In defence of current-gen game design
I feel frustrated at the moment by the endless cyclical debate on the internet (in this case, a comment on Kotaku) claiming games are creatively plateauxing due to their middle age. People seem incredibly pent up on the games-as-art debate to the extent that they seem to deride anything that the "it’s just a game" argument could possibly be justified by.
I want to open this up with a really simple sentiment: I love progressive, narrative driven games, but I sure as hell enjoy playing games that are just a game. Sometimes I just want to be entertained.
The precise comment on Kotaku (by HarlequinRiot) "The industry needs to rethink what a game can be and use all this amazing technology to make new experiences that may not be so stratified as "this is you, go here, do x, listen to y". Gaming needs it’s Moby Dick or its Brothers Karamazov, as its Citizen Kane’s come every few years." actually struck me as opposing the notion of a "game as a game". Games have rules and boundaries, a game without a good rule set is just "fucking about", and that’s why these kinds of games are either experimental or don’t exist - they most certainly don’t make money.
I don’t always need a new experience. I actually believe that amidst all these calls for innovation and change, that gaming is in the midst of a renaissance of innovation. The industry is old enough now to learn from the successes of the past, while incrementing in small steps every year. It’s really a shame to suggest that just because the core gameplay mechanic of two games are the same that they haven’t innovated in subtle ways that will be gathered into the collective unconsciousness of game development. The simplest examples of this in action are the incremental games - look at any yearly sports title or Halo title or Unreal title, and you’ll notice little innovation year on year, but over 3 or 5 years there’s no way you can argue that you’re playing the same game. I think people drastically undersell the innovation in game design that happens every day.
On Michael Abbots Brainy Gamer confab (part 2) posted yesterday (which I’d strongly recommend), one of the participants was strongly arguing the point of authorial intent and influence over a game property, implying that regardless of agenda, that a controlling authorial voice on a game imparts part of their world view on a product. While I agree this is unavoidable in narrative works (especially in the likes of books and cinema), I honestly believe it’s a stretch to state that the guys that made Trials HD or Rocket Riot somehow accidently imprinted their world view on their products. Even if the product is an inadvertent result of personal ideals, the strict confines of a game system oppose accidental messages in game design.
When the games that gain critical acclaim are generally none of the things that the critics seem to desire, it certainly shines a light on the critics themselves. You can’t celebrate Super Smash Brothers Brawl or Trials HD, while complaining that a games like GTA4 or Gears of War is thematically simple, and then in the same breath complain that games aren’t progressive or sophisticated enough. Doing so is pretty much the height of hypocrisy. If you send these kinds of mixed messages to the people who write games without realising that there’s a natural path of development that must be travelled to get the medium to where you’d love it to be. Games like GTA4 and Gears, even Bioshock, might not be "all you want them to be" but they are progressive thinking games that try to push both technology and storytelling forwards, even if their respective stories suck.
Likewise, it’s unfair to say that games aren’t sophisticated because they ape cinema, when actually, the most successful and celebrated "intelligent games" do so by emulating cinema and books. Nobody seems to have a clear vision of what they think "sophistication" in games should really be. Sophistication is often seen as production values by the mainstream gaming-media when really, the sophistication of the games rules and systems are a "purer" sign of an progressive game.
I love narrative in games, but you can’t criticise a game for aping the conventions of cinema to achieve a strong narrative without stopping to realise that they only reason they ape that ape these conventions is because they’re effective, you can’t have your narrative without it. This is especially noticeable when games attempt to forgo book / cinema narrative conventions in exchange for something more game oriented, when this happens you end up with Braid. I loved Braid and I thought that it was fairly unique from a story perspective but flawed in the telling. The way it told its story played right into game mechanics, and as a result, the story came across as fragmented and confusing to the majority of players because the game mechanics used to present the story don’t naturally lend themselves to story telling. When backed up by the authors refusal give anyone the answer, much of the message was lost. Regardless of authorial intention, if lots of your audience don’t understand the story or narrative you’re trying to convey, you’ve failed as a storyteller and end up being accused of pretention for doing something "different".
A more recent example of "emergent storytelling" would be the well reviewed "The Path". I enjoyed playing the path, but honestly, it utterly fails as a game. It’s a terrible game. Interesting and thought provoking as an experience, but an horrible game. The controls are awful (practically digital, PS1 era 3d game controls), the interface is counter intuitive and the tasks are deliberately obtuse. I still enjoyed it and rate it highly, but it failed at being a quality game while succeeding as being a quality experience.
I think that really sums up a lot of the progressive discussion on videogames - people want something more from their entertainment, but it isn’t games. Maybe the engineer in me is being pedantic about naming, but I’d much rather "interactive entertainment" for software like "The Path" than "videogame". Game is a loaded term, and along with it come certain expectations; a set of rules, some gameplay mechanics and a way to progress. I believe games can be more, I believe games can tell stories, make you feel and make you think, but I don’t think those are required aspects of a good game, games can be "good" outside of those constraints, as an exercise of entertainment through gameplay mechanics. You can’t criticise a game for being too much like a game, it’s like criticising a book for not being a film. I really believe that a game can involve art, but if the game "becomes" art? Well, then you’ve got art that’s art first, game second. That’s valid expression, but it’s intention is to be art.
On the same podcast there was more talk of the recent debate around Shadow Complex, and the reaction of people towards Orson Scott Cards involvement in regard to his personal politics. Just a quick note really; the mainstream doesn’t care about your protests. I really mean that. You’re telling me that you REALLY think people will boycott Activision because of their (sexist) Sin To Win advertising campaign? Really? It’s "just" marketing. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it was excluding, but what it does mean is that I see sex and inequality used to sell products every single day of the week. If you stopped buying everything that a person you disagreed with had worked on or had sex used in it’s sales material you would run out of things to buy and games to play pretty quickly. And that’d be just you, because of the people that know about some perceived protest-able injustice so insignificant, not only will half of them not care, but most of the people that do care will do whatever is most convenient to them when a product comes along that they’re interested in. This goes doubly for marketing, an industry that frequently abuses both it’s position and people to sell product.
While this may seem like a negative response to the confab podcast, it really isn’t. I enjoyed listening to it, as I have in the past, and have plenty of respect for all of the people involved, some really interesting thought provoking stuff on the direction of gaming comes out of it and I’m really looking forward to the following 3 episodes. The Brainy Gamer is still one of my favourite gaming resources on the web and certainly occupies the most prominent position in an interesting discussion.
There are plenty of quality, innovation filled games on the market, many of them produced recently. As for most of the critics? Part of the problem and not part of the solution. It’s all well and good to criticise game design inadequacies, but until you’ve really considered the design of compelling, fun, game systems as part of your argument, I’ll write off your "innovation is dead!" arguments as hot air.