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Attempting To Create A Gaming Canon
David Thomas writes "There's a newly posted list of games every developer should know over at Costik.com, and a similar recent attempt at The Ludologist - both articles concern the idea of a 'canon' of games. Like a literary canon, the idea is there is a list of classic games anyone serious about games should have played, in the same way any serious lit person will have read through the canon of literary works." Gentlemen, look over the lists, and please start your heckling now.
a) in most fields, this is not an option. Would you care to explore for yourself the world of literature? Not totally unguided you wouldn't - there are way too many books and way too many bad books out there to go through without a torch of some sort (teacher, friend with similar interests, website that recommended good books before, etc.).
b) this may not apply to you, but many people actually like being told what to do. They won't come right out and say it, of course, but it seems to stem from a psychological impasse, a bit of being gunshy if you will - people are unsure of the direction they are taking and want some kind of confirmation, a word from "on high" (which manifests itself as imperatives or advice from bosses, teachers, parents, etc) so they have an affirmation that what they are doing is Right and Good and Will Not Fail. Sartre touched on this with his famous quote "man is condemned to be free" - we all want the beauty and liberation of freedom, but we are scared as hell of being solely responsible for our own decisions.
I agree with you that having a literary canon along the lines of "if it's on this list, it's good; if it's not, it's worthless crap" is ridiculous - however, the reason that we are inclined towards establishing a list of works of literature that earned the good housekeeping seal of approval is to save us the time of wading through the bad ones. For what its worth, I find just establishing trusted sources and taking recommendations from them (letting yourself be the final judge, of course) works wonderfully.
Listen, the whole "literary canon" thing was created by a bunch of elitist, tweedy snobs in an attempt to legitimize their superiority. They claim that in order to be a "real" writer of literature, you have to have read a certain number of extremely boring books, and agreed with their snobby, boring interperetation of same. If you have ever suffered through a conversation with one of these people, you know that they basically sit around memorizing their professor's pet literary criticism instead of actually reading and enjoying the books themselves. And, most INTERESTING books are written by people who IGNORE the "canon". Outsiders, in other words, people who aren't involved with literary academia. I find the situation funny: the literary canon crowd write long, boring, self-congradulatory books that only other tweedy types read, while outsiders publish books that are interesting and relevant to the rest of us.
A real gamer doesn't sit around worrying about whether he's played the correct set of games to properly introduce himself to the genre. He's been in the genre since he was a kid. If he's into, say, first person shooters and strategy games, he probably has at least thirty of them in a CD holder somewhere. He understands first person shooters completely. He knows the genre like the back of his hand. He doesn't need some "canon" to help him. Fish already KNOW about water; they don't need swimming lessons.
Having said that, the people who might be interested in this ridiculous "canon" are people who want to be game developers but who DO NOT PLAY GAMES THEMSELVES. They're just like the posers and wannabes that flooded the dot-com boom back in the nineties, people who don't care about the art and who just want to cash in. "Hey, videogames are big now -- let's make some money, how hard could it be?" they say. They think, in some weird freshman lit major way, that "anyone can write about anything as long as they do a little research". So they try for something like this silly canon, thinking that all they have to do to create a great game is study all the games that have made lots of money, and make a new game JUST LIKE THOSE. And, their game tanks in the market because it's just another derivative piece of shit with no new ideas, and every real gamer sees it as such instantly.
I fucking HATE these people. They ruin everything they touch.
If you're not a gamer, don't bother trying to write a game for me. You'll fuck it up, it'll suck, and I'll hate you for it. Look at the wide range of games that suck, and I guarantee that behind every game that sucks is some noob who thought he could just waltz into a cushy game developer position after a weekend of playing DOOM.
I want to play games written by people who genuinely love games themselves, and who have been playing games since they were kids. I don't want to play games written by some corporate stiff who took a bunch of games listed in a "canon" home for the weekend and struggled through a level or two.
You're either a gamer or you're not. And that's all there is to it. It's not something you can fake.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!