Games Aren't Numbers

It’s the year 2010 and we’re all still frustrated about how little our culture accepts videogames as a respectable form of entertainment, and even less so a form of art. This frustration isn’t unwarranted at all, but the reality has to be accepted. I don’t put a lot of value in the public opinion anyway, since the public’s opinions are too frequently contrary to my own. But there are real consequences to being trapped in the cultural gutter. There’s little respect or recognition down here, escape doesn’t come easy.

However reacting directly to this fact, or perhaps just overreacting to it, isn’t likely to improve the situation. Doing so breeds insecurity which breeds false saviors. The notion that videogames will one day get their very own messianic “Citizen Kane” is a most prominent example. I’ve contested that idea a few times in the past, but I’d like to revisit it since there are so many problems I still want to address.

First of all, let’s look at what a “Citizen Kane” is thought to mean. The film Citizen Kane is widely considered to be the milestone where film culture became an art form respected and accepted by the public masses. It demonstrated exactly what film can do artistically and why it’s more than just a moving picture. Now, over seventy years later, film is an enormous part of seemingly everyone’s lives.

Except that this is a myth. Right now only “Hollywood” films are a significant part of our culture. Art house, documentaries, indie, non-American, etc. are all still on the fringe. There is only one particular type of film that has actually been rocketed to the point of a cultural institution. It’s a fallacy to assume that film is an entire medium, there are many mediums contained inside it.

Now let’s switch tracks an look at videogames. They’re even more divided that film is. The only reason why the public lumps every game under one term is ignorance. As more people realize what Halo and Civilization are they’ll also realize that these two games aren’t remotely similar at all. There won’t ever been enough room for every, or even most, types of games to break into the mainstream, but I’m completely sure that there will be a certain type of game that does.

Oh wait, that already happened to an extent with Wii Sports, except that it doesn’t count now that videogame culture has all but disowned the Nintendo and the Wii. And that only demonstrates my point.

With society as it is, we will never be satisfied with the amount of public acceptance games will get because it will never be acceptance of the games we like the most. “We” being people who spend lots of time playing lots of different games and have opinions about them. I can safely assume that I won’t ever be able to have casual conversations with my mom about King’s Bounty or Freespace. The most we can realistically hope for is the end of the perception that games are all about headshots and naked women. But then again, if you look at the top selling games each month that’s not untrue.

The only way for videogames, all videogames, to become a more mainstream force in our culture is if our culture itself changes. People need to grow up in an environment where serious games are played and talked about. A society where children are taught how to play and appreciate games in school. That’s why everyone has a respect for literature, even people who never read or have any interest in reading. Our society is currently full of people completely illiterate in the systems of games.

Videogames could make this happen, and maybe they will. I believe that on some level our society needs to evolve and play more games. Every time I read a story that uses chess as a metaphor I think that in some alternate universe a game like Civilization or StarCraft was used instead, perhaps more meaningfully. There’s something in human nature that is drawn to games, and in our millennia of existence we’ve only scratched the surface of their potential. The modern explosion of computer technology might be what was needed to finally unleash our potential to explore all the possibilities of games.

Are there problems with videogames in general that need to be addressed? Yes, certainly. The constant fetishization of gore and egocentrism of the players are definitely giving serious games an undeserved reputation by association. Physical hardware is and will probably continue to be an issue. The fact that so many games are expected to be forgotten after a couple of years makes them tend towards being forgettable. But plenty of perfectly good valid games exist. Society is what needs to catch up and accept them.

The fictional city of Rapture was created as a utopia which quickly fell to ruin due to its heavily flawed legal philosophy. The real city of Rapture, the sequence of binary code stored on disks, was also idealized. It was supposed to be a fantasy world unmatched in its realism and immersion. Just like the fiction behind Rapture, this other aspect of it begins with lots of promise. I don’t share Michael Abbot’s enthusiasm for BioShock, but I’m able to completely relate to his feelings about the opening sequences. I love the game’s exposition. Its art is beautiful, its cinematic sequences brilliant, its dialog stylized. Every detail is fine tuned to deliver a distilled and profound experience. The first hour alone is an incredible achievement on the part of Irrational Games.

