Garrett Temchulla
2 November 2007
Research Essay Draft
English 202 – 9:05am
Dr. Sherwood
The Link To Why People Play Video Games
In today’s aging population of the United States, video games are still seen as a useless, non-beneficial waste of time, even though video games are a rapidly, expanding branch of technology. They not only capture the attention of many people but captivate their minds as well. The countless hours people devote to playing is enough to classify gaming as a growing influence on today’s culture. One can ponder whether such an addiction for a particular game is because people purely enjoy engaging in it? Or they could look deeper into the “need” and wonder if gaming goes into the individual’s thoughts and personality, so much so that a person needs to “game” in order to properly function? If a person desires to game instead of simply wanting to game, some may question if such “need” is necessary for the gamer to feel whole as a person. To help support and persuade this need for playing video games, Psychologist, Abraham Maslow, who is considered “the father of humanistic psychology,” and his Hierarchy of Needs will be used to support this “need”. He categorized the Hierarchy of Needs into several categories to create his theory. Thus, the whole paper will be directed towards comparing gaming and Maslow’s theory and also answering a question. That question being, can playing video games achieve the three higher levels of Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of Needs.
This hierarchy is based upon what Maslow observed as results of humans’ innate curiosity; they are divided into four lower levels, deficiency needs associated with physiological needs and a top level consisting of growth needs associated with psychological needs. Loving/Belonging is the first of three needs that will be engaged in. This particular level has two important parts pertaining to it. These parts are the need for friends and the need to be apart of a community. Maslow believes people will start to search for belonging amongst friends and even a certain established group or part of a community. This demonstrates the importance of people knowing who you are and feeling that you have played a vital role among society. Two individuals and their stories will help explain how video games satisfy Maslow’s loving/belonging level.
Now with the foundation of this level understood, a story, written by Sherry Turkle, taking place before the eruption of video games in 1985 will be used to show proof of fulfillment for the love/belonging level. This story takes place when owning an arcade was a profitable business. The story was about a young boy who did not have many friends and was dealing with the divorce of his parents. He found a way to get through his tough times’, that way was playing video games at a local arcade. So to start, Jarish was twelve years old then and infatuated with video games. He held almost all of the high scores in the local arcade. He was viewed as different, outside the arcade, but when at the arcade Jarish was seen as an accomplished gamer. Further more, his extraordinary talents with video games helped his popularity grow within the realm of “gaming”, that realm being the arcade. Jarish expresses this well deserved popularity by simply stating “Everybody knows my initials” (Turkle 502) he says, meaning the gamers of the arcade know him and respect him because of the high scores that he achieved. Due to a combination of everyone recognizing his name and playing video games with so many people, Jarish developed a new found belonging that his life was missing. His love for video games brought him to the arcade and certainly helped him blend in as a gamer with the rest of the people there, but also standout as one of the best!
When trying to make new friends, most people have to break a boundary of trust and find acceptance within a group. In Jarish’s story, his passionate game playing and knowledge allowed the boundary of shared interests to be broken. Developing friendships was easier, for Jarish, because of many peoples’ interests in video games. Along with producing friendships, Jarish’s excelling abilities at game play lifted him to a respectable position as one of the best gamers in his town’s community of arcade gamers. Being one of the best of his interest is a position, which may normally be hard to obtain elsewhere by a twelve-year-old boy. Video games are not like sports where the biggest, strongest, and fastest people are the best. Video games are all based on very little physical abilities and more on how much you play and your dedication to a particular game. With this being said, Jarish and his countless hour of gaming has changed his image from being a young boy to an elite gamer in his town.
