A Deeply Untapped Potential for Enchantment
Video games, pleasant pleasure, and Augustine's 'eutrapelia'
This Edition of Ecstatic is by Julia Bartel
I’m all about curling up with a good book, but lately, I’ve been choosing more and more to curl up with a good video game. While my Nintendo Switch might get a little dusty in the days leading up to a weekend, or in the months leading up to a holiday, the liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s became the time when I indulge in a favorite tradition: immersing myself in the low-stakes, ever-waiting, always exciting world of a video game.
Often relegated to the margins as a niche interest for those who refuse to grow up, or maligned as a waste of time by many—Christian or not—video games are a remarkably unmined source of beauty and inspiration. Sure, there are a lot of video games that are violent, seedy, or plain immoral. However, there are also many video games that are absolute works of art, utilizing the best in music, writing, design, story, and player experience to create a truly one-of-a-kind experience. Within the genre of video games there lies, perhaps, a deeply untapped potential for enchantment of the Tolkienian variety: enchantment that refreshes, reinvigorates, and invites the player to look at the world in new ways. They can also be a source of that which St. Thomas Aquinas, in part 2 of Summa Theologiae, called “eutrapelia”—the virtue of pleasantness, pleasure, and play, which the soul needs in order to truly be at rest.
Within the genre of video games there lies, perhaps, a deeply untapped potential for enchantment
I spent years resisting the allure of the Nintendo games I grew up loving because some voice in my head told me that video games were a waste of my precious life and time. Yet when COVID lockdowns bloomed across the planet, aligning with the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the potential of the game as a place of imaginative relaxation and connection with others not only became a joyful haven for many, but seemed impossible to keep ignoring.
Once at a Christian conference, I sat at a table with some friends while we paged through a Bible study booklet. One page asked the reader to pick one photo among many that most closely resembled our own walk with God. Gazing at images of a person running a race, a person looking bedraggled in an office, or a person relaxing in a hammock, someone said, “I hope no one picked that hammock!” To which I sheepishly responded, “I did.” I used to value doing, producing, pushing, and moving above all else. Getting things done, contributing to the world, “bringing God’s kingdom”: it’s hard, in ministry and work and school, not to slip into the trap of relying on performance-based activity without even realizing it. But God isn’t a taskmaster. He made play, just as he made work, and video games have given me a place to just be: a place to enjoy the God-given gifts of quiet, rest, and fun. In the detailed design of Breath of the Wild’s world, replete with distinct biomes, towns, and creatures, I’m able to contemplate beauty. In Stardew Valley’s routine of working a farm, befriending the town’s citizens, and discovering the magical secrets of the valley, I see the value of a simple, slow life. And Animal Crossing: New Horizons has adorable talking animals, which in my view requires no other selling points.
You’re welcome to continue seeing video games as a waste of time; after all, playing them contributes very little to material reality. But some of the things that bring the most vibrance and color to our lives aren’t exactly useful. What is the practical function of a symphony? Why do we have art museums? Why putter around in the virtual world of a video game? Because rest and play don’t have to serve the function of allowing us to be more productive. They don’t have to serve a function at all. They can instead allow us to just be: to delight, to wonder at, to laugh, to find joy, to have fun. I want more of that in 2023, and there’s at least one place where I know I’ll find it: atop the peak of a Breath of the Wild mountain, in the whistling of Stardew Valley’s autumn wind, or in the laughter of friends as we share our Animal Crossing: New Horizons hijinks.
Julia Bartel
Writer & Student
Julia currently studies at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts
Thoughts on Julia’s article? Leave them in the comments!
Thanks so much for this! I grew up playing video games with my siblings, and for me they have always been a place I go to reinvigorate my imagination, to glean new and playful ways of seeing and living that I can take back into the real world with me. Ans as an artist, I find myself time and time again returning to the soundtracks, stories, and scenery that makes my heart swell. But I also go back to them just to laugh! Talking with NPCs, finding wit in dialogue, messing with physics, and choosing the most outrageous character customizations is just pure delight for me. God made that, he made play.
This was great! It might never be video games for me, but I love the points you made, Julia, about doing pleasant things just for pleasure and what that actually adds to our lives. This was a good reminder, too, for me not to scoff at what anyone does "just for fun."