by Benedict Bergeron ’29 on October 1, 2026
A&E - Gaming
When two dudes meet in a bar, one says “howdy,” and the other says “hello.” The first talks about life out on the ranch while the other talks about the hubbub of the big city: horses and cars, feed and food, and the rodeo and the metro. While they might get along and enjoy each other’s company, they will never truly understand each other unless one has experienced something that the other has. The other guy is just a dude in another world full of peculiarities. With culture, however, through common experience and the social imaginary, they might bridge the gap. They both love the song “Jolene”. They both played baseball. They both enjoy beer. They both experienced a tough breakup in high school. They have a common experience, and because of that, they both know that each can imagine, through the social imaginary that they both share, the other. They know that they understand each other.
Culture, that which bonds a community—or many communities—together, is based on the common experience put to action through the social imaginary. This cultural bonding is invigorated and dispersed on a massive scale through the Arts. The radio, as I have heard from my superiors, was once a spectacular medium for expanding culture. There were only so many stations from which to choose, and thousands of other people listened to those same few stations. You might have the same song stuck in your head as the other guy because you both heard it that morning. You might pull up to a light with your window down and hear the guy in the cream-colored Chevy listening to the same song that you were. One felt connected with everyone else, and everyone, to some degree, felt that they understood and were understood by everyone else. The same went for broadcast television. Further back, it was the comic book and the newspaper column. Further back, it was the novel, the play, the poem, the painting, the oral story, all of which have persisted in some way into modernity. This is because of both the medium paired with the art it spreads, expanding a common experience or language amongst many so that when someone says “Thanos,” everybody knows who is being talked about and what he represents. This provides the basis for communication, which is the basis of socialization, without which there can be no community and, thereby, no culture. Audible or visual art forms spread most easily and require the least effort to consume; therefore, the most popular long-form art is the movie.
But today, video games also serve as a medium in the growth of culture. They are unique in that one is physically connected to what happens in the story. Rather than being a passive observer who is moved and swayed, as when reading a book or watching a movie, we become active decisionmakers, given the chance to respond to each movement of the story. In a way, we physically enter into the character we control through our fingers. We become the character, and his or her physical fears, perils, triumphs, loves, hates, and interior drives become our own. A great example of games that do this is the Gears of War trilogy. These three games, released between 2006 and 2011, follow a court-martialed Coalition of Ordered Governments soldier, Marcus Fenix, as he and his band of prismatic COG comrades battle the subterranean Locust Horde, grotesque alien humanoids wielding guns and blades, bent upon the extermination of humanity. From the first game, in the battles against the legendary Locust, General RAAM, through the second, where
Fenix comes to fisticuffs with the brutal Skorge, the High Priest of the Horde, and finally to the ultimate confrontation with the evasive but deadly High Queen Myrrah in the third installment, the Gears of War trilogy truly takes you for a ride you will never forget. It is a simple game with a simple story and a simple but extraordinary set of heroes, pitted against a force far greater than they could ever hope to overcome; and we get to be them.
These games, although the pinnacle of their kind—Guinness World Records called the original trilogy “masterpieces of the cover-shooter genre”—are popular and, dare I say, timeless, neither because of their gameplay nor their mechanics, but because of the delivery of the story and, indeed, the story itself: simple, moving, and heroic. Everyone saw the same thing, felt the same thing, and knew that everyone else did too.
However, the ascendant nonlinear storyline has reset the standard for blockbuster games, with the most popular of the genre being the widely acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3. A testament to the genius of dedicated game designers, it won Game of the Year in 2024. Guinness describes the game as having “commitment to giving the player almost complete freedom of choice.” The game starts off like any linear game with a first act. In medias res, an antagonistic force manifests and the player bolts into action. Most people experience the first act in roughly the same way on the first playthrough. Yet, close to the middle of act two and throughout all of act three, no one experiences it in the same way. The result—and perhaps you’ve noticed this if you’ve played the game—is that everyone talks about act one, a little about act two, and pretty much never about act three. The story is then sporadic, with multiple canon endings along with thousands of combinations of sub endings. Everyone becomes fragmented, separated, and stuck alone in their own little box of experience with nothing but the pleasure of the game and player agency. No bond will be formed between two people who have never experienced the same thing.
The question then is this: does Baldur’s Gate 3, as it is, bring players closer together? Does it facilitate the spread of culture? Does it do these things better than Gears of War has? At best, BG3 does nothing to the spread of culture, but at worst, cripples it. Inevitably, it creates innumerable opportunities for isolation, envy, self-doubt, and frustration between players, since its gamemodel, the nonlinear storyline, at least in the way that it’s being used now, is placing overemphasis on the individual experience at the expense, or at best in ignorance, of the cost to the common experience. If this trend continues, I foresee a plethora of games about which no one can talk and a gaming industry that doesn’t care about art or culture, but only about roping in more and more players. The gaming industry will either consume players’ social lives, or players will see what is happening and divorce themselves from such games entirely.
Now, the last question arises: how do we take this culturally fragmenting trend in gaming and redirect it toward creating games that enhance cultural and social unity? We may look to the past and revive the long-dying linear story model, such as was used in Gears of War or Halo. Or ought we take a new approach to nonlinear storytelling? Whichever course the game industry takes, we, the players, ultimately have the final say, since a game that is NOT being played becomes simply billions upon billions of ones and zeros sitting on a drive somewhere in the ether.