Jumping a head to the current year 2007, video games can still bring a satisfaction to the level of Love/Belonging. This is accomplished due to the advances in technology, the newest way video games bring people together is being able to login online and talk to other people that are playing the same game. After reading that last sentence, one may conclude that gamers simply talk to random people every time they login and to a certain extent that is true. But to prove that this is not completely true and be able to understand, apply, and compare Maslow’s theory and video games, I conducted a personal interview with my roommate Adam. He loves video games and plays for hours upon hours a night. His newest craze is Halo 3. When asked if he belongs to a gamers group or something to that extent he said that he did not belong to any gamer groups or clubs, but did inform me about a ritual he had with his friends from home. This ritual is a weekly event that they started when the X-Box Live game, Halo 3, came out. This ritual is due to his friends and him moving away to different colleges. Every Wednesday evening around seven, Adam and his friends login to the interactive part of Halo 3. After logging in, they all put on their headsets and select a location or setting that the game has programmed in and they start their own “free-for-all”; every man for himself, no teammates or partners. All they do is run around, the stage or setting, with there own virtual player and try to kill each other’s virtual player. As they play, the game tracks how many kills everybody has and the shooting accuracy as well as other statistics. As they play there is a lot of name calling, swearing, and celebrating with every kill of the game. My roommate’s group is only interested in who has the most kills when they finish playing. Whoever accomplishes that at the end gets to carry that imaginary trophy of “glory and satisfaction” for the week to come knowing that he was better than the rest. That is just a summary of their game play. The importance that I extracted from the interview was they not only expressed themselves through their interactions but they talked about what is going on in each of their lives like school, friends, families, and girls. This ritual may not seem to be very liable to aid as a comparison to Maslow’s theory but it is. Their ritual may not have a membership card or be apart of an established league, like bowling, or organized sports but it is an understood group of friend/gamers that share a common interest. Along with that, there is an understanding that each person belongs to something bigger than himself or herself but it is the combination of each individual’s effort that keeps their ritual going. But he most vital point is that even though they all went their separate ways for college, Halo 3, a video game, is the key that keeps this group of friends together and in touch.
With a strong argument to backup the link between video games and the fulfillment of the level love/belonging, the next point to prove is the connection between video games and the next level Esteem. This level includes a lower and a higher level according to different categories of the esteem need. The lower level consists of getting respect from other people, while the higher level centers around how individuals respect themselves. “Note that this is the “higher” form because, unlike the respect of others, once you have self-respect, it’s a lot harder to lose!”(Boeree 1) The lower part, obtaining values from others, can be achieved in a numerous ways. Respect from others and recognition, are two of the characteristics of the lower level that will be compared to video game play and its outcomes.
Respect can be gained in many different forms. In sports, it can be gained from performing well, your sportsmanship, or winning. For a gamer like Adam, respect from his friends is a very important value. Since Halo 3 came out he feels the need for his friend’s respect. Even though he has respect in the essence of a friend, he also wants respect as a gamer. Adam values the respect gained as a gamer just as much as he does being a friend. He stated, “My group of friends is very competitive at anything we do. When we started playing Halo 3 it like starting from scratch because it is a new version of Halo. So for me it is another way for me to keep the respect, but at the same time be able to gain a little more.” With their ritual, Adam sometimes loses that respect as fast as he gains it. “You can go from nobody making fun of you”, meaning your playing very well, “to getting ripped on”, meaning your game play is the worst out of the group, “all within a couple of minutes”. With Adam stating that, he has to stay on top of his game week in and week out to maintain that level of respect and avoid getting made fun of by his friends. As he plays, there is a relationship between how many virtual enemies he kills and how much he grins because for every virtual enemy he kills he earns a little bit more respect from his friends. This constant struggle is why Adam likes to play Halo 3 with his friends. Because of the competitiveness of him and his friends, gaming has aloud Adam to gain respect from friends over and over again.
Turkle’s article made it clear that for Jarish, recognition for his gaming talents was a big concern. Jarish liked the way his high scores showed up every time someone started a game. Everybody knew whom he was because the arcade games saved his high scores and his initials, which enabled any gamer to view his accomplishments. The machines saving the high scores also let the other gamers, who could not beat the high score, know his rank and how good he was at that particular game. Being able to put your initials beside your score gave Jarish recognition as a true gamer. This recognition goes deeper than being a gamer but also recognizes Jarish’s dedication, commitment, gaming skills, and hard work that he put into every game to obtain the highest scores. Because of the acknowledgment that Jarish obtained, people saw him not as a little kid but as a successful gamer who had a lot of character and inner drive to be the best gamer.
