PAP: You are one of the few people in Poland who study digital games. Why research such a frivolous topic?

Dr. Michał Kłosiński: Why research games? Such a frivolous topic. Oh, I think I hear a certain presupposition in this question...

PAP: That was a provocation.

M.K.: Firstly, games are not frivolous. Secondly, they are a fascinating topic. Thirdly, they are worth researching because they are a key element of today's culture. Just like we study literature, just as we study other products of human culture to learn more about it, we study games for the same reasons. Clifford Gertz once said that culture is everything we tell ourselves about ourselves.

PAP: What do games tell us about us?

M.K.: A lot. For example, they tell us how we manage our time and lives. Games have evolved a lot over the last 20 years and now they are packed with mechanisms that are designed to attract our attention and capitalize on our time. Now we also have the mobile games market focused on capturing at least fifteen minutes of our time every day and capitalizing on it.

So we are observing how games reflect certain changes in the economy of attention and focus, or what we call in research cognitive capitalism. It is a type of capitalism that is based on sales, but also on managing our attention. So we can say that games reflect the transformation of the economy of the last 20-30 years.

PAP: If I play, say, Bejeweld Blitz every day, how do the creators of this game make money on me?

M.K.: In several different ways. If the game is paid - by simply buying it, you pay its publisher and creators. A free game may have ads attached to it - the creator of the game has sold the part of your life that you devote to watching them to the advertiser. In addition, games often have micropayment systems - for example, you pay with real money for the game's internal currency, for add-ons to gain an advantage over other players, for 'skins'.

For example: the sale of one character in the fantasy action game Genshin Impact by MiHoYo can close at several dozen million dollars after a few days. Of course, you can also get it for free, but to do that you have to devote time to the game. This is what these mechanisms of capturing us are based on: if you do not want to invest time, you open your wallet. This is a widespread phenomenon in all digital games - mobile, computer and console ones.

PAP: Why do we want to pay for it?

M.K.: It is closely related to stimulating the reward centre in your brain. When you play, you are happy because you get a dopamine rush to the brain, so you become even more attached to the activity that gives you satisfaction. A typical mechanism leading to addiction, but this can certainly be discussed in more detail and based on his own research by Professor Paweł Strojny from the Jagiellonian University, for example.

PAP: There are many types of games and it is difficult for one coherent story to flow from them.

M.K.: Of course, but just as literature does not tell one story about us, neither do games. For example, look at the game Observer by the Polish company Bloober Team. It is a horror game set in a dystopian future, a cyberpunk world where you play the role of a detective. In my opinion, it is a critical rethinking of corporatism that has taken over the world. You will find references to Orwell's 1984 along with references to futuristic, corporate communism - so there is a dialogue with our history and culture.

In another production, Cyberpunk 2077 - an action role-playing game produced by the CD Projekt Red studio - there is an incredibly interesting element of cyberpunk culture, thoughts on where we are heading in the development of artificial intelligence, augmentation of the human body, what the world ruled by corporations and life in constant fear of artificial intelligence will look like. I am currently playing Ghost of Tsushima, a great action game created by the American studio Sucker Punch Productions. The funny thing is that the Americans made a game about the history of Japan, specifically about defending Tsushima Island against the Mongol invasion. In the game, you will find many references to Japanese cinema, for example in the Kurosawa mode, in which the game world is observed through a filter imitating the grain of old samurai dramas.

One more example: the game Fantastic Features, created on the wave of protests against stricted anti-abortion laws. This game mediates a certain experience of uncertainty related to motherhood, prenatal tests, the whole process of pregnancy.

It belongs to the subcategory of serious, socially engaged games, which are part of the Games for Change movement. There are more and more of them, many concern contemporary issues, such as climate change. In recent years, this topic has gained a lot of importance and therefore at the beginning of this year, in January, a huge, over 600-page publication Ecogames was published (available for free: https://greenmedia.sites.uu.nl/ecogames-playful-perspectives-on-the-climate-crisis/), devoted to how games can be used to educate society, what games tell us about climate change, the environment, ecology, economics and how they mediate problems related to the Anthropocene, which scientists are observing today.

PAP: People do not realize that they are somewhat indoctrinated by game creators.

