Someone posted about how gaming culture’s narrow musical tastes feels alienating. The thread was thoughtful, but a lot of replies (from game industry folks) have gone into the “insulting people for having basic tastes” territory.
So let’s talk a little bit about “taste” and literacy in a medium.
At it’s core, being “literate” in a medium is about how much time and energy you’ve put into thinking about, talking about, and experiencing the works of that medium.
This applies to any hobby or taste, really: a wine connoisseur and someone who loves experimental jazz are the same thing
When you’re more literate in a medium, you start to be able to make deeper connections or notice deeper patterns. “Noticing patterns” and “feeling a connection to someone else” are very deep-seated pleasures for humans. Like a video game, there is a progression to this.
When you’re less practiced at experiencing art of a given medium, you are going to see patterns and make connections at a surface level, by necessity.
With music, that might mean that you love (and only know about!) the hot pop music.
With games, that might mean that you only play candy crush.
AND THAT IS OK
Spending time and energy and thought on the art you consume uses limited resources. We only have so much of those things in a day. We all have a limitless number of topics that, though others are connoisseurs, we will only ever be dabblers in.
It’s common for these things to take on a sort of moral judgment: It can be seen as more virtuous to be more of an aficionado of a given medium or genre. This is the stuff gatekeeping is made out of.
We should resist that temptation.
The more experienced at a medium you are, the more you will need complexity and novelty to achieve the same feelings that, once, you may have gotten from the entry level stuff.
The same feelings.
Spending energy on an art medium IS rewarding, and does unlock a deeper sense of connection to the artist speaking through their medium, but it also often moves your own goalposts. It can be harder to be affected by stuff that isn’t speaking the language of the medium at the same grade level you are.
I have spent a million hours playing games of every stripe. Of COURSE I need to dig a little deeper, find games that are a little more complex or nuanced or simply of higher quality, to be really impressed.
And of course the games that really impress me might be incomprehensible to a lay person.
In summary:
- Developing “taste” or “literacy” in a medium is a journey
- Taking steps on that journey is the thing we enjoy about it
- When you see someone enjoying something “basic”, you should not see that as a moral inferiority. They just haven’t progressed as much down that particular track
If anything, seeing someone who has only dabbled in partaking of a medium that you yourself love and are practiced in is an opportunity to introduce them to the next step on that track.
Some folks don’t want to invest that time and energy though. That is understandable to me. Other times they sense condescension (real or imagined) and might angrily close off the idea that there are deeper depths to plumb.
If anything, I see someone who has an undeveloped taste as a symptom of how tough people’s lives often are. Growing film or music appreciation isn’t gonna compete with “making a living” or “spending the few hours you have with your kid” or “resting”.