the ramble dump

Videogames! I play them, and happen to think they can be good for more than wiling away your time. But there are still plenty of people who don't. There are some horrific prejudices out there, based on misconceptions I can only try to figure out.

To start with, there's the idea that they are somehow childish, or meant only for children's entertainment. Historically this has been the trend, but at some point in the last couple decades--or, more likely, as a gradual process--things have changed. It strikes me as similar to a lot of people's attitude towards animation, which is often dismissed as just 'cartoons'. But just like animation, there's nothing inherently juvenile about video games. And these days it's more and more the case that games are being targeted at a more mature demographic. It may be the word 'game' that's misleading some people--which brings me on to the next misconception...

That video games, being games, are trivial pursuits meant only for entertainment. In other words, they're a waste of time. Right? Well, not if you hold any value in things like books and films, which I do. Video games can be works of art in the same sense as any other works of art--though obviously not in exactly the same way. To explain how, I'm going to bounce off one of the objections some people tend to have at this point.

There's a feeling floating around out there that interactivity--the direct involvement of the player--results in some compromise of what makes art 'art'. I guess this revolves around the idea that games are constructed for the player and seem to be all about catering to the player's enjoyment, such that it can never count as 'true' artistic expression. In the past I've repeatedly used Oscar Wilde's theories on art as a reference such that they're probably a little worn out by now, but I think the general sentiment--that art is sacrificed as soon as the creator pays too much attention to the recipient--applies here. Only it doesn't, necessarily.

The assumption seems to be that the creators are inevitably pandering to what the player wants, in the process creating something that entertains the player but becomes utterly meaningless because all the 'artistic' elements are slaves to this entertainment. But I don't think this is true. First off, as far as the purpose of videogames is to entertain, it might help to shake off some of the negative connotations of that word--along with its supposed shallowness--if we replace it simply with the idea that these games are designed to engage. Then we can compare them once again to films and books, and we'd have to acknowledge that both these media do the same, albeit in very different ways. All these fictional worlds or stories are constructed so that the recipient is drawn into the experience.

Any way you choose to break down what 'entertainment' actually means--an activity people find either enjoyable or interesting, or a form of escapism--relates back to this as far as videogames are concerned. And let's not forget, as much as it may be a shocking revelation to some, that art does not have to be a chore. We are allowed to enjoy it. More than that, we have to 'enjoy' it--be interested enough in it, connected to it, feeling it on the intended level--for it to work at all.

Relatedly, returning to an artist's consideration of the recipient, it would be daft to say that any of these media are used as if there is no recipient, real or potential. Even the most self-absorbed and egotistical of authors wouldn't write a novel eschewing the very idea of a recipient--it makes no sense. The creation of art isn't just some spontaneous emotional fart; it's the act of putting it out there in the world for people to experience. There's a distinction, then, that has to be made between consciousness of a work of art being received and that work of art being moulded to the desires of the recipient in the way that Wilde meant.

As for interactivity, letting the player move bits of the world about, whether that be using an avatar or the avatar itself, does not qualify as this kind of moulding. Neither does allowing actions that result in changes to the world, because again this possibility has been intended. In other words, limited choice within the context of the gaming world is not the same as letting the player do whatever they want with that world. The rules of the world, and the scope of things that can happen (notwithstanding the exploitation of unintended bugs and glitches), have been put in place by the creators, and the player moving something across a field the designers created does not result in the artistic terms of this world being undermined. Why should it? The designers intended for you to be able to do this. Even if you have multiple options for movement--which you nearly always will, even in a fairly linear game--the designers letting you pick whichever option does not undermine their expressed world because what is being expressed is not dependent on absolutely scripted events, and was never meant to be.

A game designer has as much control as he or she desires. If they really want total control over every move and a completely scripted outcome, then this medium is not appropriate for what they are trying to achieve, and they should make a film or write a book instead.

In theory, then, a game can be built according to whatever terms the designer likes and they don't even have to consider what the player wants, beyond ensuring that everything has been done to maintain the player's engagement on a technical level--just like a badly-written novel or a poorly-made film aren't going to be very effective no matter what the people behind them are trying to present.

In practice, of course, market conditions mean that most games are churned out exactly according to what the designers think people like, and we get a lot of the same unimaginative thing as a result. Wilde probably wouldn't like that too much. But then the same is, again, true for films and books.

And besides this, not every activity in life has to be such a deep experience. Sometimes our brains just like being preoccupied, and we don't have to be enhanced as a person for it to be a worthwhile activity for thirty minutes every day, or a couple of hours every once in a while.*

So I'm under no illusion that all gamers are looking for some profound experience beyond 'beating' the game. But, for as long as we're talking about the art of it, most games use this specific goal-oriented immersion to take us places that transcend the simple act of beating it, and the best games are those that do this the most meaningfully. That's where the art is. I'll talk about this some more when I get on to videogames and story in more detail.



^*Games are often deemed a waste of life on this account, but think of sports: there are obviously health benefits to doing sports, but how many people play a particular sport just for the health benefits? The same goes for transferable skills: even if we accepted the (somewhat dubious) claim that football skills, say, are transferable to other areas of our life, as well as the claim that videogames give us no such skills, who can honestly say that they play football primarily for the development of such transferable skills? People play football because they think it's fun.

This is because gaming is there in sports too: you've got your rules, your objectives and your challenges, all contrived and predefined. Of course, the experience is very different from sitting down and playing a videogame, the physicality of it making it different even if health had nothing to do with it (and I'm not saying that videogames could ever replace sports). But it's perfectly acceptable to say you're playing these games for the sake of the game. Everything in moderation, obviously, and addiction is always a possibility with anything like this, but there's no reason why gaming should be such a guilty activity. Five minutes of Pong is probably not going to be a huge experience for you, but it's not going to hurt.

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, videogames

# posted by Chris @ 3:30 AM