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Are video games disposable culture?
LibrarianThorne
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Registered User regular
There's a lot of brouhaha in the video game industry right now about whether or not games have any real meaning to them. There seems to be a running undercurrent of derision towards the medium as a whole, and it is still viewed as largely adolescent. Heather Chaplin has said that the video game industry is dominated by "stunted adolescents". David Jaffe and Christopher Ward have weighed in on the issue, as well.
This has brought into sharp relief something that came to mind as I was at GDC. Sure, the games industry makes billions of dollars, pumping out hits of the quality and frequency that no other medium can match, but there's not really any permanence to it, is there? The closest thing video games have to an Elvis is an 8-bit Italian plumber, but worse is that there are no video game equivalents to The Beatles or Casablanca or Citizen Kane. Has there been a video game Ulysses? Would anyone call video game writing Shakespeare?
The answer, I think, is that the medium is influenced by the culture around it. However, it is also one of the things that defines 21st century culture. Video games now are what rock and roll was in the '50s, or movies in the '20s and '30s. Perhaps video games are seen as a "lesser" medium not because of content but because of era. Global culture, it seems, is not geared towards engendering works that will stand the test of time, but towards immediate thrills and rewards. There is also the small matter that we are, as a global society, inundated with artistic culture everywhere we go. Seeing a stunning piece of artwork is no longer a rare event, it can be done with a Google search or just by walking down a busy street in a major city. How can we judge whether or not there is a great, Homeric or Shakespearian video game?
Ultimately, it's a bit daft, in my opinion, to say that video games are dominated by lesser minds and influences. Even Shakespeare wrote for the common people, and Homer's work spread by popularity and word of mouth. The art pieces that modern society esteems so greatly were never seen as such in the era they were made.
So, what does Penny Arcade think? Are video games held back by the consumers? Or are video games merely one part in a larger evolution of art and culture?
This has brought into sharp relief something that came to mind as I was at GDC. Sure, the games industry makes billions of dollars, pumping out hits of the quality and frequency that no other medium can match, but there's not really any permanence to it, is there? The closest thing video games have to an Elvis is an 8-bit Italian plumber, but worse is that there are no video game equivalents to The Beatles or Casablanca or Citizen Kane. Has there been a video game Ulysses? Would anyone call video game writing Shakespeare?
The answer, I think, is that the medium is influenced by the culture around it. However, it is also one of the things that defines 21st century culture. Video games now are what rock and roll was in the '50s, or movies in the '20s and '30s. Perhaps video games are seen as a "lesser" medium not because of content but because of era. Global culture, it seems, is not geared towards engendering works that will stand the test of time, but towards immediate thrills and rewards. There is also the small matter that we are, as a global society, inundated with artistic culture everywhere we go. Seeing a stunning piece of artwork is no longer a rare event, it can be done with a Google search or just by walking down a busy street in a major city. How can we judge whether or not there is a great, Homeric or Shakespearian video game?
Ultimately, it's a bit daft, in my opinion, to say that video games are dominated by lesser minds and influences. Even Shakespeare wrote for the common people, and Homer's work spread by popularity and word of mouth. The art pieces that modern society esteems so greatly were never seen as such in the era they were made.
So, what does Penny Arcade think? Are video games held back by the consumers? Or are video games merely one part in a larger evolution of art and culture?
LibrarianThorne on
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The movies you mentioned, Casablanca and Citizen Kane, didn't come out for decades after the birth of film. We are roughly in that time period now for games, and when you think about it, now is the time we are beginning to see glimmers of texts that may stand the test of time. Shadow of the Colossus springs to mind. I think it's not too much a stretch of the imagination to see that game still being relevant in 50 years. Flower and Braid are others. Your opinion may vary of course, but I think we all know one or two games that we believe are timeless.
