Slashdot has an interesting discussion on “highbrow” video games today. There is an unusual amount of stupidity in the comments, but also some good insight as usual.
I find people’s distain for games to be really misplaced. They are objecting to today’s connotations of “video game” without considering the future possibilities of the medium. A game where you control the characters in a movie and get to influence the decisions they make to alter the story would be one possibility for something that could be “highbrow”—it would come down to the quality of several attributes similar to a movie, plus the nature and sophistication of the control offered over the story.
It is disingenuous to even call it a “game” at that point. Dictionary.com defines a “game” as “An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime” or “A competitive activity or sport in which players contend with each other according to a set of rules.” I would argue that it is not simply an entertaining activity, because then movies would be games. And it does not have to be competitive, because then “single-player game” is an oxymoron. The key is rules. A game has rules. In the case of a video game, the general rule is that the player’s inputs control subsequent outputs, according to a computer program.
It is frustrating to me that so many people assume “an activity providing entertainment or amusement” when we “serious” gamers essentially mean “an activity with defined rules.” Even on Slashdot, many people scoffed at the whole notion of “highbrow games” because they misunderstood what it means for something to be a “game.”
Surprisingly, none of the Slashdot comments really hits the nail on the head; Sirlin comes much closer in his article Rethinking Story Games. He may not be framing it in the context of “highbrow” games, but the idea of a “forced advance” game he presents could easily become something culturally significant and deep—it could share all the qualities of the best movies ever produced, but with the added dimension of player control according to a set of rules. Difficult to achieve, to be sure, since video games are a far more complex medium than music, television or books (they incorporate elements from all of these, with the added burden of allowing the player to meaningfully interact). It is no wonder video games have not been accepted as “art” yet—they are too new. Computers are not powerful enough, and video game creators have a poor understanding of the medium (due to its incredible richness and complexity), relative to the other media.
This incredible complexity is another reason video games have not been recognized as art. First of all, they are only examined en masse from an end user perspective. Most people do not have the expertise necessary to see that the computer code has been brilliantly designed. With movies, for example, any film enthusiast can examine the technical considerations, such as the directing style, lighting, sound, costumes… but though video games have similar phenomena that can be studied during the game experience (everything I just listed for film, plus quality of graphics rendering, etc.), there is an entire additional layer of content in the form of the video game’s program itself. The program as a whole can be mind-numbingly complex, especially only the compiled final product is available (i.e., no source code). But it is still part of the final product, and as such could be considered when judging the game as “art.”
Secondly, programming considerations aside, the rules of interaction have proven exceedingly tricky to design to a standard high enough to be called “art.” As my prime example here, I’ll use RPGs. They come very close to being “artistic” in that they tell complex stories with developed characters, often on an epic scale. But take a look at the gameplay, now. What do you do in an RPG? I would argue that there are three main activities: 1) explore the world and interact with people—typically their canned line(s) of dialogue, nothing more; 2) fight enemies in combat; and 3) manage character qualities (equipment, special moves, etc.) to better prepare for the challenges in #2. I am continually appalled that these three activities are still the best we can muster. Old school adventure games did a much better job at presenting additional options, such as partially interactive dialogue with NPCs and puzzle solving, but seem to have died out for reasons I don’t fully understand.
Another difficulty of the interaction may be that allowing the player too much control allows him to perform actions with reduce the possibility of the game being classified as “highbrow.” For example, in Grand Theft Auto, they tried to allow the character many freedoms such as the ability to attack any NPC. The actions they chose to write code to handle (as well as the game’s title) clearly present the type of game they were trying to make. They could have provided even more interactivity on many other levels, but the amount of work necessary to produce computer code and interfaces for all those activities would quickly become prohibitive (hence my earlier comment that computers are not yet powerful enough for “highbrow” games). A fully interactive game would be something like the holodeck on Star Trek. While it is always the case with any game that you can take any action you want within the limitations of the game world, those limitations are currently very… limiting. The holodeck provides a game world with limitations nearly identical to those of the real world, meaning that you become more limited by your imagination than you do by the game. And continuing in that vein, it of course makes sense to create games with rules quite distinct from those of the real world, as well. Many games already do this—for example, I am currently playing through Viewtiful Joe, which lets you control “visual effects” (VFX) to slow down time, accelerate your character to mach speed, or perform special moves by zooming the camera in, along the theme of a cheesy B movie. These sorts of ideas are limitless, and when combined with technology like that of the holodeck, will allow the production of undeniably “highbrow” games.
“If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.”
—Pascal