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Videogames Doomed for a 'Comics-like Ghetto'?
At the Newsweek blog LevelUp, journalist N'Gai Croal wrote this week about the sometimes-precarious position of videogames in popular culture. The frustrations of legislators, lawyers, and 'pro-family' groups aside, the popularity and record sales of the gaming industry would seem to indicate rising stock for gaming as an art form in the US. And yet, there are some folks who see gaming as just another fad, which in some time will be equal in popularity to comic books or tabletop roleplaying. N'Gai starts to form his response by noting that learning to play videogames is considerably easier than developing an appreciation for literature of any kind. He then goes on to note that the (oft-cited) lack of weighty subjects in gaming is more due to the 'pop culture' nature of the hobby than the medium itself. "Popular fiction generally outsells literary fiction. Summer blockbusters generally out-gross arthouse films. Is this any different from, say, Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat out-NPD-ing BioShock last year, or Madden doing the same to Shadow of the Colossus in 2005?" He discusses some ways to address that, but do you have any solutions? Or are games doomed to be the playthings of adolescent boys for the rest of the century? (And yeah, I resent the 'comics ghetto' label too.)
Every male in my high school played starcraft, no matter what social group they came from. The same could be said for halo. Gaming should be thought of as a medium or a category, like comics are a subcategory of literature, and RPGs are a subcategory of card/board games. I don't see the popularity of Halo or of Guitar Hero-type games fading.
I can't remember it myself, but in the good ol' days movies were a seen as disreputable form of entertainment only indulged in by youngsters with nothing better to do.
If video games see a similar development, maybe in 50 years or so they will be seen as wholesome entertainment for the whole family?
Puzzle games.
Nethack.
Raise the next generation of children (through strong parenting and education reform) to learn that high culture is something to aspire to.
More than just entertainment for the whole family, video games can become a great teaching tool. Imagine learning about history in an RPG, witnessing historical events first hand. I still remember Oregon Trail. I wonder why more educational games haven't been released? Textbooks are huge business, why not textbook games?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Full disclosure: I worked heavily on the production of Bioshock's voiceover, so I have a bit of an opinion on this topic.
:)
My own take is that gaming is a very broad medium - possibly even beyond film. We see in the film industry a single medium containing both Requiem For A Dream and Dumb and Dumberer. Miller's Crossing and Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit.
Games (not "entertainment software", games, damnit) cover a similar spectrum, even if the high-brow fare is a bit thin on the ground right now. Such was the case for film when that industry was gaming's current age.
At this point in time much of the gaming industry occupies the same functional niche as pornography - people go home after an exhausting day at work, have a beer, demolish noobs on Team Fortress 2 to relax, and then go to bed. But the existence of pornography in film does not prevent that medium from providing works of real intellectual and artistic substance. Neither does gaming as pornography - both literally and metaphorically - hinder the development of deeper experiences.
I think if anything gaming provides the potential for experiences of greater power than film because we can develop both narrative-driven and sandbox experiences for our audience. We've seen the promise of the latter in GTA*, Oblivion, and I believe we'll see more of it in Spore. We've witnessed an outstanding achievement in the former named Call of Duty 4 - and my hat is off to Infinity Ward for such an amazing work. Beyond the singleplayer, massively multiplayer games can also provide a great range of experiences - from Ultima Online's open-ended fantasy simulation to Planetside's extremely structured gameplay.
We will get gaming to the level where it can be taken seriously as a work of art. We are getting it to that level. Right this moment. Your patience, please.
*I am a Take 2 employee, blah blah blah the opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of my employer etc. etc. ad nauseum.
Not true.
The majority of games are of the puzzle/Tetris variety. Bejeweled was far more popular (in terms of users, and hours played) than the top-rated FPS, and I'd guess that MS Solitaire comes pretty close behind it.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Moreover games are an EMERGING popular art form, most emerging art forms are effectively shunned by the mainstream art world until they BECOME the mainstream. Video games as a medium are only a few decades old, and as a MASS market medium only a decade or so.
Look at the history of movies and movie making for example, how many directors, actors or script writers were recognized as artists in 1920 or 1930? Compare that with the explosion of the art form in the 50's and 60's. Note also the parallel between the censorship that occurred then with film that is now beginning with games.
People who DO look at the best of the gaming world as an art form and appreciate it as such are becoming more and more common, and as that progresses so will it's recognition by the mainstream art world. This is probably not something that will happen overnight, I expect it will take years or decades... but I wouldn't be at all surprised if 50 years from now there was not a gaming equivalent of the academy awards where some otherwise unknown will get the "Best Rendering in a Simulated World" and getting a script writing credit on the "Game of the Year" is as valued as much as one for a major film.