Every medium is influenced by the culture surrounding it, and to deny that is laughable. Gaming has taken it's cues from film, literature, and other narrative media. That said, it is an undeniably different experience, and, like all new things, society at large needs time to adjust. If you do a little bit of research on the subject, you'll quickly find out that the things people are saying about gaming now (panders towards violence and titillation, exists to make money not to make art, etc.) are the things that were said about film when it was in it's infancy.
I would have to disagree about modern culture focusing on thrills and rewards over substance. Most any work of art that is now considered so, was born as simple entertainment in it's day. As you said, Shakespeare wrote the equivalent of soap operas. A key tenet of a piece of media being art, is that it is always deemed so by an audience. These audiences take time to develop a level of appreciation for the work that elevates it to the status of art.
Video games are not held back by consumers. They are held back by time and youth. But, these things will pass, and in the not too distant future if current trends continue.
Gaming has definitely shown through and had enough time to grow. It has been 30 years. The only difference is that gaming is now an acceptable part of society, not just some nerd's hobby.
Everyone on this forum mentions this. When did this happen?
Last time I checked, gaming is still some nerd's hobby. It's just that there are a lot more nerds now than there used to be (nerds are also not too socially acceptable).
Lies! Those are called Casual Gamers and us nerds hate them!
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I don't think that your first point is a fair comparison. It's like saying that the infancy of music is cavemen beating on a hollow log, or the infancy of movies is the earliest experiments with moving pictures, stereo-opticons and such. If you want to be picky, then all of that is true, but really, all those media, gaming included, never came into their own until the technology progressed far enough to clearly express itself.
It has had enough time to grow, I agree. Hence why I mentioned SotC, Flower, and Braid as examples of the artistic potential of the medium shining through. I do disagree with gaming being acceptable however. It still isn't, no matter how much people might think so. To the general public, it is still child's play. That sort of derision takes decades to eradicate though, and some of us might not even see it in our lifetimes.
Gaming is unique in that it really was born as a toy, rather than a method of expression. As the most technologically bound artistic medium that humankind has ever utilised, it took a long time for it to get to the point where it could truly be art. As humans, first impressions are everything, and initially, and for some time after, games were kids toys. This has stuck in the minds of the populace, and will continue to be that way until over the course of many years, people's opinions change, and new people are born who have never known gaming as anything but a method of storytelling.
I think that gaming in general is starting to see something of a turnaround in this regard. While I'm not a big fan of the Wii (simply due to an extremely thin catalog of games which I find enjoyable), Nintendo really did hit something big by appealing to the casual market. The PS2 took years and years to reach as many people as it did, but the Wii is garnering acceptance by groups I would never have expected to be interested. Hell, my own mother, who has never once expressed interest in video games, wants a game for the Wii.
As usual, I think people should keep in mind the difference between "gaming" and "playing video games". I play games as a hobby. I know enough about games to appreciate when developers do something clever or insightful and derive a great deal more enjoyment from playing video games than watching movies. However, the average person simply plays games; it's a diversion in a similar fashion to going to a movie.
I think the biggest change stems from the simple fact that the video game industry has become huge compared to 20 years ago. As a result, the industry reaches out to a much broader audience. While it may be a long time before something like FF7 is as easily recognizable to the average person as, say, Star Wars, properties like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are widely recognizable even to people who've never actually played those games.
I think services like Good Old Games and Gametap are indicative that video games are not entirely disposable. Up until a few years ago, the only thing I'd ever seen of this "X-Com" game was a full-page ad in some long-lost game magazine. Despite the age of the game, it was a lot of fun. Just as with movies, only the really good games will persist while the mediocre will simply be forgotten. However, I think games are held to even higher standards of excellence for the simple reason that they usually require much more time than a movie. Accepting the foibles of a two-hour movie is much easier than accepting flaws in games which can last for 10+ hours.
When we look back at the history of films and music, what do we record, remember and comment on. The very best. The absolute shining examples of the time which have stood till now as examples of how to do things. The further back you go, it seems that somehow there was a lot less going on but it was all so much better on average. Is this really true? Of course not! Its not like everyone in the late 17th century was as good as Beethoven, and for every Shakespere play produced in London there were probably 50 performances like "Busty Frenchwomen gone wild! A lusty comedic farce concerning 3 London Gentlemen in Paris! The busomiest wenches thou shall ever lay thine eyes upon! Thou will believest not the scrapes that these rakes find themselves in!"