The higher part of the esteem need is more inner-self, what the person feels and sees themselves as, based that can only be fulfilled by the individual. Achievement, mastery, and freedom are very important to fulfilling the higher level. The most important of this sub level is that individuals have to have self-respect. To reach self-respect one has to conquer the other needs of the higher part. Video games have all the components for a gamer to fulfill this higher part; it is all on what the gamer can get out of the game.
A feeling of freedom can do a lot for a gamer. It has the ability to sweep them away from an environment, like the real world, and put them into another like the virtual world. Marty is a young male that has a stressful job and used to use “transcendental meditation to relax” (Turkle 508). He switched to video games because he has “to have something to do which is so hard that he can’t think of anything else (Trukle 508).” Coming from Turkle, Marty found his replacement in video games. Playing video games “force him into another mental space where the thoughts and the cares of his day cannot intrude (Turkle 508).” This is a perfect example how a video game’s power can completely erase the real world from the minds of gamers and let them enter into a realm of freedom. Video games give the gamer a sense of freedom that Maslow describes in his theory.
According to Maslow, one has to feel a sense of achievement in their lives. A gamer can feel this everyday from video games. Achievement comes from an individual setting goals and accomplishing those goals. A true gamer sets plenty of goals during their play. A goal could range from beating a level of Halo 3 to conquering the entire game. My roommate plays Madden a lot and his goal going into every game is to either beat his opponent, the computer, by at least fifty points or not let the other team score any points. This is a pretty hard task when the difficulty level is pre-set in Madden, the toughest skill level. He plays at least one game a day and sometimes more until he achieves his goal. For example, I walked out of my room and into the common room to see that he was winning 42 to 7 with 30 seconds left. I said good game to him and he was mad about it. I asked him what his problem was and he simple replied, “I didn’t score enough points”. Adam ended up playing three more games until he achieved his goal. Adam’s only concern was that by the end of the day he achieved his pre-set goal. After some more questioning I came to the conclusion that Adam had an obsession. He was so obsessed with the feeling of achievement that he has to have it everyday. Video games, Madden imparticular, are the route he uses to obtain that feeling. When asked, “why don’t you do something else?” Adam replied, “Madden is the quickest way to get it and reaching my goal is still a challenge, when this becomes easy is when I’ll move on to something else”. For now this video game fulfills Adam’s sense of achievement everyday.
Mastery is one of the easiest needs to relate to video games. This is so because the only one stopping the gamer from obtaining are the gamers themselves. With anything else in life that person has to compete with other people and with themselves. To obtain mastery, from a video game stand point, the gamer has to have knowledge and understanding of the game and be in command. For Adam mastery is harder to obtain because you have to beat the whole game in order to understand it and to have the knowledge to beat the games. He never calls himself the master of Halo 3 but he has all the knowledge on what to do and where to go to conquer the game. Do people become masters in real life? Whether they do or don’t, the virtual world of video games allows gamers to experience the feeling of being a master in the virtual world. Video games allow the average person to experience only what the elite people of the real world have achieved. The average person can obtain this in a quicker and less risky atmosphere playing video games than someone in the real world who takes all the risks and usually it takes them a who career to reach a level of mastery. Adam likes it because it didn’t take his whole life to reach that point. He said, “Halo 3 was fun, challenging, and now I can pass on my knowledge to other gamers just like old people passing on what they know in real life”.
Now that video games have completed the past two levels, gamers can move on to the final level, self-actualization. In the real world, this level is the hardest to obtain. “It isn’t surprising, then, the world being as difficult as it is, that only a small percentage of the world’s population is truly, predominantly, self-actualizing (Boeree 2).” The virtual world of video games is different; it’s just the gamer and the game, nothing else. Even though there are a lot of parts to this level, I am only going to prove these five parts of the self-actualization: reality-centered, problem-centered, freshness of appreciation, creative, and peak experience can be obtained from video games.
