Over at Kotaku.com, Stephen Totilo has identified an awesome new trend in video games — fatherhood:
Being a dad, however, is becoming nearly as popular in video games as health bars and shotguns and, to my playing sensibilities, nearly as successful. I believe we are now experiencing a period of video game history that high school text books will look back upon as The Daddening Of Video Games.
As a recovering video-game addict (15 years and still mostly sober), I’m sorely tempted to hop off the wagon by his round-up of fatherly themed time-wasters digital realms. In Bioshock 2 — which has a kick-ass trailer — you play a Big Daddy protecting a Little Sister. In Heavy Rain, he writes, you have “to choose which of your two sons you’re going to play with first in the backyard.” And in Silent Hill, you search for your daughter after a car crash:
You are in a dark and snowy city, with a flashlight to illuminate a small percentage of the blackness depicted on your TV screen. You walk slowly and run only slightly faster. And with a tap of your A button, you can call for your daughter. She won’t hear you. She wouldn’t show up, not so early in the game, hours before the story of what’s really happening unfolds. But I would like to meet the player who didn’t press the A button and then press it again, who didn’t get into the role-play of being a dad, hoping against hope to hear his daughter call back to him.
Damn, that sounds like a true-to-life feeling, and it’s one I’d love to explore virtually, if only I didn’t have to spend all my time feeding, changing and playing with the baby. (Is this how actual AA and NA survivors feel? Pushed toward the bottle/pill/pipe by the stress of parenting, but kept in check by a newfound sense of responsibility?) About the closest I get to playing a video game is letting Sasha goof around with EliasZoo on my iPhone.
Elsewhere, Tolito traces the history of fatherhood in video games, from Pac-Man and Pac-Man Jr. to Solid Snake’s Marcus Fenix (although he leaves out the hilariously condescending King of the Cosmos from Katamari Damacy), and tries to understand why games are getting daddened right now. Is it because gamers are aging? Or because fatherly caring is an interesting new character motivation in a genre where your motive is all too often BLOW SHIT UP!!!
My theory is slightly different: Protecting a child triggers in us fathers a deeply visceral response—an “I will kill anything that comes at my kid” mode that bypasses the frontal cortex and turns us into fast-twitch maniacs capable of inhuman feats of strength and skill. Usually, we employ it simply for catching the kid mid-air when she falls backward off the bed, or to haul child, stroller, and several bags of groceries up three flights of stairs. But it’s a pretty great reflex to break out when you’re sitting down the latest fully immersive first-person shooter.
Maybe when Sasha’s a little older, we can blow shit up together. Yeah, that’d be nice.
I like the trend, too, though to confine it to just fatherhood is a little cherry-pickish. Tolito’s doing, not yours. The trend of actual-maturity is finally getting a foothold in games, and fatherhood is merely one example.
And Sasha? There is a 95% chance she will play video games, just because at this point, they are so woven into the social fabric. There is always a chance she’ll be a ‘contentious objector’ (just as there are people who, say, avoid watching movies), but it’s not the likely route.
Will she, or my potential future child, actually have any interest in the encyclopedic history of the medium that I store in my head… that’s another matter.
Believe me, with my kid, I know there will be some unironic backinmyday video game moments.
My kid brother works in the video game industry and based on my anecdotal experience, there are a fair number of video game designers who are fathers. The industry is still really male dominated (as far as I can see) and as the industry has matured a lot of designers and producers are dads. I think that probably accounts for a lot of the Daddening.
My problem is that I have twin boys and only two controllers. So I’m usually the odd man out. But I have already told Mom that we’re putting in a wireless router so we can all play PC games at the same time. Hopefully before Diablo 3 is released.