• 1Nov 07

  It's just a game. Right?

  Here's a paradox. Roger Ebert says that videogames will never be as worthy of the term 'art' as movies and that they are inherently defective in a way that precludes them being considered art. Gamers work themselves into a righteous uproar to put forth games like ICO, and attempt to disprove Ebert's thesis. Jack Thompson says that games are influential in a very negative and detrimental way, and gamers work themselves into a righteous uproar to claim that a game could never affect them in such a way and that they know the difference between games and real life and - this is the one that I want to discuss here - "it's just a game".

  Let me clarify now that I feel there to be little weight to Thompson's arguments and, like the rest of you, I consider him at best a desperate ambulance chaser and at worst genuinely unhinged. Let me also say that I consider Ebert to be wrong and that games can have the necessary traits to justly be called art. Debating the merits of these men and their argument isn't what I'm here for; rather I'd like to examine what seems to be the ability to hoist games onto a pedestal in one instant and then decry them as light entertainment the next. This is a juxtaposition which I find difficult to reconcile.

  I feel the problem is a simplification of the debate. I understand that. When someone from the ESRB is talking to Mr. Thompson on CBS or something, there is rarely enough time to get into any real detail. So things are simplified and boiled down to often useful, but ultimately limited and sometimes counterproductive points. What it omits, ultimately, is that not all games are created or played equal. Compare skate. to Final Fantasy. The one is an RPG with a heavy time investment, the other you can cruise around for 15 minutes, of which 12 minutes is random skating and the remainder is hitting a line a few times trying to get something just so. Now, there's no room in this debate for commentary on which, if any, game style or design doctrine is superior. That's what our esteemed reviewers are there for. No, rather, I'd simply like to make the point that there are many different ways to interpret a game, and that said interpretation depends on a large number of factors.

  Different gamers react to different game experiences differently, in different circumstances. I know that a lot of people cried when Aeris died - I was one of them. I know absolutely nobody aside from myself who cried when Nanaki was reunited with Seto and learnt that his father was in fact noble and brave and magnificent, but I have cried every single time I watched that scene (20+, I think). I only cried the first time Aeris died.

  What we need to do, in my opinion, is indeed to proclaim games as art - but to also act like we believe it. If games are art, surely they should be able to move people? I don't know about anyone else, but I am proud of the art that has influence who I am. I am proud that I love Babylon 5 and BSG, and Final Fantasy X and Halo. They don't all move me in the same way, or with the same techniques, but they have all in some important manner affected who I am. And so I could never say that Babylon 5 is 'just a TV show' when I genuinely believe it to be one of the most important and profound works of the latter 20th century, of any medium. Rather than writing things off as 'just a game' when some negative challenge comes to gaming, thereby neatly sidestepping the issue but also denigrating the worth of our medium, I believe we should accept that yes, games can affect people, and then point out that art, by and large, moves people to better themelves, not to kill or steal or rape or anything else of the like, among a panoply of other arguments in favor of the medium.

  I don't believe, however, that we can simply sit back and let the fullness of time remove the last vestiges of resistance to gaming. It will happen, yes, but if we want this to be fairly quick, as well as easy, if we want gaming to be taken seriously, to be seen more as the kin of The Godfather than Scary Movie, then we must show that we are open to debate, to alternative interpretations, and that we are willing to engage in the debate about gaming's harmful effects, if any, rather than sidestepping it and reducing the medium in the same deft press of R1.

  • Posted Nov 1, 2007 6:37 pm PT
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• 22Sep 07

  My most anticpated game of 2007 is almost upon us

  "Oh come now", you think "Yet another spiel about Halo 3? I mean I like it well enough but this is getting ridiculous! Huxley, surely you can think of something less obvious!"

  Well yes, actually, I can. My most anticipitated game this year is not in fact the closing chapter of Petty Office Master Chief John-117's heroic battle against various hostile aliens, but is in fact an entirely different science fiction affair; Mass Effect. It's still quite likely that you've heard of this game, because there's a lot of talk about it. And now that Penny Arcade have made a comic about the game, it's pretty much going to be known to all, their function as both town crier and royal sealer of approval being fulfilled.