Adam will be the Ginny pig for the final level. Starting with reality-centered, one must understand and be able to determine what is real and what is digital or not real. Adam is an intense gamer he twists, jumps, flinches, yells, and talks to himself. All the noise and motions he makes looks as if he is the virtual character in the game. Even though it is obvious that the characters in the Halo 3 are not real and he is in college I still asked him if he thought Halo 3 is real or not. He laughed, “No it isn’t real, the meaning of war is real, but the game isn’t”. With Adam knowing and understanding that video games are not real but some of the concepts, like killing in times of war, are real. He clearly has a firm grasped on what is real and what is not and is one-fifth of the way done for completing Maslow’s last level.
Following the part of reality-centered, problem-centered is the next to be analyzed. It is how an individual perceives problems. Most people see a problem as an obstacle or “personal trouble (Before 3),” that get in the way of a certain goal. An individual that is problem-centered does not see a problem but views a problem as a task that is in need of a solution; gamers perform this every time they play a video game. Most problems are different due to different video games but all in all every gamer does this whether he/she knows it. One example can prove Adam has fulfilled this part of self-actualization. The example deals with Adam playing Madden. He realized that the computer/other team was blitzing on just about every down. Because of the blitzing Adam did not have enough time to run his favorite standard package of plays. So, after the fourth time he got sacked he changed his play calling to short passing routes and always made sure that a running back was going into the flats. Adam saw his situation as a task to figure out a way to beat the blitzing scheme of the computer/other team. He did not see it a problem that he would have to deal with but as part of the game that needed a solution. This is a good example of how a video game presented a problem, the other team blitzing and Adam developed a solution of shorter passing routes and sending running backs into the flats.
Freshness of appreciation is the next test level. To fulfill this part Adam needs to have the “ability to see things, even ordinary things, with wonder (Boerne 4).” For this I asked, “Have you ever thought about how the new video games developed from older ones like Pac man?
Being creative is another part an individual has to fulfill to complete the last level of Maslow’s theory. This part entails, thinking outside the box, using your imagination, and at the same time being “original (Boerne 4).” Adam is creative in two ways. The first way is a part of the game that allows the gamer to design or create plays. Adam does this to the extent that he has a large playbook of his own. After playing a game he goes to his playbook that he developed and draws the plays that he thinks will work against the defense he just played. This lets Adam’s mind run wild with experimentation and creativity that Maslow says is a part of self-actualization. This part of the video game allows him to be creative, which completes the fourth out of the five parts of the last level.
The last part dealing with self-actualization is peak experiences. “A peak experience is one that takes you out of yourself, that makes you feel tiny.”(Boerne 4) Adam experienced this about a week ago. He held the imagery title, for the ritual with his friends, for three straight weeks and just beat the game for a second time. He was boasting all day about how good he was at Halo 3. His attitude changed when he checked to see where he was on the ranking system of Halo 3. Halo 3 has a rating system of players based off of certain statistics and when you play online it pairs you up with your level of competition to play against. Adam knew about the rating system and the day he logged on to play some random gamers he realized that he was not even in the top 25,000 gamers. He did not talk for the rest of the day he just sat in his room. He thought his recent success would have had him in the top 5,000. Certain video games, like Halo 3, can put a gamer into his or hers place. Video games can let you think you are the best of the best but then there is a reality shock on where you stand as a gamer. This situation with Adam is what Maslow was referring to about peak experiences. Adam was in an element of his own but when he saw his rankings he was taken out of it and put into the huge pool of gamers, where he was just another gamer trying to climb the ranking system of Halo 3.
After reading this paper one still may have some objection to my thinking, but what would the world be without critics. For the people who think video games are a waste of time, I see video games as a way for the gamer become one with themselves. “Humans think and understand best when they can imagine (simulate) an experience…” (Gee 2005). Video games can provide gamers with an experience every time they play, it is up to the gamer to get as much out of it as possible. The thought process, experiences, and an understanding of situations are all provided by a video game and thus it is easy to linked Maslow’s theory of needs to video games. Also, Maslow made reference that only a small number of people actually complete all the levels, I have to disagree because Adam has completed all the levels through video games and if he could not or did not play video games he would not be the person he is today.
Bibliography:
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