On Game Developers and Legitimacy

Gamasutra is running a feature by game developer Brian Green on how he and his colleagues are still striving for legitimacy and respect as part of a medium that's still commonly thought of by many as "for kids" and "potentially harmful to kids." He notes that while financial legitimacy is no longer in question, artistic and cultural legitimacy are taking more time. Green makes some interesting parallels to the early movie and comic book industries, and points out that moral outrage against comic books did significant damage to the medium's growth in the US. "... in the United States there was a 'moral panic' about the corrupting influences of comic books on children, as there often is with many 'new' media. The government threatened to enact laws to censor comic books, for the good of the children. (Does that sound familiar to game developers?) The industry reacted by enacting their own regulations, the Comics Code Authority (CCA). The Comics Code Authority heavily restricted the content that comics could contain. For example, the words 'horror' and 'terror' were not allowed in the titles of comics. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden."

Comments

The CCA was Frequently Bypassed in Clever Ways

[CodeBuster]

Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden.

For example, from the wiki article on the Comics Code Authority:

Marvel skirted the zombie restriction in the mid-1970s by calling the apparently deceased, mind-controlled followers of various Haitian super-villains "zuvembies". This practice carried over to Marvel's super-hero line. In the Avengers comic, when the reanimated super-hero Wonder Man returned from the dead, he was also referred to as a "zuvembie".

Re:An insiders view

[CodeBuster]

Fallout 3 (which I haven't played, admittedly)

You really owe it to yourself to give Fallout 3 a try, especially if you are a fan of the series. I got hooked as a CS major in college and although I have little time now for serious games, I made time for Fallout 3 and let me say that I was not disappointed. It is obvious while playing the game that the team at Bethesda are real fans who played the original games, groked the Fallout universe, and really wanted to do justice to the first two games and the Fallout name after the series had been tarnished and sold down the river by Interplay with embarrasing console money makers and cheap third party "tactics" spin-offs. The result was really marvellous and the few minor flaws remaining can very easily be fixed in the patches to come. I was especially impressed that Bethsoft had the courage to preserve the over-the-top violence (ala Bloody Mess), drug use, and dark humor that had always been a staple of the series (even though they compromised a bit on Med-x == morphine, and some minor usage animations); no mean feat these days when games receive the sort of intense public scrutiny that comics once received. I am really looking forward to a revamped Fallout series with fan contributed side quest add-ons and more content in the future (there is talk about a sequel where the level cap is raised to 30 and the player takes a cross country trip to the ruins of Pittsburgh). Just talking about it makes we want to pick up my A3-21 plasma rifle and blast some super mutants into piles of goo.

Comic book mythology

[westlake]

It can be useful to think clearly about the comic book in the fifties:

Kids - like everyone else - were watching television. Men were reading paperback books.

Mickey Spillane. "My Gun Is Quick"

Comic book sales were in a steep downward spiral and crime and horror looked like a quick - cheap - way to recapture an older audience.

The immediate problem was that distribution was routed through the same news outlets as everything else.

In the drug store with Scrooge McDuck and the cigar store with the bondage themed True Detective magazine.

The hard core stuff sold under the table. It could be - and often was - a very sleazy business.

The larger problem was that the newspaper comic strip was still in its prime.

Caniff. Al Capp. Chester Gould. Walt Kelly. Charles Schulz ---.

Both veterans and newcomers producing really, really, good stuff in every genre

--- and when they fought their own battles against censorship, they came into the fight with much better ammunition.

Re:When did comic books become legitimate?

[lgw]

I thought V for Vendetta perfectly captured the descent into totalitarianism of a modern society. It didn't capture a particular decade, but I think it did a great job of being a 1984 for post-1984. It doesn't yet seem dated, though I'm sure it will in 100 years, as almost nothing is truly timeless. If anything, the ubiquitous surveilance in London makes it more relevent today.

As opposed to what other art?

[Moraelin]

1. As opposed to what other art medium?

A crucifix in a jar of piss is considered art. A TV displaying static in an empty room is considered art. Or I've personally seen such works of art in a private collection as 4 pieces of A4 paper, 2 crumpled and 2 folded, then straightened out and framed. That was art. I've seen a sculpture apparently representing "death" which was really a steel sheet monolyth. No, seriously, it was a big rectangular box of steel sheet. That was it.

Or probably the best example here was a modern painting I've seen, which looked _exactly_ like a tetris game when you just lost. No seriously, it was essentially a square grid with 1 to 4 adjacent squares filled with one of 5 or 6 colours or so. Except I recon one of the rows should have been eliminated before because it was full. I wonder if it was an error of the artist or that was some thought-provoking part about the unfairness of life.

If _that_ is art, why isn't Tetris art? It can produce the same kind of an image. Why is it art if it's displayed in some snob's collection on canvas, but not when it's on the screen?

2. The general idea (or excuse) of art these days is that it's supposed to be "thought provoking" instead of anything else. (In fact, last I've heard about it at an arts college calling someone else's work "pretty" instead of "thought provoking" is the most grievous insult you can throw and not be sued for it. But use it only if you want to make an enemy.)

So then why aren't, say, the story arcs of City Of Heroes art? I know several did get me thinking about morality, or about doing what you think is right and discovering that you've been manipulated, and a few other things.

And I'm not even saying that City Of Heroes is the only game like that. Most games can provoke _some_ thought. E.g., KOTOR 2 did a good job of being pretty morally complex, and had more than a couple of situations worth thinking about. E.g., The Witcher got pretty philosophical at times, and it made a good point that sometimes there are no right sides to pick. E.g., Black And White, much as I otherwise thoroughly despised that game, did get me thinking a bit about divinity and such. Etc.

Heck, I once even wrote an essay about Chucky Egg as a metaphor for the struggle of the common worker against the oppressive corporate chickens. Ok, it was a big joke, but it did provoke that kind of thought at least. So even a simplistic one-screen platformer can technically be thought-provoking.

And again, if a crucifix in a jar of piss or a crumpled sheet of paper can use the "thought provoking" excuse, then virtually any game can. If you're the kind that's inclined to think of the deeper meanings and possible metaphors of that jar, I see no reason why you couldn't do the same about a Mario kart game. (See the XKCD strip where she gets all philosophical about choosing to not cross the finishing line. Ok, just to make him lose, but still, that's some thought provoked.)

Re:An insiders view

[martyros]

But these two games also reveal part of the challenge, in that a game in the purest sense, as James Earnest (of Cheapass Games) used to attempt to impress upon me often, doesn't care about plot or story or pretty graphics. A game is about rules and play and fun, and that's it.

Actually, that's a very good point. There have been games around since before writing began. But no one has ever tried to say that Poker, or Hearts, or Chess, or Monopoly, or golf were "art". That's not what the inventors of those games was going for. The difference is that a lot of modern video games involve both the "game" aspect and the "story" aspect. And for the vast majority of games, the "story" aspect isn't particularly respectable art (nor does it particularly need to be).