Editorial: Video Games Are Growing Up

There’s a certain stigma attached to being a gamer. And I mean… I get it. For a lot of Gen Xers and elder millennials, video games are something experienced through kids and cousins, whether they’re hustling cash for Robux, sweating over a round of Fortnite, or catching ‘em all in Pokémon. Then there was #GamerGate — the awful online alt-right hate campaign centred around 4chan bros harassing female developers. And the enduring influence of anime means there’s often an embarrassing male-gazey sexualisation in video game aesthetics.

Given all this, it’s more than fair for the unacquainted to treat video game culture with suspicion. But as you’ll read in this issue’s cover story, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in games as well. You see, the original generation who grew up playing games are now the people making them. They all went off to uni or whatever and — just guessing here — smoked some weed, discovered Alice Coltrane, watched The Seventh Seal, and all those other things people tend to do on their way to becoming culturally literate lost souls.

“The indie game scene has produced some wild titles that have more in common with experimental theatre than Call of Duty.”

The resulting indie game scene has produced some wild titles that have more in common with experimental theatre than Call of Duty. From the funereal Hebridean island sim Dear Esther, to the dizzying magic realist voyage of Kentucky Route Zero, to the revolutionary interactive cinema of Immortality, some of the most interesting artworks of recent years have been games. MoMA is collecting them, BAFTA is awarding them, and video game academia has arrived. The world is catching up with a medium that’s starting to hit its stride.

With that in mind, read our latest feature here to hear from four key figures in Iceland’s video game scene, all of whom had interesting things to say about the evolving place of games in our culture. And to all the sceptics out there — give games a chance.

Enjoy the issue, and Grapevine’s ongoing coverage of the local game scene. Happy Pride month. Stay hydrated. And Free Palestine.

John Rogers is our guest editor this issue. Catherine Fulton is away.