Patience Grasshopper, waiting is... you grok?XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Video games may be a hell of a lot easier to learn than literature appreciation, or even basic literacy, but I do have one question about that...
So?
My son is so incredibly happy that he's picking up reading skills that the Nintendo and my wife's computer are almost growing dusty from lack of use while he spends his time reading dinosaur books, and Calvin & Hobbes. True, hardly great literature, but the fact is just because something's easier to do doesn't mean it's going to win outright.
Then again, maybe the issue isn't the kids... let's face it, movies with substance, with a message, with depth and meaning don't tend to make a lot of money, and thus either don't get made, or only get shown on select screens for two weeks, and then fade into obscurity. Transformers made HOW much money?
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You think a game that came with Windows 3.1 and up is less popular than Bejeweled, a flash game?
I bet the 2 most popular games, in terms of man-hours spent playing it, are minesweeper and solitaire.
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American comics or Japanese?
There's a huge swath of Japanese "manga" at most any decent sized retail bookstore these days. Most of those readers
seem to be teens, early teens, and twenty-somethings.
If you're talking American comics, then most of the readers I see are late 20s and 30s.
Even I read manga anymore and I cut my teeth on Spiderman. The books hold up a lot better and, once you understand the
language and cultural weirdness that can come into play, the stories are just as good, if not better, than what Marvel
is putting out - only with about 300 times more variety in genre.
At the same time though lots of people under 30 love the latest summer blockbuster based on some superhero. So weekly/monthly comics may not be popular but comic book characters in latex suits sure. There is more merchandising than ever before and a lot of it sells pretty well - I saw a kid throwing a tantrum over some batman toy in a Walgreens. I've also seen a lot of people under 30 read graphic novels (Neil Gaiman's Sandman a couple of years ago, Sin City, after that, and funnily enough Watchmen these days which has been out for ages)- weekly or monthly comics not so much but the comics industry is by no means dead.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
They attempt to appeal to niche sectors of the population with puerile stuff.
No wonder nobody is taking it seriously as an art form.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Odd - since quite young children seem to enjoy being told stories (which sounds like "developing an appreciation for literature" to me).
So, perhaps the translation is "The videogame industry has yet to fully develop a parasitic industry of critics who 'appreciate' video games by writing pretentious deconstructions of them".
Currently, so-called "reviews" of video games are just descriptions of what the game entails, whether the gameplay is compelling and the quality of the technical execution. Anybody who has "developed an appreciation for literature" knows that proper reviews are smug little essays designed to impress upon the reader the reviewer's extreme wit and cleverness while scrupulously avoiding saying anything informative about the actual work under review, but citing myriad other obscure works in the clear expectation that any worthy reader will be familliar with them all.
Once the videogame industry has evolved such critics, all that remains is to ensure that all 5th graders are forced to write 1000 word reports on the influence of the depiction of dwarves in "Colossal Cave" on the works of Scott Adams then videogames will be accepted into the pantheon of true art.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Actually, the biggest reason I know for the aging-out of comic books is that they refuse to start and stop the stories in any rational place. Why should I spend the money to buy an Amazing Spider-Man #1 (I've enjoyed the films and '90s animated series.) or whatever and read the "complete" story that I need to pick up and understand the latest issue when Sluggy Freelance (a webcomic that causes comparable confusion if you drop in on the middle of a story) offers free access to the archives going back to the first strip? Or when mangas actually have stories that start and stop, allowing me to read one book (or one cycle of books) and be done with it?
That's why comic books are dying: nobody wants something with so much unknown backstory.
Most of my favorite movies, and most of the movies that I would consider "great works of art", are violent.
Are you going to claim that Michael Mann's 90's blockbuster "Heat" is not art? Or Quentin Tarantino's "Reservior Dogs"? What about that Mel Gibson revenge movie, "Payback"?
One of the most critically-acclaimed movies of 2007, "No Country For Old Men", just happens to be a violent crime thriller.
Violent games, like violent movies, are great. Being violent does not preclude them from being art. Nobody can tell me with a straight face that Mass Effect is not art. Maybe its not accessible to them, but its definitely art, because I said so. Ditto for Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty 4, God of War 2, etc.
- infinite spin (explained),
- spin triples (explained), and
- a randomizer that lets you play forever (explained part 1 and part 2).
It's a good thing that there are still fan games that let the player screw back.I think the problem with American comics is that they just don't know when to end them. Ok, so you've got a character that's really popular like a Batman. Well crap, it would be best if you just rotated writers every few years and let them tell stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. When they try to keep the same thing going on for 50 years, you end up with continuity problems that make the dogma of the early Christian church look coherent. With something like Archie Comics, people accept that they're in a perpetual time warp where everyone is a teenager in an idealized 1950's world even though modern appliances appear. But when you're talking about a long-running American comic, everything goes to stupid-ville.
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