Elvis had 10000 forgettable contemporaries, whose songs didn't last. For Coldplay, there is the Cheeky girls. For Citizen Cane, I give you Batman and Robin. While Mr Smith was going to Washington, audiences chilled at "The Ice BEAST of planet Freezulon!"
Do video games have their flops? Of course. However I would argue that many have merits when considered in their totality. To ignore the fact that the game is fun, is like saying it doesn't matter if a film is well shot, or if a Piano is well tuned. Too many people only judge games by their writing, which arguably is their least important aspect for the most part. Is Mario Kart someone worse than a good movie simply because its prime motivator is fun, not story?
Gaming is not as good as movies or music when judged by the standards of movies and music. If we judge say, Citizen Kane by the standards of a video game then it is awful. You don't get to do anything but sit through a 2 hour cutscene, its the same every time you play it, and really it just fails as a game completely. This is why people from old media shouldn't judge new media. I wouldn't get my music reviews from 1up, and I wouldn't read a video game review in NME.
There are some games which are true quality. The halo series, conflict freespace 2, Master of Orion 2, Civilization, Sim City 3000, and dozens more. Are they good movies? Are they great paintings? Epic songs? No, of course not, they are games. But I have gained just as much emotional response and interest from raising an empire to greatness, or fighting the Shivans as I have from the Shawshank Redemption or any great art.
If I was to choose the absolute best example of human culture to show to an alien as "This is the finest thing we did in the field of art and beauty" then no, I wouldn't choose a game. However I wouldn't choose a movie either, or a play, or a painting. I'd likely play them some of my favourite songs. Does this mean that movies and painting have failed too, because my #1 pick is music? Of course not.
Where in the past it was more often that game studios were groups of like-minded people who all committed to a game or a core gameplay idea, they do it now because it's a job rather than a creative outlet. I'm generalizing quite a bit, but just go with me on this one.
You ask if we've had our Citizen Kane or Odyssey, when the truth is there's people devoted to singing the praises of things like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 7 as one of their favorites (if not the best game evar), for reasons of gameplay as well as music, or story, or what have you. It's hard for us as gamers to have perspective when we're continuously arguing about what best represents the genre (is it hardcore or casual? cinematic or gameplay oriented? strawberry or lemon-lime flavored?)
You can see some of this reflected in the movie industry as well, when you get the "is it a summer blockbuster or oscar-worthy" discussion going on. And it is telling that in the movie industry, for every 8 Wayans Brothers films you get, a Dark Knight or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will come out of nowhere and take you for a ride. (made possible by a focused crew or indie filmmakers respectively.)
But that's where the similarities end, and here's my main point-- the why of it-- we don't notice it as much with movies because the tools to create films are widely distributed. Cameras, digital editing, and so on are every day items. In some sense it's correct to say the games industry is still in its infancy, because by comparison, the tools to make a video game (or even a mod for one) are more restrictive, and somewhat harder to learn, meaning that diminishing returns takes over, so instead of every 8, maybe it's every 80 games that are about blowing up aliens and saving the human race, you only get one Shadow of the Colossus, or Braid. Because it's easier for the people who make up the industry to work for a paycheck than to come up with something original and see it through to fruition.
Long story short: It's hard to see from our current position. Interactive entertainment is a huge chunk of ground to cover. But I'd be willing to bet that when the means to create mods and videogames proliferates more and becomes more popular not just as a means of entertainment, but as a means of expression, we'll be able to sift the cream from the crap much better.
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Ka-Chung!
I don't think thats accurate. You're not going to get a Citizen Kane every year, because the majority of games are not designed to be works of art, rather easily digestible and enjoyable ways to pass the time.
