Why I Hate Edutainment and MMOs

I suppose this title is a bit harsh. Actually, I don't really hate edutainment OR MMOs. I have no gripe against the games themselves (any genre that can produce a game like The Typing of the Dead is alright by me), nor against the people who make them. My gripe is really with the way they're studied, particularly in the larger context of game studies.

If you're unfamiliar with either of the two genres, allow me to explain. "Edutainment" is the term used to refer to games that teach a subject. This could be old-school games like Number Munchers or more complex games that happen to have an educational element, like Civilization. Because of the immersive and interactive nature of video games, many have found that games are a good way of teaching people facts and skills. The fun and playful nature of games keeps people coming back, and helps them to absorb the information. It's no secret that games and play are a great way of learning - people have used games to learn and teach since long before the video game.

MMOs are Massively Multiplayer Online games, games which include communities of sometimes millions of players, all interacting and playing with each other online. World of Warcraft is usually the first game to come to peoples' minds when discussing the subject. MMOs can provide a very interesting forum for the study of virtual worlds, and various sociology/social dynamics/anthropology studies.

As interesting as games in either of these genres can be, more and more I have found the way they are studied to be somewhat degrading to video games as a medium. Both genres deflect attention away from the medium, forcing it to be little more than a vehicle for something "more interesting."

When people look at the potential of video games to teach, particularly people outside the Game Studies community, their enthusiasm seems to contain the implicit criticism, "Well, games are pretty useless by themselves, but look, we can use them to teach people things of real value." It's as though the medium is only valuable to the extent that it can teach us history, or a foreign language, or typing skills. You know, useful information.

To me, this is like someone saying that only non-fiction books have any value. While I know a lot of people prefer to read exclusively non-fiction, I think most of them would agree that some fiction, particularly the classics (Shakespeare, anyone?), have at least some intrinsic value as works of art. Even if they would argue otherwise, I think they might have a difficult time supporting their points while running from the angry mob of literary critics at their heels with torches and pitchforks.

It's the same thing with MMOs - games are looked at not for their worth as games, but for how they can illustrate interesting social phenomena and, more often than not, are lumped in with non-game virtual worlds like Second Life. The sort of studies people usually talk about when they discuss MMOs seem to belong more in the field of sociology than in Game Studies. The game itself is largely ignored in favor of the players. And while it is certainly interesting to see what this new medium can tell us about ourselves, it seems terribly rude to that medium to ignore so much of it. Studies of MMOs often seem to largely ignore the existance of single-player games, as though multiplayer games were all that the medium consisted of, or at least all of any importance. In fact, MMOs and single-player games are vastly different from each other, and should not be lumped together.

Games can be art. I firmly believe this. I want to study them for what they are, and what they can give us as a medium, not how they can be exploited for the purposes of other schools. I wouldn't study filmmaking for what it might teach me about how to make educational science videos. I would study it as an artform and as a medium. This is how I think we need to look at games as well.