Watching Strangers Play Video Games

YouTube hosts countless videos of professional gamers at work. My son spends hours engrossed in the things. His fixation reminds me of the day I showed the Avengers movie in class: my students could not tolerate any dialogue and demanded that I fast forward to the fight scenes. They cheered every blow and explosion. Spectacle, clearly, was indispensable. Unlike plot. Gamer videos celebrate action. I wonder what the net effect of this might be. What happens when you divorce action from plot? What theme-less drift absorbs you, trading a series of actionable scenarios disconnected from any larger arc other than Winning?

#media #video games #entertainment