But there are games with fantastic writing. I dust off my Planescape : Torment CDs for a playthrough every 6 months or so. And I'm still amazed at the depth of the story and writing in it, the multiple interpretations of the theme that can be had, and the characters that really make you care about them.
On this forum theres almost a rule, that every time Deus Ex is mentioned, someone has to install it again and play it through. Despite the now primitive graphics, it story, setting, and gameplay have endured.
I only recently played Braid, but thats something I can see myself returning to in the future.
These are only 3 examples, but there are more out there. They're often buried beneath the deluge of mediocrity, but you can make that statement about movies, books, and music too.
All the while forgetting there's an entire genre of indie games...
Video games are not going to be widely accepted as art when only a small segment of the population experiences them. It is a hard sell for people who aren't already open to the idea. I'm sure it will happen with time... it basically already is.
I don't really see anyone doing that here. So far I think we're getting reasonable responses from across the spectrum.
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Ka-Chung!
I was talking about the links in the OP, as well as general opinion outside of the industry.
I would say that sometime around 2000, games got taken over by the consumer culture / marketing etc etc, and now as a mature market it caters mostly to the blockbusters while, like the movie industry, the real gamers know the quality games.
All and all, every time i read about this sort of thing i am reminded about how painters never considered early photography to be art.
Words are art. (Books)
Visuals are art. (Paintings, etc)
Sound is art (Music)
Combining them is art (Film and television)
But adding interactivity? Oh no! That couldn't possibly be art.
They are the first games to really understand that it's far more about atmosphere, and less about writing or cinematography. THey are the first games (that I can think of) to really take advantage of gaming as a seperate artform to anything else we've thus far seen.
They're labours of love, and it shows, but this has more to do with my definition of art being anything done with such skill and love it becomes artful, so I'd place the fifth element as art because bar one scene it's pretty much all pitched perfectly.
What I mean is, everyone lauds Shakespeare now for his "classic" literary work now, back then his plays were based around the popular culture and fiction of the time he lived, it's popular culture that games base themselves on now and that the OP seems so dismissive of at the moment.
Gaming having the "equivalent" of Shakespeare won't be told for a long time yet. I disagree that modern culture is less capable of defining classics, it's just that we haven't had the time yet to assess those classics. People point to the Godfather as a piece of cinematic history. Shawshank redemption. In the gaming sphere we have Shadow of the Colossus, World of Goo. Different types of expression that are already recognised as something special, but they can't be called classic, not yet.
I would also say that games take art in completely different directions than was ever possible before purely through interactivity. It's something artists in other mediums have been experimenting with for millennia, and yet here comes a medium that is based around interactivity, and we dismiss that aspect of it as not being "artistic"? I'd say that the evolution and changes we've seen in the interactivity of gaming is no less worth of appraisal for merit. And there have been some stunning advances in such a short history.
Someone else touched upon this - some of the greatest works in history haven't been appreciated in their own time.
EDIT: Speaking about the legitimacy of video games, has everyone been paying attention to Six Days in Fallujah? If you're like me, someone who has been predicting and anticipating the maturation of the medium as a whole for decades now, the previews out there (here and here) make it sound like a product which could make strides for video games.
The idea of a documentary told from an interactive perspective is tantalizing, and I desperately want to prove Rodger Ebert wrong.
EDIT AGAIN:
Right the fuck on.
EDIT THE THIRD:
Right the FUCK on.
When people actually try something genuinely ambitious (and I'm talking much more than the very basic postmodernism of Shadow of the Colossus), then people might actually begin to take the medium seriously.
Right now, un-noticed anomalies like Pathologic aside, there's no reason to.
How is Shadow of the Colossus postmodern?
https://medium.com/@alascii
Check out the links I posted above. That Six Days in Fallujah game includes a mode where you can play as a reporter embedded within the unit. As such, you'd experience no combat, and would get to see the battle from a neutral 3rd party perspective outside of the conflict.
