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The Wager
BryanSalvatore
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Just throwing out a reaction to Steve Gaynor's Wager ( http://fullbright.blogspot.com/2008/02/wager.html ), which I reached today through the front page posting.
Several things jump out at me:
1. Games already are profitable in the way movies are. In many cases games are more profitable.
2. The stigma as child's play might exist, but the fact is quite a lot of games are aimed at 20somethings and many, many gamers are aged 18 and over. Adult gamers are not infantile. They are not having difficulty moving on to more adult media (like Lost). Games aren't child's play anymore and haven't been for a number of years.
3. It's hard for me to believe, in light of (2), that the stigma isn't simply vanishing. Someone going out into the world as an adult now either already is or will soon be more likely to be a gamer than not. Many of those people simply won't consider games to be juvenile; juvenile games are juvenile, but many, many games simply aren't and many people nowadays know it.
4. He criticizes games for wanting to be movies, and talks about how if you walk through an EB you're going to see loads of titles about men with guns, sports stars and the like. I disagree that that has anything to do with wanting to be a movie. Single player games are at their best when they put you in situations which feel like life or death, make you care about the outcome, and then empower you to ensure a positive outcome. It's not about being like film (specifically action movies), it's that a professional sports league or a military scenario or whatever is the ideal setup for a game to do what games do best.
5. He simply disregards multiplayer gaming, despite multiplayer gaming being the clear future of gaming. Multiplayer games do not tell you something about human existence. They are not art in the traditional sense of the word. There are exceptions, especially cooperative and narrative games which straddle the line, of course; I'm speaking in sweeping generalizations here. Multiplayer games function by drawing people together. They are social tools. In some cases the form of socialization is infantile and often simply painful. In others it is deep and meaningful. But that doesn't change the fact that multiplayer is simply not intended to be like film, novels, or narrative art in general. The thrill of an online shooter game is not in its narrative, it's in the bonds you develop with teammates and the competition you experience with opponents.
6. Barriers to entry are diminishing rapidly. First, the major portion of the current generation has been introduced to gaming conventions. Games make sense to them. Second, vast amounts of time and money have been expended in reducing barriers to entry without losing the crucial elements of a game. Non-gamers in many, many cases still won't be brought into the fold, but they don't have to be. There is a good chance that the next generation will be almost wholly a generation of gamers. In 40 years, unless something seriously changes, it'll be inconceivable that the average 40-50 year old has not spent some significant amount of time gaming.
Videogames might not be accepted as a deep and rich form of art in 50 years. Trends could take a left turn and leave them behind. But it is my belief that it would take such a left turn for that to be the result.
Several things jump out at me:
1. Games already are profitable in the way movies are. In many cases games are more profitable.
2. The stigma as child's play might exist, but the fact is quite a lot of games are aimed at 20somethings and many, many gamers are aged 18 and over. Adult gamers are not infantile. They are not having difficulty moving on to more adult media (like Lost). Games aren't child's play anymore and haven't been for a number of years.
3. It's hard for me to believe, in light of (2), that the stigma isn't simply vanishing. Someone going out into the world as an adult now either already is or will soon be more likely to be a gamer than not. Many of those people simply won't consider games to be juvenile; juvenile games are juvenile, but many, many games simply aren't and many people nowadays know it.
4. He criticizes games for wanting to be movies, and talks about how if you walk through an EB you're going to see loads of titles about men with guns, sports stars and the like. I disagree that that has anything to do with wanting to be a movie. Single player games are at their best when they put you in situations which feel like life or death, make you care about the outcome, and then empower you to ensure a positive outcome. It's not about being like film (specifically action movies), it's that a professional sports league or a military scenario or whatever is the ideal setup for a game to do what games do best.
5. He simply disregards multiplayer gaming, despite multiplayer gaming being the clear future of gaming. Multiplayer games do not tell you something about human existence. They are not art in the traditional sense of the word. There are exceptions, especially cooperative and narrative games which straddle the line, of course; I'm speaking in sweeping generalizations here. Multiplayer games function by drawing people together. They are social tools. In some cases the form of socialization is infantile and often simply painful. In others it is deep and meaningful. But that doesn't change the fact that multiplayer is simply not intended to be like film, novels, or narrative art in general. The thrill of an online shooter game is not in its narrative, it's in the bonds you develop with teammates and the competition you experience with opponents.
