Stuff like this is just so common. It isn't enough to have a nice hobby with a great return on entertainment time vs. investment. Some people just are not happy unless they are creating unfounded MEANING in it as well.
We have the RPG as Art type, and even worse we have the RPG as the hope of mankind type.
What BS.
Oh, I'll grant that the ability to spin reality is a powerful influence. Sadly that is core of politics and PR although calling it 'story' is nothing more than making the term 'story' meaningless as a useful word. But to leap from there and decide that just because one plays RPGs that world is yours for the remaking... is just stupid.
Let's pass over the small matter that real public influencing skills are not what is being used at the gaming table. Let's pass over the fact that no matter the spin, in the end reality will catch up with you (although if you're like Stalin or Mao, you get to pass that off to the poor bastards who are alive after your gone).
Let's just take a passing look at any collection of gamers out there. They hate each other guts. One says one thing, ten others will leap and and say the reverse. The only thing they'd do in the real world even given all of Rob's foolish assumptions is add to the noise. And they'd add a LOT to the noise.
Just what we don't need. Gamers wouldn't save the world, they'd doom it.
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6 comments:
I'll second your sentiment, although its seems unlike you to bow to fashion in leaving out our modern western autocrats when describing passing the buck.
But I'd like to see gamers in charge - government governing best that governs least, and all that.
rainswept: Well, I try to leave politics out of what is a RPG blog...
Difficult some times as much of what plagues the political world plagues the culture and thus plagues RPGs.
I believe in RPGs as art. I just don't think art is something as lofty and preternatural. Grandpa Rients occasionally liked to whittle to pass leisurely moments. I'd call that art as well, but I'm in no hurry to call the Smithsonian over it.
Jeff Rients: generally those claiming RPGs are Art, do see it as something lofty. Otherwise they have no reason to bring the subject up.
I don't have problems with someone that defines it as unexceptional a result as you just did.
I heard (on Top Gear of all places so discount that based on the source at your leisure) that art is something that serves no other purpose but to be art. What that means is up to debate, but I'd say that there's a valid point that art can be entertainment but not all entertainment is art. Games by their definition are entertainment first, but the fact that stories CAN come out of RPGs and stories can be art so by that reasoning RPG's can be art... certainly not all game sessions are but I think any game has the potential to produce art through the stories told. I'd be inclined to argue that the game it's self isn't art any more than a blank canvas, a set of brushes, and a palette of paints is art. (Or a set of crayons as the case may be.)
In the end I think the core of Rob's point is still valid. There are some skills developed by gaming that can serve us in other areas of life. Not all gamers will develop those skills of course, and not all games offer benefits like this in similar ways. Maybe Rob has some rose tinted shades on by believing that RPGs could ever offer consistent tangible educational benefits to the people playing them (and still be entertaining), but I don't think he's being pretentious by doing so.
Hm,
RPGs: The frivolous art.
I like it. As someone who is not too fond of pretension in his entertainment, I enjoy RPGs the most when they advocate the Role-Playing as serving the Game, and not the other way around. Stop ascribing traits to my hobby things it does not have, let alone aspire to.
It's cool by me if someone wants to personally decide to seek a deeper meaning in life, but I buy RPGs being the means to that revelation the same way I'd buy marbles as a means to revelation.
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