The game also focuses on, and utilizes, that exact kind of "go in and kill everything" expectations from a game. The soldiers said they walked into the battlefield all amped up, expecting it to be like a game, only to have the reality and psychology of the situation hit them like a sack of bricks. And then, by the end, it was essentially hell.
Where are the games depicting the life of working-class families in 19th-century yorkshire, or similar? For that matter, where's the games equivalent of, say, a romcom (including accessibility to the general population)?
One slightly more ambitious piece about war doesn;t change how limited the general field is. It plays upon assumptions created by its own nature as a game, then flips them at the end, especailly with what the player becomes.
Basic, but there.
The Sims.
I'd say the fact that you look at the game and say "it's just about war" speaks more about your own limited views upon the genre than the medium's limited range. Your criticism is that games are about going and killing people. They're aiming to get away with that, even offering a mode where you're forbidden to hurt anybody.
But, you're asking about the equivilent of a romcom? That would be the adventure game genre. Stuff like Phoenix wright or those god-awful hentai dating sim games. Are they being used to their potential? Nope, but the potential still exists.
Then, of course, there is this:
EDIT: JohnDoe, I considered the Sims, but that's not really what he's asking about. He's talking about constructing a narrative. The sims does the exact opposite - it's a narrative-less game.
Something like the sims meets phoenix wright, however... that has potential. Imagine the sims with a story.
EDIT DOS: Oh, but I just thought of what would be considered a romcom game - Feel the Magic XX/XY.
Its not a 'romcom' as in a direct translation, but it works as a gaming equivalent.
EDIT: And then you also have to consider stuff like Afrika which has an extremely loose story tying it all together.
Note I'm not saying these are flawless examples of a narrative without combat - far from it actually. But rather, these are the seeds which should be nurtured and explored as they demonstrate how you can express ideas in an interactive medium beyond "kill this".
But if we're just throwing out examples now of games without combat that tell a story, there's one being LPed right now on this forum. Raw Danger!
So?
Anyway, it DOES have a narrative. It just doesn't fit it into your narrow definition of following a writers narrative. It happens on the fly and depends on your actions and the random nature of the CPU controlled Sims. Its the perfect gaming equivalent of a romcom.
I think you need to back up and re-read what the current topic of discussion is. We're talking specifically about narratives at this point, so the sims is NOT a good example to be throwing a round.
No, they're not. There's drivel in every medium, and its the vast majority. As I said before, the same cycle of art is governing Video Games. We're barely breaking into the mainstream phase (22 Billion dollars in 2008, for those of you who need factual evidence of "mainstream"), the public acceptance is rising and children are being raised with gaming for recreation. All these things will lead to better business and thus better works, but they'll be in the mass of easy cash-ins. To summarize the culture as a passing fad just as its reaching its prime is ridiculous.
You're thinking too limited in scope. It's hard to imagine unexplored possibilities, but think of it this way - a lot of the joy people get out of television is from projecting themselves onto the character they're seeing. Thats why we naturally like characters we can identify in. In this way, you're getting to experience something you wouldn't normally get to experience.
Romcoms are not different. A lot of times, people watch to fantasize that they're in Ross's possition, or whatever. Now, imagine a typical romcom plot, but with the ability to change the choices the main character makes. Imagine a fully idealized version of what mass effect was trying to pull off with it's dialog choices, applied to a romcom.
Its a valid example.
You don't need to lecture me on what a narrative is, I've argued that same point numerous times on this very board.
However, it's not pertinent to the topic of discussion at this point. Its pretty obvious the type of narrative he's referring to, and pointing out how your technically correct doesn't change his opinion.
I don't see where you're getting that.
Depicting the life of a family? Accessibility to the general population? How is The Sims not a perfect example? It tells a story by utilizing gameplay and makes it personal in a way no other medium can match.
Just like a painting is less realistic than a photograph it has its own strengths. I know that is a bit of a stretch for a comparison to video games but the problem is that almost all games are just trying to be a video game and very few care about being considered art. Video games can be art but most are not, just like many movies and TV shows.