M.K.: Is every person who reads literature indoctrinated? Indoctrination assumes some doctrine. True, game creators are often driven by some idea, an example would be the post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk game Horizon Zero Dawn, in which the world has been destroyed and Earth is ruled by animal-like machines. The protagonist, Aloy, is a member of the Nora tribe and in this post-modern, post-human world, she fights to learn about her past and restore the planet to its pre-apocalyptic state.

These are interesting visions, not necessarily indoctrinating ones, games serve as problem detectors and extensions of our imagination, which we also see in literature and film. Games grow out of a certain culture, they are an expression of its fears and dreams about the future. This is why, in my opinion, games achieve incredible goals when it comes to education. For example, I work with geoinformatics specialists from Palacký University in Olomouc, who - working on the game Cities Skylines - learn to design cities better. In terms of relieving them of traffic jams, making them more ecological, figuring out a better architectural layout, etc. Similarly, I work with Little Bit Academy in Katowice, an amazing initiative by Dominik Koziarski, which teaches kids how to program games in Roblox. LBA is now involved in a project on cyberhate, which shows that games are used to work with young people on contemporary social problems.

PAP: When the first computer games were introduced to the market, psychologists were lamenting that it was no good, that games would only teach violence and the world would become worse because of it. Did their predictions come true?

M.K.: It's hard to say. There are games that, not by accident, have an 18+ PEGI (Pan European Game Information - European computer game rating system) designation. Like all other cultural products, games can pose a threat to individuals who are unable to handle them. In this sense, I would say that it is not a problem of games as objects in themselves. I think that games are certain detectors: they reveal existing problems.

The latest psychological research shows that problematic gaming affects people who are bullied at school, have a very bad school environment or have family problems. For 20 years, every year we have had 2-3 studies on games and violence, so the question of whether games cause violence arises often. All research - quantitative and qualitative - shows that games are not a direct cause of violence. Unfortunately, we still often rely on prejudices such as 'games will turn us into electronic killers'. That is not true.

What is important are gaming disorders, which have been categorized and included in the latest classification of disorders, ICD-11 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems), they will now also be in DSM-5 (a classification used to diagnose or exclude mental disorders in a patient). We need to seriously consider counteracting these disorders, increasing the grassroots work related to gaming hygiene. Because if someone plays for more than three hours a day, or 21 hours a week, their interpersonal and social relationships will start to suffer.

PAP: Such disorders are treatable, are they not?

M.K.: Just like all other forms of behavioural addictions, but it is difficult. Besides, I am not in favour of taking all kids who sit in front of a computer for too long to a psychiatrist, I believe we should rather build the same awareness in parents and children as in the case of food. I like food metaphors. They explain the world very well. If you eat only fast food all our lives, allowing yourself to eat it without restrictions, your health will deteriorate. It is the same with games. If you reduce your cultural diet to sitting in front of a computer or playing mobile games on your phone for 10-12 hours, then first of all you will damage your spine, secondly you will damage our eyesight and hearing. In addition, you can become behaviourally addicted to these products and lose control over time and, as a long-term consequence, over your life.

PAP: Do children escape from the bad world by gaming?

M.K.: Escapism is a serious problem, but it is only one side of the coin. The other side, the positive one, is utopia, the dream of different, better living. Games have the potential to fuel our dream of being better. They give us spaces in which we are able to gain social acceptance, belong to a different group than our peers who exclude us. Games also offer us spaces of fun, so-called ludotopias, in which we can design the world differently, meet expectations that we are unable to meet in real life, in which not everyone can be a hero or saviour of the world.

On the contrary - problems related to reality are overwhelming, young people are pushed to the limit in school, they live in constant stress and competition. In addition, this reality is accelerating more and more. Social media devour our attention, our attention span has shrunk incredibly. For me, reading 20 pages of text was not a problem. Today, when I assign students 20 pages of text, I know that a significant number of them will not read more than five pages. Games are here part of a broader spectrum of problems related to attention disorders, to the acceleration and bombardment of information, to the cognitive draining by the mechanisms of cognitive capitalism, which capitalises our cognitive powers, our attention and focus. That is why I believe that making games a scapegoat does not help us effectively identify the space for further educational activities related to a better understanding of gaming culture and their social impact. (PAP)

Fig. PAP infographic

Interview by Mira Suchodolska

mir/ joz/ mow/ kap/

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