6. Barriers to entry are diminishing rapidly. First, the major portion of the current generation has been introduced to gaming conventions. Games make sense to them. Second, vast amounts of time and money have been expended in reducing barriers to entry without losing the crucial elements of a game. Non-gamers in many, many cases still won't be brought into the fold, but they don't have to be. There is a good chance that the next generation will be almost wholly a generation of gamers. In 40 years, unless something seriously changes, it'll be inconceivable that the average 40-50 year old has not spent some significant amount of time gaming.
Videogames might not be accepted as a deep and rich form of art in 50 years. Trends could take a left turn and leave them behind. But it is my belief that it would take such a left turn for that to be the result.
BryanSalvatore on
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The problem isn't that games are like movies, it's that the game industry strives to be like the movie industry instead of trying to find it's own model.
What's laughable to me about "the Wager" is that it actually poses that games will end up in a position similar to comic books. Comic books were always a niche product and never gained real widespread traction among adults. Games are already a mainstream thing among adults who grew up with them and that trend isn't slowing down, if anything it's picking up momentum. It's more common for adults between the ages of 18-30 to have a console in their home than not. And with the Wii doing a pretty impressive job of bringing more people into the market saying that videogames will go the way of comic books just strikes me as rediculous and thus amusing. Growing market share among adults will get videogames respectability.
Sure you'll always have book and film critics talking about how their respective mediums are superior but the people won't really care and, at least to me, when you're talking about respectability it's the public who decides that.
Surely that's the point, though. Kids who grew up reading comic books, by and large, left them in their parent's attic when they moved out. That's simply not happening with games; to the contrary, more and more they are becoming an integral part of adults' lifestyles, and gaming is growing across every demographic.
Edit: I'm also really curious about the reasoning behind ''Comics and video games do not have similar themes"
I think they ARE dissimilar. There certainly are similar themes sometimes, particularly with narrative/single player gaming, but the things that draw someone to gaming are very different in meaningful ways from the things that draw people to comic books. That was the point of my post; gaming is not comparable to either movies or comic books, but it does appear to have the ingredients to be a lasting phenomenon. As Adrien pointed out, people don't give up gaming when they grow up the way they give up comic books. They may not be playing the same games, but they're still gaming as adults very often.
Editing it in for MikeMcSomething because we seem to be posting across each other:
Comic books are about imagination. A comic book is a story told through representative images. You can hit deeper subthemes, but at its essence that's what it is. Don't take me to be saying this is a bad thing, either. Comics can be wonderful, deep, and engaging. But it's no surprise adults put them down eventually - an exercise in imagination is pretty futile when you work 50 (or more) hours a week and are raising a family.
Gaming is really about two main things layered together. It's about socialization and empowerment. The key aspect of multiplayer gaming is that it enables you to spend time with other people who have similar interests. The key aspect of single player gaming (and a major subtheme of a lot of multiplayer gaming) is that it empowers you to solve the problems that the world within the game is facing, whether that is some action-packed gunslinging story, improving your place in the world through simple effort (MMORPGs - is it any wonder they succeed so well now that much of the stigma has been erased?), winning sports championships, simply surviving impossible circumstances (survival horror), or helping your simulated people "live" "fulfilling" "lives." There are always variations, and none of what I just said holds true in all cases, but that's the gist of it. Unlike with the storytelling and pure fantasy of comic books, these are themes that are going to speak deeply to an adult audience, especially one which in most cases lacks much power over their own lives and much time to get out.
I wouldn't necessarily take the wager, but I'd give out a wager of my own - if gaming falls short like comics have fallen short, it will have been for different reasons.
Could you define what themes you're referring to? Reading through the article itself he uses broad and inaccurate generalizations to try and tie the two together. I have a hard time taking someone seriously who beleives that the majority of gaming consists primarily of "sports stars, Japanese children's cartoons, burly men with guns, and women in shameless, implausible dress." If anything all that demonstrates to me is how out of touch with the medium he is.
And no one said comics are for kids. The point is that comics by and large didn't have the staying power into adulthood that games have shown. That doesn't mean that there aren't adults who enjoy comics and I don't think anyone is even trying to imply that. What's being said is that games have already shown a much larger potential as a medium among adults than comics ever have.
Because last time I checked death is permanent in real life.
