The Art and Joy of Gaming

Virtual hockey player Andrew Telfer, better known as “Nasher,” is a hockey influencer extraordinaire. An NHL gaming whiz with a massive YouTube following, Telfer moves between the virtual and real, posting videos that include trick shots filmed live in the rink as well as footage of him getting comfy in front of his Xbox to stream to his followers.

You’re familiar with the regular NBA, but have you heard of the NBA 2K League? It’s a competitive online gaming league based around the NBA 2K series. Esports star Artreyo Boyd played NBA 2K for 12 hours a day to hone his skills, and in 2018 was announced by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver as the No. 1 NBA 2K League draft pick, going on to play for Mavs Gaming, the 2K arm of the Dallas Mavericks.

What do you get when you mix designer brands and video games? When the Chinese team FunPlus Phoenix won the League of Legends World Championship, it received not only a trophy but also a Louis Vuitton trunk. The goal? To turn young gamers into ambassadors for luxury brands. It’s also a reflection of the growing market at the convergence of video games and luxury brands. So if you’re a sucker for Gucci, Hermès or Dior, gaming might just be for you.

Before Broad City star Ilana Glazer cracked us up on the small screen, she was a weed-smoking gamer on YouTube. Her show, Chronic Gamer Girl, ran for two seasons starting in 2012 and featured Glazer and her guests playing video games. Full of fluffy banter and comic relief, it’s a great place to start if you’re looking for a crash course on video games. No technical knowledge required!

Some believe that video games are a waste of time, but gaming can actually help people learn. Game developer Gonzalo Frasca was among the first to turn video games into a field of academic study known as ludology, and he also pioneered their use as educational tools. Developer Garabed Khachadour has further illustrated how games can teach by creating the game, Mayrig: Paths to Freedom, which is an interactive story based on true events of the Armenian genocide.

What if video games could train you how to discern between real and fake news? Harmony Square lets players act as a “chief disinformation officer,” whose goal is to create divisions in the community. The game is meant to help players learn how misinformation is spread and the impact it can have — an important skill in our “post-truth” times. Should more teachers be including games like Harmony Square in their curriculum?

Could “persuasive gaming” make you a better person? Researchers think so. For example, in the game Papers, Please, you play an immigration inspector for a fictional communist state, playing out an experience designed to make you more empathetic toward migrants. If shooting at bad guys isn’t for you, maybe this kind of gaming will be more your style.

All writers have been there, stuck with writer’s block and desperate for inspiration. Is playing video games the solution to fixing the plot of that novel or screenplay? The online game Storium brings creatives together to collaborate on a narrative, and it even helps by suggesting obstacles or character strengths for your protagonist.

There would be no Pac-Man if not for the Yakuza. In the 1970s, Japanese video game company Namco had to contend with counterfeit arcade machines produced by the infamous Japanese mafia. The company’s CEO went so far as to reach out to the leader of the Yakuza to request they stop the illicit manufacturing, but to no avail. Frustrations over the Japanese mafia interference eventually inspired Namco to make its own arcade hits, including the iconic Pac-Man.

Imagine a world where you couldn’t play Tetris unless you knew a guy who had a copy of it on floppy disk. Before Tetris went mainstream, that’s exactly how its Russian creator, Alexey Pajitnov, passed the game around Moscow, as the rights to the game belonged not to him but to the Soviet government. Dutchman Henk Rogers, a scout for Nintendo, eventually succeeded in helping the gaming company secure the rights from the Soviets to distribute the game internationally.

Video games often cater to macho tastes: cars, guns and girls. But game designers are also reaching male players who want games that are more realistic and less centered on stereotypes. In one installment of God of War, for example, the protagonist becomes a single father. In Grand Theft Auto V, one of the protagonists is shown visiting a therapist to get help with his toxic masculinity and to process childhood abuse.

Black women are underrepresented in the gaming industry but, thanks to some seriously badass women, that’s slowly changing. Thumbstick Mafia, Brown Girl Gamer Code, INeedDiverseGames and Black Girl Gamers are just some of the groups encouraging gaming companies to take Black female consumers more seriously.

What new endeavor would you like to see the gaming world try next?