Much has been made of the fact that games are not the same as movies. Despite any apparent similarities, they have different goals; they work different ways. They cannot be evaluated using the same criteria.
(Thus the indignation over Roger Ebert’s game-related comments. Electronic gaming’s would-be defenders somehow combine smug disdain with a curious undercurrent of desperation in their rejection of Ebert’s scorn. Yeah, sure, Ebert doesn’t “know” games. Nor need he: the guy’s job is to know movies, and he’s spectacular at it, a necessary consequence of which is that he’ll never see gaming except in terms of how it fails to live up to the standards of cinema. Stop wasting his time and ours with litanies of refutations and counter-examples.)
Regardless of the ubiquity of Let’s Play clips on YouTube or the occasional cutscene theater bonus disc, the experience of playing a game cannot even be approximated by watching a recording of gameplay footage. At best, watching such footage can call up the memories of play in that game’s former players. Or, for audiences familiar with other games of similar structure, such videos can help them imagine what playing that game is like.
Likewise, videogames are not books, or plays, or dance. The distinction’s more obvious in these latter cases, and therefore maybe less necessary. My point being here just that the experience of interacting cannot meaningfully be synopsized into another medium without fundamental alteration to the nature of the experience.
So: games ain’t movies, or music, or prose. Fair enough. Yet let me propose that, despite all the distinctions between these different media, useful parallels may be drawn between them. Parallels which can inform the acts of criticism and creation.
Braid may not be a poem, but I don’t think it’s invalid to compare it to poetry.
(Although actually, I think Super Mario Bros. has the superior claim, with its 4-stage levels forming 8 “stanzas” and its rhythmic patterns of obstacles and enemies, never really seen elsewhere in the series. If Braid suggests free verse, SMB suggests a sonnet cycle.)
For an even closer comparison, consider the tabletop roleplaying game. Tabletop RPGs have been around a little longer than the modern video game, but their success has been more limited. Their existence stands more immediately in Video Gaming’s shadow. Roleplaying enthusiasts have put forth dozens of theories about the ways players interact with each other and the framework of rules and behaviors the game embodies. Among these ideas is a concept (first articulated in these terms by Ron Edwards) that puts forth that most people roleplay to satisfy three connected (yet competing!) drives:
- Gamism is the desire for competition, for triumph over adversity, and for the successful realization of one’s goals within the framework of the rules;
- Narrativism concerns the process of using the framework of the game to tell your story and create dramatically interesting scenarios;
- Simulationism follows the desire for realism, verisimilitude, and a rejection of concessions to Game or Story that would breach those ideals.
What intrigues me about GNS perspectives (as they’re collectively known) is that, while many videogames attempt to satisfy all three goals, it’s easy to pick out games which emphasis just one or two. Pure gamism: Tetris. Pure narrativism: Storyteller. Pure simulationism: World of Sand. Gamism plus narrativism: Shadow of Destiny. Gamism plus simulationism: Off-Road Raptor Safari. Narrativism plus simulationism: …Façade, maybe?
That’s just the beginning. Next time, we’ll start cross-pollinating our adaptations to generate hardy hybrid theoretical models.
Skye Nathaniel
on Jun 5th, 2009
@ 1:44 pm:
It surprises me that Ebert brings up the subject of theater but doesn’t notice the obvious parallel between the actors’ performance and gaming. It may not be wise to allow for multiple endings in Romeo & Juliet, but certainly the nuances of performance artfully provide intricate differences from one rendition to the next.
Similarly, Barker’s malleable narrative ought not to be seen as essential. The fact of interactivity lends to linear stories such as Mother 3 or Shadow of the Colossus an immediacy and investment that would to some degree be absent in another medium. The latter example in particular harnesses its own linearity so as to cast the player in an inevitable tragedy.
Ebert says, “I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.” But a game is a balance of agency between its designer and player. The art (or the high art—or whatever) emerges in this space; it is not the static product you place on your shelf.
I had intended to address GNS theory and why I feel that it is insufficient to describe videogames, but I ran into some articulation troubles and decided to save it for another time. It is obviously a useful theory to bring over from the tabletop realm, but surely you must have some reservations?
Jason Love
on Jun 5th, 2009
@ 9:33 pm:
Yeah, I’m not really done talking about GNS and how it applies to video gaming. For all that I suggest that there are benefits to drawing these sort of parallels, I never actually got to elaborating those benefits, beyond sort of a cursory “huh, look at that. Parallels.” Expect more… later!
Chris B
on Jun 24th, 2009
@ 5:28 pm:
“Tabletop RPGs have been around a little longer than the modern video game”
Not the most reliable source I know, but wiki says that the predecessors of tabletop RPGs have been invented in the 60s, and the first commercial one has been released in ‘74, which makes videogames roughly as old or older (Space War in ‘61 and the release of the first home console in ‘72). Though I’m not sure what you mean with “modern” videogames.
About the drives:
“Gamism is the desire for [...] successful realization of one’s goals within the framework of the rules”
I think that in the end, this is the only drive (the one drive to rule them all.. yeah that was lame), as it seems to encompass all the others. If your goal is to beat your adversary, to tell a dramatic story, or to find a goal to begin with, you’re always driven by your desire to reach what you’re aiming for, and therefore always driven by “gamism”.
“Narrativism concerns the process of using the framework of the game to tell your story and create dramatically interesting scenarios;”
Your adversary here is (besides the game’s framework) your own imagination and “sensibilities for dramatic staging”. You’re telling your story by playing the game in such a way, as to create dramatically interesting scenarios. Like holding back against an inferior opponent in a fighting game, to fake the tension of a more evened out match.
I suppose we don’t see this as a specifically stated goal in videogames, because they’re not good at quantifying our performance as “scenario editors”. To appreciate a dramatic scene is harder than registering a headshot. This stuff just works better with an intelligent human being in the role of the game master.
“Simulationism follows the desire for realism, verisimilitude, and a rejection of concessions to Game or Story that would breach those ideals.”
If you’d want to use these terms for video games, I’d maybe suggest calling this “toyism” instead, because every videogame simulates something (Daggerfall a fantasy world, Tetris the falling of blocks) and the term might be misleading.
But anyway, I think “Simulationism” drives us to set up our own rules, when we see the game’s framework as inconsistent or incomplete, therefore using it in unintended ways and hereby creating our own games, just like a toy can be used to play a myriad of different things. Maybe speedruns in videogames could be seen as an example of this.