  Mass Effect is being developed by BioWare, those same fine men and women who have produced such esteemed games as Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, and Knights of the Old Republic, and who inhabit the Great Northern Wastes, tinkering away on their moose-based motherboards, the data flowing throughout at the speed of warm maple syrup. Ahem - forgive my getting carried away with blantant stereotyping of our colonial cousins. At any event, even an iterative advance on JE and KOTOR would be worth getting, at least for me, but the level of improvement which seems to be present in Mass Effect is so great that it doesn't seem like it will be fair to compare them. These former titans have been struck down and are now mere mortals, scurrying about the toes of a vast and terrible new power.

  On the basis that I am the world's biggest slut for science fiction, I am enthused by any sci-fi game on basic principles alone. On the basis that I really quite like KOTOR and Jade Empire, I am enthused by the fact that BioWare is making ME. On the basis that this game looks like it will actually have an intelligent, detailed plot which I can get immersed in, I am very much enthused. By this trifecta combined, I am unreasonably hyped about this game. Much as a young gentleman in an earlier era seeing his first exposed ankle, I feel as though I perceive a sea-change, some grand experience which I will treasure forever. In short, and probably with no small degree of undue optimism, I am expecting something console-defining from the November release of Mass Effect. Certainly, the foundations upon which the X-Box 360 is built are mighty important things. Halo 3 being the obvious cornerstone of the console for the moment, and with a glut of games due over the next few months, Mass Effect might face some considerable competition for the market.

  Still I write this in the spirit of a gamer, not a market analyst. I purchased Mass Effect: Revelations by Drew Karpyshyn, a novelization of some of the game's backstory and setting the scene of the game proper. Without turning this into a book review, I don't think it's Shakespeare, but I found it an enjoyable and engaging read, which is pretty much exactly what I want from most books. It also did get me into the game world even more considerably than I had been, and if you're looking forward to Mass Effect you might want to consider checking it out. At any event, what I am most looking forward to, I think, is a cohesive universe. As I said above, I am a kinky little freak when it comes to science fiction, and there's little I won't do to get my hands on more of the stuff. I want to see all the weird and wonderful ideas that BioWare have come up with for this universe, and I want to explore not a cohesive game world, but a cohesive game GALAXY, seeking out every nook and cranny.

  This is all, of course, to say nothing of a gameplay system which looks to be solid, fast-paced, and fun. I admit that I tend to put gameplay considerations aside for a story I like, and just push through any amount of dire game, but in this case it looks like I won't have to. Huzzah!

  And until November 23rd? Well, there's a little game coming out you might have heard of which I imagine might keep me busy for at least some of that time.

  • Posted Sep 22, 2007 8:26 pm PT
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• 13Sep 07

  A little of my gaming past

  Aaah, those heady days of youth. I can't really remember the first game I played, but I know that I was incredibly young when I did so; my bet would be sometime between the ages of two and three. I did have a PC when I was very young, but that was soon enough taken from me by parents who felt I spent too much time playing Starglider and not enough time learning my multiplication tables. However, I was permitted to have a single, solitary piece of gaming equipment - an Amstrad CPC. Let me tell you, I'm not quite sure how a combination of Bridge It and Dizzy Prince of the Yolkfolk failed to dissuade me from gaming forever, but there you go.

  Fortunately, I had a grandmother who doted utterly on me, and who I spent my summers staying with. This is where I got my first real console, and where I learnt that games could be pretty special things, although a good set of that wouldn't come for a few more years. The first console I had was a SEGA Master System, and the fun I had with it. Still, the summers came and went and soon enough it was time to upgrade. A Mega Drive beckoned, and was soon acquired for me. My first real memories of gaming come from the Mega Drive - the Sonics, Marko's Magic Football, Toejam & Earl were games I played intensely, and which I remember fondly now. So the Mega Drive, and by extension SEGA, hold a pretty special position for me. I know, I know, everyone else has their Nintendo memories, but I was a SEGA baby and I remain SEGA's man today.

