Redefining: “Videogame”
When someone says “Videogame” what comes to mind? Sega? It’s one of the world’s most popular videogame brands, and home to that blue hedgehog who’s finally making a comeback. Miyamoto? Arguably, Shigeru is the most influential developer in the world. Platforming? It's a widespread gaming genre that was created in the 80’s, and it's well known for kick starting arcade culture. Engrossing? Certainly, there are over 10 million people playing World of Warcraft. That’s more than the entire population of Switzerland. It’s just one word, one tiny word that has such influence on our modern way of thinking.
I’ve been asking the questions, “Why study videogames?” and “Why are videogames important?” To me, they’re an open field of exploration. My generation has had little part in what innovations have come out of literature. Literary theory is something untouchable by the lowly undergraduate university student, but videogames are a tangible medium overflowing with modern and new ideas. Videogames are a virtual chimera. They’re film, literature and art combined into one being that is surrounded with a vibrant community of people and cultures. The problem is that videogames have yet to be recognized as more than simple entertainment; they have yet to be accepted by people in general. And maybe that’s a good thing.
I’m one of those people who can relate videogames to basically anything. If I walk into a McDonalds, buy a Big Mac and the total comes to about five bucks that’s one blue rupee in my brain. It comes from a gamer mentality that developed during the golden age of the Genesis and Nintendo wars. Those were glorious times. They also helped define a generation, and I’m one of the Genesis casualties. It took ten long and arduous years to get over Sega’s failure. I’m still trying to work my way through the pain. I even went as far to get a Dreamcast to arouse some of that old nostalgia. But I was lucky enough to be one of the many who experienced the Nintendo 64 back in the heyday of its technological superiority. Mario and Zelda revolutionized videogames; Cloud Strife and Ryo Hazuki respectably; moreover, they helped create a paradigm shift in the perceived reality. The jump from 2D to 3D solidified videogames as something entirely new.
My mind literally exploded when I played Zelda 64. Every-conscious-second after was spent thinking about and pondering the game. Its graphics, its visual clarity, its epic nature and you have no idea how badly I wanted to be Link. The big change came in being able to witness character development and growth in three dimensions. A character like Link is able to undergo a process of transformation of both character and personality. He gets older, he gains responsibility and he becomes a developed hero, kind of allegorical, eh? Link changed the delivery of storytelling and character development within the videogame medium. Who we are depends on the cultural memes with which we associate.
I’m a writer, games journalist and student; brother, son and nerd, but without those labels, who am I? I’ve been studying up on modernist theory and there’s this idea of the modern man’s obscurity of the self. I’m not going to get into Marx, Freud or Nietzsche, but their ideas still hold a lot of weight. And recently, videogame protagonists have either been blank slates or fully developed in nature. It’s Commander Shepherd versus Nathan Drake. One we can identify with because we become a part of their personality and the other because he’s likeable. The protagonists of today are greatly affected by their causal natures. As players, we partially control their destinies and they become human analogues for our beliefs, ethics and morals. When given a blank slate, we’ll scribble. When given a fully developed character, we’ll analyze. This is the kind of insight videogames afford and causality is one advantage they have over other forms of media.
To have enough power to change the progression of a developing narrative is an interesting concept. We aren’t at the point where we can say, everyone stop what you’re doing this is how things are going to be, but we’re close. Heavy Rain sits right on the boundary of being an interactive cinematic experience and a genuine videogame narrative. We aren't at the point where we can stop the narrative, but we are given the abillity to branch out or constrict it by killing off main characters. This is what makes videogames so interesting within the scope of intellectual thought. They are a virtual evolution of the narrative. That’s a lofty claim, but there are a few games to back this up.
One of my favourite films is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). The Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) is a tormented soul and rightfully so. In what world can a writer exist where critics, journalists and editors keep begging for more and more only to gobble up his words? For him, writing is a pain filled and shameful occupation because they have made him in their image and have squashed his individuality. He asks, “What hell of a writer am I if I hate writing?” He is unsure of his identity, he finds himself fragmented along the lines of his purpose and occupation only to be schismatically depressed. The modernist hero, one who has become fragmented because of society, is present in almost all forms of contemporary literature. None of us are sure who we are in this world, and the videogame characters of today reflect this feeling. Videogames are a transformational medium, and this is what makes studying them so interesting.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl takes intertextuality and runs with it. Strelok is a Kurtz like caricature of a man who has conquered the Zone. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is an example of a videogame series that has exceeded its narratological boundaries. Strelok is an inherently fragmented character. He has amnesia and is surrounded by familiar faces. What is sad about his character is that our experiences with him determine what he thinks of the Zone. He’s a modernist hero. He’s someone the modern day person can relate to. We control the causality of his development. We are able to experiment with his development as a protagonist, he's like clay in our hands, and we have the power to shape his identity. Though this tabula rasa kind of development is only one kind of narrative available to the modern day player. There's a huge range of games out there, and indiegames are a great source of experimentation.
I replayed Dear Esther a few days ago. What I like about the game is that it contravenes the established genre. It’s built on the Half-Life 2 engine and is technically a first-person experience, but what you experience is entirely different. It goes from the realm of just being a videogame and becomes a kind cinematic narrative, a moving and complex story about a man, a book and an island. Dear Esther arouses a sense of experimentation within the medium. Photography wouldn’t be what it was today if portraits had remained its sole artistic purpose. The difference is that videogames are available to almost anyone who has a computer or a virtual platform. As well, the ability to program and create videogames is becoming more and more open to the general public. With more people working, it’s inevitable that the medium will become more and more experimental.
When trying to make this argument, it’s hard to avoid sounding like Dib from Invader Zim. The problem here is that so long as Dib keeps calling Zim an alien, his classmates will keep laughing at him. We can’t get over pre-established images of nutty UFO observers and people wearing tin-foil hats. The problem for me is that so long as people believe that videogames are mere form of entertainment, so will they remain just “Videogames.” The term is limiting but there’s no real alternative to it. I mentioned a few above, but in terms of establishing a meaningful definition in its place. Videogames are defined by their interactivity and the ability to affect the virtual game world. And the experience doesn’t necessarily have to be fun.
I recently played Edmund, an indiegame developed by Paul Greasley, and it was a tough experience. The problem wasn’t trying to classify whether or not it had the components necessary to be a videogame, the problem was dealing with the games thematic devices and seeing whether or not it could be called entertainment. Moral recompense, in other words feeling like crap, is all a part of literature and art, but never are we so able to feel it within this interactive medium. Your actions have direct and brutal consequence to the characters within the game. Edmund is a brutal experience and the landmines in one of the game’s sections are symbolic of how touchy its subject matter can be. The game also begs a huge question for me. If a game takes away the entertaining aspect of the medium, what should it be called?
The transformation from comic book to graphic novel won’t happen for videogames, at least not yet. We don’t have a Swamp Thing or Citizen Kane, though there are games (Shadow of the Colosus, Silent Hill, MGS4) out there which have the potential to transform the medium. There’s so much potential for videogames to evolve into something more, but this term is holding it back. And so long as “Videogame” is the only way of describing an interactive cinematic experience like Dear Esther or a brutal experience like Edmund, then they’ll remain a kind of ill-defined entertainment. I’m no alarmist; I think that given time videogames will be recognized as more than just fun distractions by most people. Most people already do, and they didn’t need an exhibition at the Guggenheim to change their mind; they just needed Link to defeat Ganon, save the princess and live happily ever after. Videogames just need a push in the right direction and a few people to guide it towards being something more than just entertainment.