I personally find the article very ignorant, which is weird coming from a 25 year-old video game designer.
The same could be said about gaming. Who has time to game when you work 50 hours or more and are raising a family?
Comics can be put down and do, but gaming may last longer but it is also put down. How many of the older generations that are now in thier 40's-50's still game? This was the age that pac man and stuff came out. Not very often I'd wager.
As far as the adults having time - it's not about time and I didn't mean to imply that it is. You can collect comics for 30 minutes a week, or you can game for 30 minutes a week. I mean hell, I know a lot of guys with families who can't get out to see a movie more than a few times a year, but we're not talking about how adults let movies go. It's about energy. You have to care, which means the medium needs to speak to your current experience. I believe gaming does that for adults much better than comics do, possibly better than movies as well though movies have much lower barriers to entry.
Maybe I'm just living in a weirdo universe, though; both my parents play WoW - not often, but reasonably regularly (which is nice, because I don't see them that often anymore, just don't have time to get over to their house).
At the level of stretch you're using, the same could be said of LotR.
Of course games are following movies. HALO has lens flare, for fuck's sake!
You need to read the posts of others more carefully. The issue of staying power of comics as addressed by HappyLil'Elf was not about their staying power over a time period. It was about the consistency in which they stayed with most people over their life time. Whether they've persisted for a long period of time has no relevance whatsoever to their ability to enter the mainstream. Comics are read by a large variety of age groups, I don't think anyone with any sense is stating that's not the case here, but it's out and out absurd to state that games do not persist into adult life with much more frequency than comics. As in, comics really don't even approach the numbers at all.
This is a comparitive point, not one meant to defame comics.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Yeah, thats the same kind of staying power I was talking about. You need to read my posts more carefully.
This thread is long on bias, and short on people who know much about comics
You specify a period of time in which they are popular and then label it a different discussion.
Yeah seems pretty much like you're not talking about the same thing, as if you were referring to persistency of the hobby into adulthood (the crux of the issue and probably the most important factor to determining whether it will become culturally relevant) and then labelling it a different discussion, you have no grasp of the topic.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I disagree. I find my self, a man of 24 summers under his belt, to find more time readign than playing. On the Train to and from work, I can pop a good manga and read it. In my lunch hour there is multiple chances to read manga.
Of course it also the case with Gaming, but where gaming fails is the need for you to bring say a rechager (for a PSP or a DS), a couple of games and the console itself. With a manga, all you need is the book itself. People, and adults, I believe have a easier time shutting the book than waiting for the final boss of be defeated. If in an emergency you can just close the book.
However, comics are the same as novels in my opinion. All that differs is that it has pretty little pictures than lines of words. Sure a bit of imagination and fanatsy is required, but are you tellign me you don't have that in games? Moments of "Where is he coming from?" Or "How did they build that base here?". These exists in games whether you believe it or not.
I will break it down for you, but first I will show you the fantastic process I am going to use to do it, like a magician revealing his secrets!
It is called the transitive property
It works like this:
If a = b,
and, b = c
then, a = c
Ok, here we go!
If Comics had 'staying power' from the 40's to the 90's
and, 'Staying power' is a high likelyhood to continue to be consumed as consumer age increases
Then, Comics had a high likelihood to continue to be consumed as consumer age increased, in a time period defined as from the 40's to the 90's
Becoming an "adult" entertainment media is all about capital and marketing, something that the incestous comic book industry never had.
Comics were fucked over for reasonably unique reasons. I think games aren't going to run into the ground for those reasons if at all. Hell, their million-seller years have already outlasted the million-seller golden years of comic books by a decade or two.
As for similarty of themes in comic books versus video games... I just don't see it. The first thing you think of when someone says "comic" is "Superhero". Superman is still reasonably unique to comic books. Comics are still trying to shed that image. Videogames have gone from puzzles to adventure to twitchfests to RPGs... the only thing that can be used to draw some similarity is to point out that when you're paying crap fees for writing, people are going to write poorly.
Did you read the article?
The problems comic books have with finding an audience have far more to do with horrible business models and marketing decisions made decades ago. When fucking Spider-Man makes $500 million as a movie, but still has barely 100,000 readers? That's when you know your industry is kind of fucked up.
I disagree. My field, Manga, is definately not meant to be read by younger audiences, ala under say 16 and so. The prime range of younger games.
