, fame, family, religion, or stability. Conversely, you could think the best answer is in a poem, a piece of music, or even the all-new 2025 Toyota Tundra with a 3.4-liter V6 and a towing capacity of 8,300-12,000 lbs. Great work, Toyota! When we look at art, historically, the answer to this question changes with generational perspective.
Modern art is boring and will not be studied in 100 years. Let’s just be real about it. Unless you’ve taken a college course, no one knows the names of artists or pieces of art in the past few decades. The solution to this? Consumerism, of course. It always is. The world of entertainment is the most accessible and easiest form of art to grasp for the average citizen today. Of these art forms, video games have skyrocketed into becoming more mainstream than ever. Why is this?
I have been playing video games my entire life. Some early memories include spending hours mastering Samus’ move set in Super Smash Bros. Brawl to beat my brothers, finishing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on my 3DS, and buying The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Special Edition on the digital PlayStation store with my mom’s credit card without telling her. I thought she would not find out. She did. There was always something about video games that stood out to me. It was more than just mindless killing in Call of Duty or running over other online players in GTA Online. I could never quite explain it to my parents’ generation. With this article, I’d like to try.
I want to start by trying to cross the border. No, not getting political here. I’m talking about one of the most iconic openings of all time, when your character wakes up in the back of a wagon only to hear, “Hey, you, you’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right?” Then you’re told of a civil war between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, followed by being informed you are going to be executed. You make your custom character, then right as your head is about to be chopped off, BOOM! A dragon appears to cause havoc in the small town of Helgen. In the chaos, you barely make it out alive after being given the choice of getting help from an Imperial or Stormcloak. This, of course, is the opening to Bethesda Game Studios’ Skyrim.
Everything about this intro is how you start a video game. It lets us get familiar with the gameplay in a fun and non-forced way, introduces us to the story and politics of Skyrim, and gives us something that we want to beat, in this case, dragons. Here’s the thing: after that opening, you can go anywhere you want and do anything you want. Hold on, why introduce us to the story if it gives you the freedom to not follow the quest you’ve been given? Honestly, past this opening, I don’t remember much of the main story other than you’re Dragonborn and can take the souls of dragons after you kill them.
If not the story, why has this game stuck with me? In a word, atmosphere. Skyrim’s cities, mountains, valleys, and caves feel lived in. These elements immerse you in the world like no other game I’ve experienced. There! Easy, we have our answer. We play video games because they allow us to play and make our memories different from other players. Article over… Except, wait, I’ve written about my favorite video game of all time, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. (Find that article here.) That game has some open levels but is a story-driven narrative.
So, is it stories? Are video games the best way to enjoy a good story? The argument could definitely be made. I remember watching my older brother play through the entirety of The Last of Us: Remastered, and it was good, and a bit scary for what would have been maybe 12-year-old me. Later, I went back and played it myself, and it was a completely different experience. I was the one playing now. Yes, it’s about Joel and Ellie’s relationship in a post-apocalyptic America, but when Joel saves her from the fireflies at the end, it felt like I was doing that. Like I was responsible for Ellie’s well-being. Because I wasn’t just watching Joel change as a character, I was playing as him, and I changed too.
Well, there you have it. The answer is that when we immerse ourselves by playing through the events of a story, we feel a deeper connection to it. Okay, last time I do this, but no, I don’t think that’s the answer. I thought I had the solution to my question, that it was a mix of both of these ideas, and I was going to talk about Red Dead Redemption 2, and how our player freedom affects the story.
I think the truth is simpler. I recently got a PlayStation 5, and it comes with a free copy of a game called Astro’s Playroom. It is easily one of the best free games I’ve ever played. It’s a 3D platformer in the vein of Mario or the hit franchise Knack. I got a new perspective when I let my girlfriend play some of it. One of the things she struggled with was jumping over a gap. I’ve played games my whole life, so of course, you try and double jump in these types of games, but she tried to jump and fell. Respawned and tried again from a different angle, falling to her doom once more. Finally, after much trial and error (and patience on my part), she discovered you could indeed double jump.
There is no grand story as to why the little robot in the game can double jump; he just can. Through trial and error, my girlfriend was able to discover something new by trying. It brought me back to being a kid and owning my first video game console, which was a “new style” Nintendo Entertainment System. My dad bought it from a grocery store bagger for $60 after we had gone to all these different pawn stores looking for one with Super Mario Bros. 3. Thanks, Dad. I didn’t feel super immersed in playing Super Mario Bros. 3; it was hard at first, but the more and more I played, the better and better I became.
That’s it. For real this time. That’s why we play video games. Because we want to cause major controversies in the mainstream media! No, I’m kidding everybody, kidding. We all might want different things out of life, but we all want to succeed at those things. We all want to overcome our struggles and trials. We want to face our personal dragons and double-jump over gaps. Video games, more than any other art form, give us that opportunity. They remind us that through overcoming our trials, we become stronger. Get killed by that dragon? Hey, you can always respawn, get more powerful gear & weapons, and try again. To me, there’s beauty in that.
*I have been writing on MooCow Entertainment for 4 years as of this article being posted! I never thought I’d be doing this for so long and am grateful to anyone who has ever read even a few paragraphs of an article I’ve written.*
[P.S. This article is not sponsored by Toyota, I just thought that the Tundra joke was super funny.]
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