When I was young I used to live in South Carolina. I had friends that I played with at school mostly and had lots of land to explore and interact with, but when I was about 9 my mom got remarried to a man who moved us to Cincinnati. I didn’t have nearly as many friends and the landscape, still explorable, shrank considerably. During all this time was when video game systems were just becoming common place. While in SC we had an Atari 2600, and since I didn’t have many friends close by, I would love to play and explore in these worlds that were created for me. When we moved my mom and step-father got us the NES and we found even more worlds to explore. I’ve always loved video games for that need of exploration and play that couldn’t easily be found in the real world. In Henry Jenkins “Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Space” he explores this idea that we as a people and as children need places to play and, when they have been taken away by cities, and overprotective parents, are given to us through video games.
I completely agree with Mr. Jenkins thoughts on play space, although have different views on some aspects of it. One implication of Mr. Jenkins’ treatment of video games as a play space is that video games are just for kids. Along the same lines I feel that adults need this play space as well, which is in fact why the vast majority of video game players now are adults. Although Mr. Jenkins does not say so directly, he apparently assumes that adults don’t need the same release as children do, that adulthood means that you have given up on all the childishness and have become a “Man” or “Woman”. From personal experience there is no defining point in life that tells you you are an adult, and in fact the act of heading toward adulthood leads even more need for you to have a place to vent your frustrations and seek creative outlets.
In discussions of the play spaces and childhood, one controversial issue has been death of adulthood. On the one hand, A.O. Scott argues “Mad men” and “Breaking Bad” shows this death as the death of the main character. On the other hand, Andrew O’Hehir contends that capitalism is the cause of adulthood. Others even maintain Seth Rogan is more serious than Woody Allen because of this supposed death. My own view is it is not the death of adulthood that’s the problem but the death of childhood that is the issue. We treat children like little adults, they have school that the must attend, they have play dates, they have teams sports that their parents usually force them to do, all so the can be responsible. Gone is the freedom of childhood and it’s play. When you never have a childhood well you have to express it in someway. This is where young adult novels are being read by adults, video games are being played by adults, media is more driven by what we as children loved. In fact I feel that the “Death of adulthood” is purely a response to the death of childhood and the loss of play spaces. In conclusion, then, as I suggested earlier, defenders of the theory that adulthood is dead can’t have it both ways. Their assertion that adulthood is dead is contradicted by their claim that we actually had an adulthood in the first place.
Now in my claim that childhood is dead is more fitting with Mr. Jenkins original idea that we have replaced play spaces from outside to within likewise the play spaces of typical childhood being replaced by games, and structured play. We seem to have very little unstructured play anymore. It always seems to have rules and boundaries in the same waysports and play dates tend to have. Video games have loosened those boundaries just a bit but there’s still the boundaries of the game itself, for example, not being able to climb certain mountains, or go past certain barriers. It rarely seems to be about the fun anymore but the task of it. Sports have goals, have cooperation, have rules, similarly video games have all these features. It’s when they go beyond those rules, like “Second Life”, Minecraft”, or even “Legos” that we really begin to use our imagination and get transported to our own world.
References:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/magazine/the-death-of-adulthood-in-american-culture.html
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/12/the_death_of_adulthood_is_really_just_capitalism_at_work/
http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/death-of-adulthood-pop-culture-ao-scott-essay.html