CBC Encounters Modern Culture With Wobbly Coverage

A Call of Duty tournament is taking place in Canada and you could tell the CBC struggled covering it.

Over the years, I’ve been working quite hard to cover a huge variety of different games. The story is that I’ve been a gamer around the time of the NES, SNES, and N64 eras. Unfortunately for me, life got busy as the GameCube era rolled around and I had to drop out of gaming while I dealt with life. This website, however, gave me a chance to get back into gaming by picking up where I left off. So, I started gaming through the eras I had missed and gradually started moving into modern times.

One of the criticisms I got, however, was that no one cares about the eras I’ve been covering. The PS3 era? PS4 era? All in the past. I should be covering modern games now instead of games so far in the past. The thing is, I want to be reviewing these games armed with a fair amount of knowledge. This so I can figure out what kind of expectations I should have. What’s more, the games I’m covering now are actually reaching into the modern era. A great example is Super Mario 3D World + Bower’s Fury which… isn’t that old of a game. At the end of the day, it’s being worked on and modern gaming is already here on this site. Further, it’s only going to get more deep into the modern era as time progresses.

Still, if you think that is bad, well, you might want to check out some of the coverage being put out by the CBC recently over a Call of Duty tournament. Some of the reports are actually fine, but other reports, well, you can tell that the CBC isn’t really used to modern culture in general. Talk to them about VHS and mix tapes and they’ll happily talk about the nostalgia and how everyone remembers those things. Video games? Well, that’s a bit of a new and novel concept.

One of the reports was a video report from Friday and the lead into the story is a bit cringe worthy. It really isn’t that far removed from saying, “So there’s this apparent phenomenon called a vid-e-oh game. So for those who don’t know, this vid-e-oh game concept is like a board game, but it’s put in your television. Players can hold a thing called a controller and play it on the TV screen. It’s, uh, definitely a different way of doing things, but some people apparently have a lot of fun doing that sort of thing.”

That’s the kind of sentiment you can get out of that lead. After all, the host sat there describing Call of Duty, saying that it’s one of the best selling franchises of all time and is described as a first person shooter military style video game. The icing on the cake was that there was an interview in that report where they spent a good deal of time talking about the money behind it. The anchor seemed somewhat surprised that people can make money playing games at all. It’s a bit of a silly sentiment to have these days since people making a great deal of money has been going on for well over a decade now (if not, longer). After all, people have been making money in traditional sports for many decades, so the idea that a different kind of game is paying out to players isn’t really a new concept.

In a different report which was posted on YouTube, one of the journalists at around 1:23 brought up the attitude that people think that it’s just a video game and it’s just a couple of guys playing video games. That mention was more depressing than anything else. The fact that this was even brought up at all really shows that out of touch boomer mentality.

A major part of the problem here is that news organizations like the CBC have spent years demonizing games. Narratives that have been pushed include the idea that video games in general are dangerous and addictive or that games turn people into psycho killers. Examples of this include blaming video games for the United Health CEO killing, blaming video games for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, or even when the media ridiculing a 13 year old for making Tetris history. All of those examples were from the last two years and it’s far from an exhaustive list.

The reality of the situation is that games are for all ages and more and more people are playing and it should be common knowledge that people do play games. There are plenty of people even in the boomer demographic who have gotten into these as well. The stereotype that gamers are only teenagers in their parents basement hasn’t really even been a thing since the late 90s. The people who grew up playing the N64 and SNES are already inching closer to retirement age and thinking about the last 10 or 20 years of their working life. What’s more, the people who never really grew up with these games are largely into their 70s and beyond. Video games have long been part of the popular culture of today. Had the mainstream media spent all this time demonizing them, they might have noticed these things.

The gaming industry is absolutely massive. Some might have heard that the industry is worth more than the film and TV industry combined. Well, even that might be a bit out of date because according to Access Creative, the gaming industry is actually closing in on double that of the film and music industries combined:

As we’ve already seen, games industry growth is substantial. But it takes real, monetary terms to understand the scale. The UK games industry was worth £7.7 billion in 2022, and globally, a whopping $249.6 billion (predicted) this year.

But how do those numbers compare to film and music? Both industries have been established for a long time and have rich histories. Enjoyed by billions of people every year, music was worth $31.2 billion in 2022, and film was worth $93.4 billion in the same year.

You don’t need to do the maths to see that the games industry is worth almost double the film and music industry, combined.

So, this is not an issue of “well, you’re enthusiastic because you cover it, but most people aren’t”. The reality is that I’m the norm when I talk about gaming. If you are someone who absolutely detests the concept of gaming and would never touch that sort of thing, you are actually the exception, not the rule. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it is becoming increasingly exceptional that you avoid all video games.

Another thing here is that if your disliking the concept of playing a military shooter, that’s fine. There is no rule out there that says that in order to be a gamer, you have to like the Call of Duty franchise. You really don’t even have to play Call of Duty at all if you don’t want to. I find the franchise to be highly overrated, personally. You can play completely different games like Minecraft, a Forza Motorsport game, a Legend of Zelda game, a Super Mario game, a Might and Magic game, a Bejeweled game, or something else entirely. The types and styles of games out there are massive and it’s a whole ocean of content. I have my own recommendations, but different people have different tastes as well and what I like may not be something that you like. That is also normal. It’s a bit like different flavours or ice cream. Some might like strawberry, others may like mint, and a lot of people like chocolate. Choosing one flavour over another isn’t wrong, it’s just personal preference – even on a given day.

One attitude that drives me nuts – and this wasn’t covered in the reports – is the attitude that gaming is somehow a lesser form of entertainment. It’s perfectly fine to say that you have a preference to, say, floor hockey. If you prefer movies or reading books, I’m fine with that. Where things cross the line for me is when people say video games are a lesser form of entertainment. Specifically, video games aren’t important in any way and don’t matter unlike darts or swimming or reading books is a sophisticated form of entertainment, but video games are trash. That is when you start seeing me give those people a giant middle finger. I’m not saying you have to like gaming, but to disparage people for liking the activity of gaming is just an indicator that you are a prick who can kindly fuck off.

As for the money aspect, most people play for the enjoyment of it. What’s more, tournaments aren’t the only way people do earn money while gaming. A big way is streaming where people donate money to players on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. There are lots of people out there that make a living doing this – and some even earn 6 and 7 figures per year doing it. I have my own YouTube channel devoted to this stuff as well. I cover games because I know plenty of people out there want to escape from the politics of this world (I know full well that it’s absolutely ugly right now, so I don’t blame them).

Now, credit where credit is due, the mainstream media at least tried to have a taste of modern culture. This isn’t particularly typical that they do something like this. Normally, when they cover culture, it’s more about 80’s culture where they reminisce about LPs, mix tapes, black and white film, and listening to music on the traditional radio. At most, gaming stories revolve around pinball and cabinet arcade games like Space Invaders and Pac Man. So, they generally lead pretty sheltered lives from a cultural standpoint.

So, stepping out of their comfort zone for once is at least a positive step forward even if it is really clear that this is all mystifying and new to them. It’s a lot better than their usual cranky old people yelling at cloud type reporting that is pretty typical from them. Who knows? Maybe they’ll cover some of the interesting cultural stuff being posted onto platforms like YouTube vehicle restoration projects or science projects. Modern culture is quite huge, evolving, and expansive, so it would be nice if mainstream news organizations actually honestly started exploring it. I know it’s wishful thinking since it probably won’t take long to go back to their usual bashing of modern culture drivel, but seeing this at least showed a brief sign that they were open to exploring culture that has been around in the last 20 years or newer even if what they ended up picking for a topic is kind of iffy.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.