Exeter’s Video Game Culture Examined

Whether it’s the end of lunch block or an evening break after study hours, students in Ewald are often found flocking to the common room during their spare time, where they commence tournament-style rounds of Super Smash Bros in groups of five or six. Like many other dormitories on campus, Ewald has a social culture that revolves around video gaming.

In the past few months, health professionals across the country have expressed increasing concern about the addictive nature of video games. 

According to a New York Times article, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially added “gaming disorder” to their list of substance use and addictive behaviors in May in the International Classification of Diseases, describing this disorder as “excessive and irrepressible preoccupation with video games, resulting in significant personal, social, academic or occupational impairment for at least 12 months.”

However, some, including CEO of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Stan Pierre-Louis, contested this classification. “Mental health experts … warn, over and over, that creating some kind of ‘video gaming addiction’ classification isn’t supported by the evidence and that it puts patients at risk,” he wrote in an editorial featured on ESA’s website. “In fact, the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have each reviewed the evidence and declined to describe any level of video game use as an ‘addiction’ or as a ‘disorder.’”

Meanwhile, video games have garnered significant popularity at the Academy, according to Associate Director of Counseling and Psychology Chris Thurber. “Video games hold a prominent place on the menu of distraction or distractions from which a person can choose if they are wanting to just not think about academics for a little while,” Thurber said. “We have many more ways to procrastinate and distract ourselves now, especially online.”

Many students believe the stigmas attached to frequent video gaming habits are disproportionate. “If … you say I read for 12 hours this week or sewed for 12 hours this week, then suddenly it’s no longer a big deal, because it’s not video games,” upper Nick Pham said.

Additionally, video games foster lively social activity, upper Charlie Preston noted. “Gaming is not someone sitting in a room alone playing a video game with strangers or just with AI,” Preston said. “It’s a group of people who gather in person and say, ‘let’s get on the same server, let’s get our accounts together and do some sort of virtual activity together.’ It’s very communal—people are talking to each other and celebrating each other.”

Upper Alana Yang agreed, recalling how she bonded with her peers in her lower year math class over Minecraft. “We had one test left and we were joking about making a server. When we finally did, it ended up making math class more fun,” she said. 

Others disagree. Mathematics Instructor David Huoppi said, “In one sense, it could be considered a group activity since [students] are in the same room as their friends who are also playing the same game, but there may not be much meaningful conversation going on.” 

Upper and Virtual Reality Club co-head Andrew Woo, who is a frequent Minecraft and Super Smash Bros player and has attempted to create his own video games, shared that the activity can be a venue for extracurricular exploration. “I began playing video games and I thought they were really interesting. I wanted to know how they worked, so I began programming,” Woo said.

Ewald proctor and senior David Gonzalez noted that video games only become a problem when they prevent students from meeting academic expectations or interacting with peers. “I think the concern only comes if there’s prioritization of video games over homework to a large extent, where people are playing video games during lunch and during their free and during study hour breaks and then staying up all night working; that can be a problem,” he said.

Webster proctor and senior Daniel Colón acknowledged that this is the case for certain students. “I’ll use Rocket League, for example. If you lose a game, and you don’t think you should have, you think perhaps you are better than the person you were playing against … the addictive nature of video games will make you say, all right, another game. That cycle continues over and over again,” Colón said.

However, video gaming is not the only mode of distraction for students—other poular platforms include Netflix and Youtube, Religion Instructor and Ewald affiliate Thomas Simpson said. “Video games, YouTube, and Netflix are all designed to be immersive and absorbing. In moderation, they can be wonderful,” Simpson said. “During a given week, I myself use all three as as a way to soothe stress and connect with my kids. The potential danger is that we’ll go down one of these rabbit holes, to the exclusion of other more important commitments and priorities. So in the dorm, we try to foster healthy conversations and practices aimed at moderation and social connection.”

On the other hand, Huoppi suggested that video games are more addictive than alternative distractions. “Generally speaking, I would not say that most TV programs are designed to be addictive—rather they hope to capture an audience that wants to come back for the next episode,” Huoppi said. “The video game designers want the user to not be able to put the game down. That seems like a big distinction to me.”

Several noted a gender imbalance in the gaming community. “I have not encountered any girl who talks about video games, let alone plays in the same magnitude as my friends, who are all boys,” senior Brian Kook said. 

Senior Rose Coviello expressed that although she plays Call of Duty on her iPhone, most of her female peers do not play video games. “All the people who play with me are my guy friends,” she said. “I don’t know many girls who really play video games.”

Lower Dawit Ewnetu, on the other hand, believes this is an inaccurate characterization. “I think that we tend to see more gaming boys in ads and whatnot, but realistically, there is an even mixture of both boys and girls in the video gaming life,” he said.

Upper Jackson Carlberg noted that marketing may have an impact on gaming demographics. “I think video games are marketed more towards males and when you look at the gender of the character in certain story-driven games like Assassin’s Creed, they added a female avatar just this year,” he said. “That could be why more boys tend to play than girls.”

Some believe gaming promotes toxic masculinity. “On a national scale, men who game often tell women ‘you can’t play video games.’ Then some people will actually quit games when girls start beating them,” Pham said.

In a similar vein, certain age demographics are more prone to gaming than others. Senior Orion Bloomfield noted that lowerclassmen tend to spend more time gaming than upperclassmen. “Part of upper year is realizing that the time you had for video games, movies, or other forms of entertainment have seemingly gone away. You need to grow as a person in some ways to get over that hump, and find what truly fuels you from the day to day,” he said.

Math Instructor and Main Street affiliate Tim Whittemore reflected on the evolution of media. “Just a few decades ago, we used to have smoking rooms, [where] you would go and talk about who knows what. Then, cell phones came along and Facebook and texting and Snapchat and so many other ways that have changed how people socialize,” he said.

“Now, right next to the Main Street common room, kids go to a room, game and scream together. It’s not a negative or positive change, it’s just another change in a long history of change.”