One thing I haven’t seen a lot of writing about, especially surrounding “geek culture,” is what maturity is supposed to look like for millennial and gen z folks. (This isn’t to say that this writing doesn’t exist; I’m on the lookout for it and in the thread this article came out of I’m asking for recommendations.)
It’s a question I’ve been thinking about since I read this post about queer fandoms of children’s media. The post came to a conclusion I broadly agree with – engage with mature media, develop a critical sense for “adult” works, etc. – but it’s led me to consider what it means to *be* mature. This is fully one of those questions that seems like the best and only response should be “do you really have to ask?” But honestly, yes. I really do.
I think with video games especially it’s a weird question, because of course the medium has been trying for decades to prove that it’s not just a children’s toy for babies and can actually engage with the adult world. But idk man have you SEEN the fucking discourse? Any of it, especially lately? I really do think we’re struggling to figure out exactly what maturity means. I’m certainly not gonna solve this problem with a tweet thread or an article. It’s a question of philosophy in one sense and in another its a sociological question, but regardless, I feel compromised – I’m too close to the subject matter to answer sufficiently I think.
In the moments of not-writing I’ve been taking for myself, I’ve been thinking a bit about the output I released last year, toward the end of No Escape‘s “gotta post every day or people will think I’m a hack fraud for goofballs” period. One set of pieces dealt with a phenomenon in a game I love to talk about, Destiny 2. “Dad builds” was/is a phenomenon where people would find the best easily-acquired legendary weapons to use in PVP and PVE challenges because some folks just don’t have time to farm exotics or hunt for pinnacle weapons. The question was usually formatted like: what gun do most people have that can easily approximate Recluse, for example.
Looking back I was far harsher on it than I should have been from kind of a backhanded perspective – I was mad in part because it was framed in a way that suggested dads just need a break that we don’t afford moms – but it’s not a terrible idea? Especially now that I don’t have fucking 10 hours in a day to play a video game repetitively? And I’m more tired now than I was in 2019? And in general I would rather not give any games every waking moment of my life?
Nomenclature aside, the dad build is a step towards maturity in the game space. Being able to say “look, I don’t have the time or energy to obsess over a game, what is the toolset that will allow me to have the most fun with the least amount of bullshit grinding” strikes me as a healthy way to engage with video games. And sure you might say “this sounds old” but I think this ability to disentangle yourself from a game and say “I don’t want to spend every waking moment of my life on this” is good regardless of age, honestly. Asking for shorter games, for modes that don’t require a 20-hour investment every day, etc. is good. It might even be mature.
But maturity isn’t just a question in this one sense. What does it mean for games *themselves* to be mature, for example? (Yes, there’s a rating, but that’s not what I mean.)
That Zombie Game What Caused A Bunch Of Pissbaby Gamers To Brigade Laura Bailey Part II attempted to deal with violence and revenge and its consequences. I don’t have a PS4, I can’t say whether it did so with any maturity (or success). My sense, just from playing games in the same vein, is that at the end of the day mechanically you’re not going to get the lesson the game is trying to teach you through the narrative. I have no idea how much the game tried to reconcile its mechanics with its narrative but you see what I’m saying: if the game is fun, even as the story is trying to tell you you shouldn’t be having fun, you’re still probably going to listen to your experience with the game over the on-the-box narrative. I believe it’s possible to reconcile mechanics with narrative in a way that foregrounds maturity. Will players engage with such a game maturely? Maybe not.
Will it matter? That’s a great question.
Anyway, I would love to hear other perspectives on millennial/gen z maturity, especially as it pertains to “geek culture.” Drop me a line on twitter.
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