Feature: Is it Time for Games to Grow Up?
Well, you have to!
Cody’s feature from last week set me to thinking about video game’s place as an artistic medium in today’s society. Though I’m not really concerned with games being considered art so much as I am concerned with video games moving beyond mere entertainment. Video games being something other than fun and entertaining, it’s a crazy idea, I know, but let’s take a closer look at it.
As of today, we play video games for various reasons: escapism, to be challenged, to relax, but always to have fun. A game that is not fun will almost universally be panned by critics, because, well, it’s just not fun to play. This is completely understandable given our current mindset as to what constitutes a good game, and what video games should be (they are called “games” after all). But if video games are ever to advance as a medium which evokes strong emotional reactions, is it fair to require all games to share the same fundamental characteristic; that they are fun?
Take, for example, a game that is meant to display the horrors of war. Would it be possible for this game to be made, make you feel emotionally (and possibly physically) sick at times, yet still be a commercial success? Right now, I think that’s impossible. But there are plenty of examples in film, literature, and art that do that exact thing and are regarded as the pinnacles of their respective medium. Why can’t a game do that too? I suppose one could just write it off as differences between the various media, but that’s just lazy.
Right now, it would seem that video games are not allowed to do these things. While video games have been gaining ground and becoming more and more respected for their artistic potential, it would seem that they are prohibited from doing anything too controversial. I suppose this is because of some cultural stigma that still says that games are something made for children, or, if not that, that they are something you do to pass the time, and not something you use to have an emotional experience. Really, though, that’s just not a very good reason.
I believe that the true motivation for developers to not create games like this is money. As I already said, people play games to have fun, and most people don’t want to play a game that’s not fun. And if people don’t buy your game, you don’t make money. Plain and simple, nobody wants to take the financial risk. That’s why the majority of games like this today are simple, indie developed games.
Regardless of what prevents developers and publishers from making these games, if it were to be attempted, it would seem that video games should have an edge over other forms of entertainment when it comes to eliciting emotional reaction, given their interactive nature. A person is much more likely to feel emotionally attached to a character that they are able to interact with rather than a character which they simply watch. And that’s really where a lot of emotion springs from: a perceived connection between the player/viewer/reader and the character. That’s the reason you cried like a baby when Aeris died in Final Fantasy VII.
But that’s too simple, and just not what I’m talking about in this feature. I want more than a tear shed for a lost companion; I want to play a game that makes me feel like a bad person once I’ve finished; a game that makes you question the things that you’re doing (but not because of some twist where you find out you’ve really been working for the bad guys the whole time, or because of some contrived moral choice). But, hey, maybe I’m just a masochist.
I think it is pretty obvious that it is impossible for a game like that to be made at this point in time (and be successful), but I think the more important question is if video games should even move into this territory. Should our games maintain their position as vehicles of fantasy and escapism, forever appealing to the child within all of us?
My answer to that question would be both in the affirmative and the negative. Clearly games will always have a place as something we do to have fun and relax, and that’s probably what the majority of them will continue to be, and that’s not a bad thing. However, if our medium of choice is ever going to evolve and become more respected, then it must push boundaries and cover topics which make some of us feel uncomfortable. And somebody needs to start somewhere. A major developer needs to take on a controversial issue, thus allowing others to follow in their footsteps, and allow video games to mature and become more “grown up.”
It seemed as if Konami was taking a step in the right direction when they announced that they were going to publish Six Days in Fallujah. But as we all know, that didn’t work out. Public outcry forced Konami to suspend their role as publisher. And this game was being billed as a “game-amentary” that covered what happened during the battle, and not something which made any political or social statements, but it certainly could have been a way for games to start covering such sensitive ground.
Can a video game ever be successful and cover controversial topics/create a negative emotional experience? Today, no. Sometime in the future? I certainly hope so. Should developers attempt this seeming impossible feat? Yes, and the sooner they start, the sooner our games will become more grown up.
Author: Ryan
4 Comments to Feature: Is it Time for Games to Grow Up?
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My thoughts on this are that “fun” is the wrong standard to hold games to. We should be looking for “entertainment”. These are two different things. I think most people would agree that Schindler’s List isn’t fun, but people watch it for the emotional experience. That play on emotion is entertaining.
