The second of the readings for tomorrow’s class talks about how Joseph Pulitzer amped up the common man’s taste for sensational news by great graphics, thanks in part to late 19th C printing technology.
With that in mind, check out this page from a Times story on video games.
I really liked that reading, not least because it very nicely inverted the usual “causes/phenomenon” relationship in the history of the media in question. But good infographics and good graphics are unquestionably a part of what sells news, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a ~bad~ thing. There’s always a temptation to wring our hands and lament how changing technology has changed cognition and society over time, but we couldn’t go back even if we wanted to, and like the man said, “The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”
As we become more and more desensitized to news, not just in their increased frequency, but now in their brevity, these “twitch” games have come to reflect that. We can only tweet 40 characters at a time, text messages only allow so much formality, and the majority of conservational speech has been reduced to “lol” and “brb.” In a digital age where time is essential and our attention spans are much shorter than they used to be, utilizing entertainment in 5-10 minute intervals caters to the crowd of people jumping from thing to the next. And if you’re going to be doing something for such a short time, you don’t want to be thinking deeply about the art and the meaning behind the game, you want some big-eyed, adorably-drawn birds to throw at the mean, green pigs.
It’s all about short doses and making those short doses as exciting as possible. And if it’s not sensational it won’t sell, as Zach gage pointed out with his satirical game, “Unify Birds.” And as our smartphones get faster, these 5-10 minutes may even decrease. What then?
Anderson explains our obsession with Angry birds, and “stupid games” in general, as “the string of digital prayer beads that our entire culture can twiddle in moments of rapture or anxiety”. We have been hearing the buzzword “gamification” everywhere- basically a way of masking real life tasks under a blanket of feel-good accomplishment. We are desperately seeking to satisfy a caveman-like desire to overcome challenges and experience bursts of victory, and when we can’t win in the real world at least we can be motivated to collect points by launching a cartoon bird into a pyramid of pigs.