Video Games: My Journey from Hateration to Toleration

My name is Ailidh, and I am doing slow rehab on my lifelong hatred of video games.

When I first became a parent, I was a strict hippie. Even before we had kids, I made my husband agree to no plastic toys (we negotiated an exception for lego), and I upheld this position after my children were born. But my husband loves video games, movies and technology. He’s a programmer, and the skills he’s developed in tech bring him a lot of joy. He wanted our kids to have enough access to tech to make them fluent. He wanted them to feel inspired to be producers and creators, not just consumers. Perhaps, dear reader, you might intuit that I struggled with this. I still do. But, I’m proud to say, I’ve moved from hateration to toleration.

When my husband wanted to introduce our kids to video games, I had to reflect on my long-held position. I was convinced that video games would melt their precious little brains, so my kids only played on iPads with their dad. I was a snob about it and that didn’t feel good, especially as my kids got older and more of their energy and interest was invested in video gaming. I realized I was shutting myself off from something that my kids loved, and I didn’t understand why I was so vehement. 

I did a little inner work. I acknowledged that I had felt left out around video games my whole young life, and I had transformed it into a form of disdainful disavowal. But I did not want to be scornful of my kids’ interests. I wanted to be interested and engaged with them about their passions.

A turning point in my gaming-based journey of self-reflection occurred one day when I was listening to the podcast Reconciliable Differences. I heard an episode (https://www.relay.fm/rd/3) in which one of the hosts was ranting about sports (which I love), and the second host just shrugged and asked, so what? People love sports, it doesn’t affect you, so why the hate? I realized I shared the second host’s perspective. In the next episode (https://www.relay.fm/rd/4), this second host makes the case for video games as a creative endeavor. Folks, this was a game-changer for me! I was folding laundry at the time, and I still remember the feeling of needing to sit down and re-listen. If you or someone you love is trying to wrap their head around videogames as a not-terrible thing, I recommend the podcast episodes above.

I also did a lot of reflecting on active and passive consumption in my own life. When I watch a movie, read a book or go see a play, I am consuming a piece of someone else’s creativity. It is a passive act, though it becomes more active when I connect the material to my own lived experiences. Video games are less passive. They require a lot of engagement from the player. The game is co-created by the developers and the gamer(s) in real time. The player sets themselves challenges (or not), explores spaces, and solves puzzles. In fact, I’ve come to realize that video games are essentially sprawling puzzle-landscapes. This realization has made video games easier for me to embrace than TV, movies or Youtube. It has placed video games closer to par with how I value books. And just like with books, TV or Youtube, there’s a range: some content makes us smarter, and does not. In fact, some content might even make us less smart (cough YouTube videos of dogs farting cough).

I’m not trying to say that video games are a panacea, or that they are without problems. But I’m glad I’ve worked hard to get over my snobbery about video games. I am committed to learning to play videogames with my kiddos, while they still want me to. I hope I can play with them occasionally when they go off to college. And maybe, eventually, it will become a way to connect with my grandkids (if I should be so lucky)!