Tea's all fun and games
While books and movies are often cited as the foundations of modern culture, it’s video games that have a surprising amount of influence – but where’s the tea?
Adeline Teoh goes beyond the parlour for games.
What does a gamer look like? If the image in your head is of a teenage boy playing World of Warcraft, then you need to update your wetware. About two-thirds of Australians play video games on a regular basis; 78% of them are aged 18 or over – with the average age of 34 – and 47% of them are female*.
The nature of the games has changed as well. Video games are not just those with epic narratives, they range from Words with Friends and Candy Crush Saga to ones where the premise is to steal cars (Grand Theft Auto) or become a troublesome bird character (Untitled Goose Game).
In Nintendo’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses (pictured below), gamers play as Byleth, a professor whose main role is to teach students of their ‘house’ to become battle-ready. While the art of fighting is a primary part of the game, it’s the addition of a mini-game centred on tea that has the most interesting implications.
The Tea Party mini-game is a chance for teacher and students to bond. Serving the students’ favourite tea and introducing their preferred conversation topics will strengthen your relationship, all of which boosts their academic achievements and assists you to triumph on the battlefield. It’s a great way to illustrate the benefits of tea to an audience that might not be familiar with tea’s social power – after all, gamers flock to Fire Emblem series for combat, not cuppas.
On the more overt side is A Tavern for Tea, an indie game where you play a tavern-keeper whose venue is on the borderlands between humans and demons. The aim of the game is to get both humans and demon customers alike to leave their prejudices behind and chat to one another by learning to brew a magic potion – that is, tea.
High Tea has a more historical bent. Created by Wellcome as an accompaniment to a London exhibition on recreational drugs in society, the game focuses on the ethically dubious activities of British traders during the first Opium War. Players must broker the best opium deals possible for sale in China, then buy as much tea as possible to send home and keep Britain happy.
According to ‘Digital Australia 2020: The Power of Games’, an Interactive Games & Entertainment Association report by Bond University, video games are more than, well, games. As well as helping gamers forge connection and community, where the ‘third place’ is digital, games also educate and promote creativity. It's a fitting partner for tea, which stimulates the same areas.
Tea may be one of the most popular beverages in the world, with billions sipping their brew of choice every day, but in many ways the culture of tea suffers from its everyday-ness. Alternatively, gaming is positioned as a fun, active pastime that has a correspondingly dynamic influence on culture. It’s time to start asking how we can show tea’s relevance in modern culture, beyond its influence on dynasties past, and whether perhaps ‘gamifying’ tea will get us some way there. As in a video game, tea has many lives and it’s time for us to play again.
* Digital Australia 2020: The Power of Games
