Video Games, the Suffering of the Real World, and Sam

So this morning I was listening to some music in the living room and sam (more about whom in future posts) came in and hooked up to play Zelda and he asked if it would bother me and I said not with the sound off and he said ok and after a few minutes of listening to him grunt and whisper-curse in frustration over mistakes and his inability to figure out how to get the required prizes and find the necessary openings to reach the next level I asked him why he was playing the game on a saturday morning instead of just listening to the music (because thats the kind of annoying thing I say) and he said because the game was a nice escape from the regular grind and then for a while I just watched the game unfold and his moves on-screen.

A little time passed and sam said he thought that if I played the game with him I'd wind up liking it so much I might get back into enjoying video games (because I used to enjoy them -- in the same sense that an OCD sufferer enjoys his daily frantic rituals) and I said I didn't really want to get back into video games and he asked why not and I said because they seemed like a giant timesuck and then we were quiet awhile and he eventually asked me if I didnt think that an ideal video game that was artful and exciting and thoughtful and such would be as worth spending time playing as listening to music would be and (even tho I dont really like thinking about abstract idealizations -- as buncencia will attest -- because I dont think they illuminate much more than the structure and assumptions of the least interesting parts of our brains as currently enculturated) I thought about it for awhile and said no because a video game always imposes a structure on the play of your mind unlike listening to music when even as youre totally absorbed in it allows a real creative playfulness where your mind and music dance and play with each other and he said yeah but that a video game was still a good escape.

So I listened to him playing for awhile more making all those frustrated grunts and whisper-curses punctuated by occasional spasms of achievement vocalizations and I said if you think about it video games dont really give you an escape from the current reality as much as reproduce and amplify it (because thats the kind of annoying thing I say) and he asked what do you mean and I said think about when you start playing a new game youre dropped into a world where the rules are given and quite rigid yet unknown to you and the aims are also given and highly defined but only dimly perceived and you are there to struggle and stumble about encountering dangers and opportunities of artifice constructed before your arrival and as you stumble about you slowly begin uncovering the rules and learn to count as achievement the conformation of your mind and behavior to the pre-scribed rules and goals of the game and quantify frustration and failure in direct proportion to your inability or enduring resistance to conform to the games rules and goals whereas listening to music entails conceding to the musics given pattern while at the same time letting the pattern-play of your mind weave in and out and about the musics own pattern creating as you and it play about a new pattern of youit.

And then sam said yeah I see what you mean and then we laughed and joked for a few minutes about how we could design a buddhist game where the way to advance to the next level involved letting go of the desire to gain the next level and then we were quiet awhile while sam continued to play and then I said that I thought that reproducing and amplifying the madness of the ruling paradigm is probably unhealthy (because thats the kind of annoying thing I say) and sam played on for a bit and then smiled and said yeah,

but its fun.

Sams cool.*





*If the question arises, What is the point of this? I guess the answer is: the point that could be articulated and explicated would be beside the point.