Maybe Microsoft's approach would be easier to swallow if they seemed to be saying to the country, "Hey, videogames are great, and more worthwhile than you think. Everyone should try them!" But that's not the message here. This seems to be a matter of money, of expanding the market, plain and simple. It seems Microsoft is passing up subculture for money. And it hurts.
But should it? Aren't videogames, like any other industry, innately driven by money? Money equals sales equals popularity, and, in the industry as we know it, popular demand determines the shape new games will take in the future. Games can't be developed without money. Game publishers flock to it. So why shouldn't creators?
Here's where the question of artistic integrity comes in. Capitalism can inspire creation, certainly, but often the best art is produced in defiance of monetary restraints, of realistic business models, of preoccupation with worldly gain. If mainstream videogames will always be defined by the ebb and flow of supply and demand, perhaps what we need to take risks outside the system, for the sake of art. Because, in a way, that's what raises a work from the level of entertainment to the level of art, even if it's not successful art - the hope to get something more out of it than money. Mediocre books are made all the time; they're usually the best-sellers. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as literature. As with games, originality often lies outside the restraints, both economic and cultural, of the mainstream.
Going Public: the Need for Acceptance, the Fear of Sublimation
Then again, the question of artistic value almost becomes a null one without mainstreamization - that is, there's no one around to view it. A videogame doesn't need public recognition to be good, but the lack of audience would be frustrating, for sure. Which brings up the larger question, not just of a game, but of games in general: Can videogames actually be art if the general culture doesn't appreciate them as such? And don't we have to, inevitably, sell out our subculture identity, and delve into the mainstream in order to catch society's eye? Even then, our success in the quest for respect is hardly guaranteed. We face snide remarks, criticism and reluctant thinkers. Videogames have been getting more and more big media attention as they've become more mainstream, but it hasn't all been good attention.
And perhaps we're equally to blame if the American public hasn't latched onto the association of videogames and positive, quality interaction. They expect a certain stereotype - the gamer who sits in front of the TV shooting haplessly, who refuses to think of his experience as anything more than indulgent entertainment - and we do little in day to day life to refute it. We gamers think about videogames all the time, but as a community we still have an unwillingness to think, to validate our interest in a meaningful way mainstream intellectuals could understand, and in time, come to respect.
Then again, if you like to game, and thinking is not your thing, who says you should jump through hoops to show off for other people? We're been tugged from each side. Do we want mass recognition and validation, or ourselves? There's no easy answer.
From a cultural analyst's perspective, it's almost painful to watch a unique, complex subculture get swallowed up in America's hegemonic mainstream. Something may be gained, but something will definitely be lost. But before the community as we know it goes altogether, there will be (in fact, there already is) a process of eating away, an invasion by the norm. And whether or not that, in the long run, is a positive thing, our knee-jerk reaction is one of self-protection, of defense against outsiders, of clinging on to our gamer identities before they get sublimated once and for all in faceless, mainstream swell.
