George Wendt and Games
What has a neighborhood bar to do with gaming?
Last month, George Wendt passed away. He was most famous for his role of the regular customer at the bar on the TV show Cheers. I started watching this show with my Dad when I got older and now, it is a show that I know more about than he does. Other shows he got me into that I now know more about than he does are the 1960’s Batman, Monk, and of course, Smallville.
I am ashamed that when he died, I thought about what he contributed. Would someone want most to be remembered for being an actor? For one thing, I doubt that is what Wendt will say is his most important work. I suspect he would say it was being a husband and a father, but his career was acting.
Yet that could apply to any career. You could be a plumber, an electrician, a courtroom stenographer, a photographer, or anything else. Most people who have ever lived will never be in the history books. It could be tempting to say that an actor doesn’t make as much a difference as a great world leader or a veteran in a war or a philanthropist.
As gamers, we must resist this attitude.
Years ago, Ben Witherington III, a New Testament scholar, shared a blog where he was amazed about the theme to Chronocross, Time’s Scar. Unfortunately, that was a long time ago and I cannot find the post. Witherington shared it because it was such a beautiful piece of music and someone commented about what a shame that it was wasted on a video game.
Really?
What if I said, “It’s such a shame that the talent of writing and the ink and writing material was wasted on the plays of Shakespeare.”? What if I said that it’s a shame that electricity and funds were made to make TV shows like Cheers or Seinfeld or Happy Days? What if I said it’s a shame that Homer wasted his writing talent to write stories about Greek myths?
We could to some extent say that all of the above provided some entertainment value, even if there was teaching meant to be discovered in them as well. TV shows, movies, books, plays, video games, etc. all can be vehicles for sharing a philosophy of life and moral positions. On Cheers, when Sam Malone in the final season enters a program for sexual addiction, it shows a turning point in the life of the character. Whatever reasons they wrote it for, Sam realizes his life can’t be spent in endless pursuit of sexual pleasure alone. (Well, that and the Stooges.)
Looking at George Wendt and his role on Cheers, I can say one thing: he contributed to a series that was a set of stories in one overarching narrative about the life and times of people at a neighborhood tavern in Boston. People got united in this story as 93 million people watched the season finale. That’s also the number of miles from Earth to the sun. That’s a lot of people. A lot of people got connected to one another because of the role someone played in a story.
As gamers, we also connect over stories. Gamers can spend endless hours debating over the timeline of the Legend of Zelda franchise. I would find it amusing if someone tried to do a PhD dissertation sometime trying to make sense of the Kingdom Hearts series. I enjoy this channel on YouTube with an in-depth look at the Persona 5 characters. A great fear I have over the age of streaming and AI coming is that we will be trapped in our own creations instead of having shared creations. We need shared stories.
George Wendt would still likely say that his greatest contribution was being a husband and a father, but if you said that he would also be remembered for his role in a story, I think he would be pleased with that. It is those stories that unite us. I was not alive when Batman with Adam West was being made, but the stories of the series connect me with a time where my own father was growing up. I see what he watched in his early teenage years and we discuss Batman through the years. When we have seen Batman and X-Men movies in the theater, we have got to share in how the series has changed over the years.
We should never discount what people do for stories. If the contribution a person makes to society is writing stories that unite people, that will be something they can likely be part of, provided those stories build up society. If someone is a game manufacturer or writer and they say they want to help enable stories, that is a contribution to society. No. Time’s Scar was not wasted on Chronocross. It was used to help introduce us to a story and good stories are not a waste.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)