  Still, time marches on. By this point I was approaching double digits in terms of age. Ten years old(!), how glorious and impossible an achievement! I had got my gaming fix when away from my grandmothers in arcades, and spent plenty of time with games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and the incomparable Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Yet here now came news of something new. Something beyond the iterative graphical upgrades that made Eternal Champions look so good, or the general all-around improvements that allowed Theme Park to compel me for weeks at a time. Here game genuine, amazing 3-dimensional games! Now certainly, I'd been wowed by the two-second cutscenes in Flashback, but this was something else entirely. This was something I needed to beg my grandmother for!

  Yet which to choose? I had wanted a 32x, but seeing the new consoles on the way and being aware I could have exactly one of them made me even then cautious, and let me hold off for awhile. Soon enough, the 32x was of no more interest to me. But neither was the Saturn! Look at this thing, this 'Play Station'! My Gods, the graphics. Wipeout! I must have it! And I did have it, the Christmas following its first release. The four games I got with it were Wipeout, Theme Park, X-Com: Enemy Unknown, and Destruction Derby.

  Nobody saw much of me for awhile. This was something new, special, and mindblowing for my youth. Now, also, began a tradition which would last the better part of a decade, the renting of games. Now the place my grandmother lives, in Northern Ireland, is not exactly on the map, and until recent years didn't have too much of anything. No Blockbusters, that's for sure! But there was one little rental store, run by a man named Harry, his wife, and their two children. I would rent two games a day, every day, for all of summer, for five years. Unlike any console before or after, I would play more UK games for the PS than I would miss. It's almost a challenge to find a PS game I've not played, in fact. Here were golden years, but always framed by classics like X-Com and SimCity 2000.

  The PS of course turned out to be a juggernaut. Even more than the Japanese and US markets, it dominated here. Not only that, Sony successfully marketed it in a way which made gaming not just acceptable to the mainstream, but cool. You can argue about the consequences of that, but I'm of the opinion that it was a fairly good thin. It did filter through to my old man, who got a hold of one of the things sometime in 1998, from a shady character who had fitted it with a mod chip and fitted us with various legit and less-than-legit games. I would complain and reject this history, except that it meant I got to play Thrill Kill, which was never terribly good, but hey, there's prestige at stake here, and playing unreleased games rates pretty highly in attaining it! More importantly, it gave me far more time to enjoy the games I really loved, like Final Fantasy VII and Suikoden.

  At any rate this possession of a console at home as well as at my grandmother's was a Very Good Thing. It also gave me more legitimacy in asking for games (My parents were paranoid types, and mention of it without what they considered reason would have been met with swift interrogation) and consoles. Soon, we had a Saturn, an N64, and a new gaming PC.

  Then SEGA released the Dreamcast, and I felt terrible for ever ditching them. Jet Set Radio. Shenmue. Toy Commander. Skies of Arcadia. Phantasy Star Online - my first attempted sortie into the world of online gaming (Aside from a few rounds of DooM on a LAN with my pops), which failed because our phone provider sucked. Still, it was fun enough in one player for awhile. The Dreamcast, I think, was when I started to really grasp the movement forwards that had been taken with 3D. Yes, the PS1 had amazed me. The N64 had done some incredible things. But in my case it was the DC which really resonated with me, and in many ways still does. I can load up those games and not have to adjust to the graphics - I can't say the same for anything else released before the millennium changed. And some of those games have unsurpassable gameplay; I still consider SoA to be one of the best, most involved RPGs ever made.

  After that, things settle down a bit. The old man becomes old worm bait, mother moves out, and I stay with my other grandma for a couple of years before moving in with mom. The main point here is that I had much, much more freedom to play games than at any point before, and I went at this with gusto. By this time, of course, we'd arrived in PS2 and soon enough X-Box territory, and I'm sure I don't need to go listing all the classics there. Of course, gaming moves forwards, more and faster than almost anything else. We've just really got into the swing of things after the 2D era was phased out, when suddenly along comes Nintendo with their DSes and Wiis, and we're having to start to rethink everything again. Who knows how this generation will go, and what the eighth gen will look like? I do know two things. First, even if we have another '83, I've got enough games in my catalogue to tide me over. Second, I love this medium, and I'm damned glad to live in a time and place where I can be a part of it.

  • Posted Sep 13, 2007 3:01 pm PT
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