Games are for children. Games are art. Games are for man-children. Games are for all. Depending on who one talks to there is a variety of audiences who gaming is "meant" for. This variety of audiences is one of the reasons the ESRB rating system is in place. But there is a more fundamental question that the ESRB ratings system cannot address: it is a question not only of who games are meant for, but who has access to games.
I don't speak of accessibility to gaming in the sociocultural sense: this isn't a blog about whether or not games are appropriate forms of expression or what games are appropriate for different audiences. What I speak of is gaming accessibility in its most simple meaning: are there barriers in gaming which prevent some people from playing games? Are games "meant" for these individuals or groups?
In this regard there is an element of socioeconomics, I suppose: the revolt of gamers against the XBOX One had everything to do with questions of accessibility for millions of gamers who may not live in the often disconnected reality that is the East and West Coasts, of which most domestic games companies call home including Microsoft, who wondered why anyone would want to live anywhere else to which many gamers replied by telling Microsoft regardless of where they dwell it will be somewhere which does not have a XBOX One.
There is of course the question of the cost of gaming systems and the games themselves. With the economies in many countries preventing gamers from being able to afford new consoles, as hardware and software becoming increasingly more costly to manufacture it appears that a large part of the burden on recouping that cost is in the first-world markets. This is another reason why it is imperative to game developers and publishers to sell as many copies as possible during the launch window and why, as said in a previous blog, game developers and publishers seek to control the access of gamers to information about their products, through things like review embargoes (where a gaming news outlet cannot release a review of a game until launch day or afterwards), limiting access to "friendly" outlets, limiting what is shown to reporters and artificially creating scarcity (the "exclusive" reveals, covers, etc.).
So games are Prozac for the proletariat; a mechanical messiah for the middling 'Mericans who otherwise would be lost, of which their American Dream dreams of electric shepherds. Very well. Games then are tools of a power structure. They are forms of propaganda.
Or at least that is what some have already alleged about Gone Home and most gaming reporters....
"Are the people even worthy of games?" appears to be the existentialist query raised by gaming journalists, up there with the other great questions such as how many mushrooms could Mario munch if Mario munched on mushrooms, and how many angels could fit on a pin or more likely, how many more games can Lightning star in, in a series called Final Fantasy?
There is certainly an element of socioeconomics here and while I said this blog wouldn't delve into sociocultural matters the two become indistinguishable here: but it is the gaming reporters who create this environment themselves.
The gaming media itself is in the same position, and adheres to many of the same values, as certain Microsoft employees: the way that the gaming media has sought to redeem Adam Orth, of "just #dealwithit" infamy, could perhaps be because they saw what occurred with him and saw a glimpse of the world outside their San Fransisco and New York bubbles, and realized the damn rabble was after one of their own. For the gaming media Adam Orth is not even to be recognized as an idiot, but as a martyr: games are too good for gamers, and we are too good for these forum-dwelling cave trolls.
Who are games made for? is a question that the gaming industry is asking itself and what it decides is where gaming shall go: as gamers we should be active participants in that dialogue because at the very least I think that those who have a platform to ask the questions gamers want ask don't even bother to do that before dictating to gamers what they should buy and what they should be allowed to buy and what games and what types of gamers are not allowed.
So who are games not "meant" to be made for? :
---Anyone who enjoys JRPGs.
----Anyone who enjoys FPSes.
----Anyone who enjoys ladies in gaming (so much hostility to women in gaming and they then have the audacity to wonder why so few women play.....)
-----Anyone who dares question why games should involve gameplay.
----Anyone who.........
So just consider this, gamers: according to these ideas about who games are "meant" for it may all seem fine and good that you don't find yourself on any of these criteria but know that if anyone and everyone can be excluded from gaming.......
That means one day games can be "meant" for anyone but you, too.