Would I play a game that makes me feel like I’m a horrible person afterwards? Absolutely. I said as much in my feature on the emotional spectrum of video games.
Sadly though, AAA games cost so much to make these days that I doubt any publisher would green-light such a project. One could argue cinema is the same, as most big-budget films are pure escapism. But with film, it’s easier to take a small budget and make a great independent movie. Independent games, while potentially fun, just don’t have the funding to match a AAA title’s atmosphere and audio/visual experience. Graphics might not matter on the question of fun, but when you’re trying to make a deep emotional impact, it helps to have a believable world where you aren’t crying over a pixel.
There is some hope though. I’ve recently heard BioWare talking about the potential of entirely dialogue based games, which would be an incredible paradigm shift given the video game industry’s action/combat intensive focus. Maybe with a developer as big as BioWare, EA would actually have the balls to release such a game.
On a side note, there’s no reason why a game can’t be both “fun” and “entertaining”. Based on some soldiers’ first-hand accounts and my own experiences playing things like softair or paintball, I imagine real war is an incredible rush. So there’s no reason why the gameplay can’t reflect that. The story just needs to bring in the crushing emotional struggles soldiers deal with as they cope with their actions.
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I think you pretty much nailed it when you said it has to do with money.
Making a computer game is difficult and is often done by a team of people which requires a lot of effort. It is perfectly reasonable for developers/producers to get some kind of reward for their hard work, irrespective of the quality of the product.
This is not the same as in film – everybody understands that if you boil it down to the bare essentials it simply requires a camera and an actor. Two simple (and comparatively cheap) components that are easy to acquire and use. This allows any subject matter to be approached in any shape or form.
For games to take on this wide spectrum of topics they have to become accessible (in development terms) to the absolute masses and not just a few keen people in their bedrooms. They also have to be distributed easily. Fortunately there are systems available to do this and sandbox games or games that come with an SDK have proven that there is a want to make new versions of an existing product.
So in conclusion, with regards to the title, no, they do not need to grow up – merely allow themselves to be easily created by anybody in order to broaden their horizons.
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Thanks for the comment, James. You have an interesting take on the issue.
I think we’re already seeing the beginnings of easily created, mass marketable games. With services like Xbox Live Indie Games which are aimed at allowing independent developers to showcase their games on major outlets like Xbox Live. As well as the internet itself and the millions of flash games that are developed which I failed to mention in the article itself, but here’s a good list that showcases some of the best “art games” out there: http://www.mentisworks.org/2007/07/art-games-best-indy-titles.html
There still certainly is a technical boundary though. Not anybody can make a game, it’s still “just a few keen people in their bedrooms,” as you said. This limits the amount of these indie games, thus narrowing the spectrum of subject matter covered, but I’m not entirely convinced that this will really get games where I want them to go. Film didn’t get its Citizen Kane and Schindler’s List from independent filmmakers and I don’t think games will either.
I am convinced that it is the societal mindset that needs to change; the mindset that says games are toys and only for escapism. Once that changes, we’ll see developers who are much more likely to take advantage of the new market that spawns from it.
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Great idea. Problem is, it doesn’t work like that. Put gamers in the position that they have to do things that will make them feel horrible…and after a while they’ll stop feeling horrible. Eventually, they’ll stop niticing that the things they do are awful, and sometime down the line, they’l even start to feel proud of doing grotesque and awful things. That’s the way human nature works.
The brutal truth? Humans can get used to anything. That’s the big danger. Put Joe Six Pack in a concentration camp as a guard, at first he’ll break down, weep, refuse to herd the victims into the ovens… After 6 months, Joe Six Pick stops reacting. It becomes just another job. Hannah Arendt described it as “the banality of evil.”
In fact, if the army and our intelligence community wanted to produce dehumanized brutal people to do ugly hideous things like torture people in Abu Ghraib, kidnap American citzens from their homes in the dead of night and hurl ‘em into prison without charges and without trial, eavesdrop on innocent citizens’ private conversations without warrants, etc., they would probably start by creating a computer simulation of these activities and run the recruits through it until the recruits got so inured to the process that when the time came to torture a real human being or kidnap an innocent child or pregnant woman and whip a black bag over her head and haul her off to a secret prison, the recruits wouldn’t even think about it. After enough hours in the computer simulation (i.e., video game), it would just be another job.
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