And there is alot of Mature "Content" if you so wish it. Depends on what you conside mature. Gore? There. Sex? There. Violent beheadings? There. Its a matter of looking at it without blindfolders on.
The younger folks, the folks who actually play games, they're willing to entertain the idea that games can be as socially relevant as films. And so when us, the game players, are the ones holding the reins of public discourse, games will finally gain their acceptance. And it won't take 50 years, it'll take 10 or 20 at the most. Those who grew up with games are already in their 30s and early 40s. It won't be long.
I agree with a lot of the article. It cannot be said enough that the subject matter of most games, like most comics, is trashy, stupid, male wish-fulfillment nonsense. Even though gamers are supposedly grown-up now, this is still by far the highest selling model.
Even less masculine games, like Super Mario Bros, are essentially violent, their enjoyment comes largely from death-defiance, albeit cartoony, abstracted death-defiance. The language of "dying" in videogames is so ingrained in the medium that I often say that I died on Guitar Hero songs.
However, I think he ignores both the technological advances in videogames and in comics, and their ability to push the medium to higher levels. For example, webcomics rarely deal with male power fantasies and are wildly popular. As images consisting of drawn visuals combined with words, webcomics are certainly an extension of the comic/graphic novel medium—and they are an example of how technology has allowed a thriving independent scene in the medium to achieve mass appeal and expand the medium.
Games are much more dependent on technology, and will change more drastically than comics as technology develops. The Wii, just from its motion controls, has ushered in a whole new demographic of casual gamers. But I think that's just the beginning. I wonder to what extent the medium of videogames is going to start overlapping and absorbing other mediums. For example, alternate reality games, interactive novels and even interactive shows on the internet.
It's certainly possible that Halo games will continue to remain the bestselling videogames, but this doesn't mean the medium is going to stagnate or fail to expand its influence. Comics didn't. And as a medium continues to evolve more rapidly, it becomes increasingly likely that someone is going to stumble onto a new expression that proves to be wildly popular.
There are three comic books with the most exposure to the public: Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman.
None of them push 100,000 in sales. I'd swear that most people who loved the Spider-Man movies don't actually know where you can get the comics.
Point is: Games don't share this problem, at all. They're sold almost anywhere and anyone who's used a computer knows what they are. Arguably, consoles are most like comics in being a more niche market, but the current generation has aggressively pushed the idea that they no longer be relegated to children's toys in a variety of manners.
Short of a McCarthy hearing, I don't see games hitting the same low comic books did, ever.
Lots of manga is meant for kids under 16, there do exist Japanese comic-books that don't center around loli-rape and/or blood and guts. That doesn't really matter at all however as Japan is an entirely different market from North America. The market here for manga makes the market here for conventiional American comicbooks look like fucking Hollywood. The more relavent points here are people like Alan Moore who write comicbooks with mature stories and themes to a mature audience. Of course in order for books like the Watchmen or V for Vendetta to sell as well as they have and do they have to distance themselves from superheroes by calling themselves graphic novels instead, and while there are fairly consistent notable differences between the average book called a graphic novel and the average book called a comicbook this is because books with the characteristics graphic novels are known for all get classified as graphic novels, there's no reason why you couldn't write as mature a Batman arc as say The Killing Joke though.
And of course you run the standard broken rhetoric about how sex and violence are immature, when in fact they are neither mature nor immature they're just things that can happen in a story and what's mature or not is how the story treats and handles them and regardless the audience has to be sufficiently mature to handle them and acknowledge the differences between fiction and reality so that even if the violence and sex are handled in an immature manner the audience isn't going to be harmed or driven to harm others by their exposure to that content, hence calling it "mature content" in the first place. And blindfolder isn't a word.
Fix'd.
Is there a period and comma shortage where you live, or something?
To roughly quote Stephan Colbert:
I just want to say one thing those this thread seems to have gone inactive....If Comics do not have the social acceptance of movies and tv, how is it that close to half of the tv and movie fare of the last 5-10 years is lifted from a comic or graphic novel in some way. Beyond that the movie industry is making video game titles into movies at a fairly strong clip as well and many games now have "box office" close to or even higher than the average hollywood feature. That to me says that the american public at least takes both fairly seriously at any age demographic.
I read it in DFW's essay on porn, so I'll see if I can get some numbers online.