It is always surprising to hear President Emmanuel Macron, so concerned about the country’s prosperity, attacking one of the jewels of French industry so violently. By stigmatizing, during his speech on June 30, the toxicity of video games as responsible for the conflagration of the last few days, the Head of State points to one of the most dynamic economic sectors in the country, with an estimated turnover to five billion euros in 2020. The video game is also one of the only players in the cultural world to have escaped the restrictions imposed in the time of Covid.
The ideological questions obviously prevail here over the commercial and financial issues: we are not sure that we should be happy about this in this case. Through a short sentence that no investigation comes to support, Emmanuel Macron throws a general discredit on a complete ecosystem of creators, developers, studios, publishers, broadcasters and players, without forgetting the researchers: these are more and more numerous. now to consider that video game works have their full place in university studies, in the same way as literary, theatrical or cinematographic works. Institutions as prestigious as the National Library of France now give pride of place to archiving, studying and promoting these new cultural objects: we can only pay tribute to the audiovisual department of the BNF, which has worked in for the recognition of video games as a monument of our material and immaterial heritage. Similarly, university laboratories are multiplying research programs, conferences, publications and journal issues on all aspects of these newcomers to the cultural landscape.
At the bend of a brief presidential address, a few words are enough to sweep away the patient efforts made for several decades to legitimize these unloved in right-thinking circles. No matter what we do, no matter how much we say: video games in general continue to appear toxic, and why not the only culprits, along with social networks, of the current insurrectionary climate. However, video game works certainly deserve better than these old stereotypes that designate them as scapegoats for all the misfortunes of our world.
cathartic practice
In reality, do we really know what young girls and young men are playing today? The offer is plethoric. The first-person fighting games (FPS) which the President of the Republic is obviously thinking of only constitute a fraction of the titles offered, even within the so-called “triple A” large productions. And next to majors has blossomed, aided by the release across the platforms, of a range of original, inventive, incredibly creative and innovative indie games. Some have ambitious social, philosophical or even metaphysical intentions.
We first think of the productions of the French studio DontNod: Life is Strange, in 2015, depicted the delicate passage to adulthood of a fragile heroine, with touching androgyny, in a tense school universe and a city in crisis. From, Tell me why (2020) treated with delicacy, emotion and subtlety, without militancy, the difficult question of transgenderism. Another French studio, Asobo, whose medieval franchise The Plague Tale (2019-2021) has garnered prestigious awards. We cannot mention here all the nuggets produced by the independent game: the marvelous and poetic Graywhich retraces the mourning journey of a young orphan; Dear Esthera jewel of contemporary poetry set in the breathtaking landscapes of the Hebrides Islands; Papers, please, which makes the player relive the suffocating and terrifying daily life of a civil servant in a totalitarian country; Or The Stanley Parable, recently released (2022), which denounces with corrosive humor the hell of offices while offering a mise en abyme of video game art and its paradoxes. Let’s quote again What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) poignant family drama and universally admired aesthetic masterpiece.
It will be said that Emmanuel Macron was not thinking of this vast nebula of independent titles, equivalent for the video game universe of arthouse cinema. It will be claimed that he only had first-person shooters in mind. The amalgam caused by the absence of explicit precision would not be less in itself eloquent: it is as if one were attacking “the cinema” in general by thinking of the only Fast and Furious. It will be left to psychologists to repeat that no causal relationship between video games and violence has ever been demonstrated by serious studies.
On the other hand, we will insist more on the danger which consists in lending to works of fiction a power of conditioning: it is the same prejudice of a contagion of passion which pushes the partisans of the culture of erasure to try to suppress works deemed to encourage deviant behavior or stereotypes that they disapprove of. To condemn the video game on the grounds that it would lead to acting out is to place little trust in the critical spirit of the players, who obviously remain capable of making the distinction between fiction and reality. After a wild campaign on call of duty Or The Division, once the lever is put down, they taste only more civil peace, far from going to work actively for the advent of the Apocalypse. Rather than prohibiting young people from playing video games, we prefer to advise everyone to practice cathartics: it is still better to satisfy one’s natural aggressiveness on pixels than in the street, on beings of flesh and blood.
*Tony Gheeraert is professor of 17th century French literature at the University of Rouen Normandy.