A videogame’s world is massively critical. It’s one of the things games can do so much better than any other medium. In a game the world can be explored freely just as the real world is. It’s no surprise that most games take place in fantasy or heavily stylized worlds, the strongest point of a medium can and should be subject to the most creativity.

Some imaginary worlds are created simply for their flavor. I like laser blasters, lightspeed spacecraft, green skinned amphibious aliens, and robots just like I like certain shades of blue. I’m thus attracted to games which feature all of these things. There’s nothing beneath the surface, and there doesn’t need to be.

BioShock is certainly beautiful on its surface, but the surface is not why we still talk about it. It explores cerebral possibilities. Its bizarre and ridiculous world connects itself to reality. This is a noble cause, but I say that it is unfortunately the weakest part of Rapture. Just as its flawed governing philosophy destroyed the city, its flawed narrative destroys the experience.

For an imaginary world to be a good world, it must be believable. I refrain from using the word realistic because it would imply that the imaginary world is just like with the world I live in. The most fantastic worlds are the ones that are nothing like my own at all. They’re the ones which, at a glance, appear to be the least believable, the most absurd. That is where the accomplishment lies, in creating a world where everything is the most opposite of our own yet it reveals itself to to be perfectly logical.

One way to accomplish this is through a birds-eye view. Dune‘s narrator chronicles the lives of its universe’s aristocracy and royalty. He describes every aspect of the system they govern and are governed by, the inner workings of the governments and businesses, and the private lives of those who control them. The characters begin in prestigious positions, descend into the tribal underclass, and then work their way back to the top. All the while their experiences are documented, and the nature of their situation analyzed. There are few details of their society which are lacking by the end of the book.

Dune isn’t a very realistic book. It’s subject is an entire planet with virtually no water or natural life, yet gigantic worms stretching across the horizon roam its sands. There is a society of witches who specialize in mind control and eugenics. And in this sci-fi world where space ships as big as cities can transport anywhere instantly, all computer technology is strictly banned by imperial law. Yet, the world is completely believable. Assuming that gigantic sand worms and witches existed, each component of Dune’s world falls into place logically. There’s a reasoning for every detail. By the end of the book it’s clear that Herbert didn’t just make up a fantasy world and invent a reasoning for it, he invented the world and used realistic logic to tie the pieces together. It all makes sense.

There’s a much more personal approach as well. Blade Runner takes place in a fantastic stylized alternate future. There’s a lot that its audience can make sense of, but there’s a lot that they can’t. The opening shot portrays a cityscape with towers belching fire. Throughout almost the entire film the city is perpetually covered in a heavy downpour. Mechanical pyramids and flying cars exist. The presence of artificial humans is explained, but only the details relevant to the plot. The science behind them is left out of the picture. From a purely analytic standpoint, it’s difficult to imagine this particular world existing.

What makes Blade Runner powerful is that it’s not about the overarching systems. It’s about the plot, the characters, and the drama. The world isn’t realistic, but the emotions expressed by the characters are. The comparison between humanity and machinery is one that has crossed the minds of a modern audience. The viewers can connect with the characters and their struggles.

These are exactly what BioShock attempts but does not do adequately, or sometimes even half-decently. The problem is not that it’s an unrealistic game, the problem is there’s nothing realistic about the game. It’s entirely full of images and words which float around and never complete a logical circuit.

There are no characters in the game to connect to. All of the narrative dialog functions to give the player directions. The emotions are insincere and simply a thin motivation for the player to continue progressing forwards. Rapture’s citizens all look the same and sound the same, quite literally. The practical limitations in creating lots of dialog and models presents itself when an entire city’s population wears the same clothes and repeats the same lines constantly with the same voice. The tape recordings explaining the backstory are just that, simple explanations of the backstory. Any time they attempt reach into any personal level they either fail due to their unrealistic characters or their formulaic patterns.

The worst offense of all is the presentation of the little sisters. They’re the worst because they’re loudly supposed to be the primary things the player is to feel sympathy and a connection towards. However like everything else in the game, they’re an array of repeated models and voices and exist only as a mechanic to be manipulated. After being rescued, each little sister will say “thank you” with the same voice all the others did and immediately run away. The people I really felt sympathy for were the hundred or so who were killed by the protagonist, some of them had personalities.

Rapture’s larger system is just as unbelievable. Plasmids simply cannot be taken seriously, they’re drugs bought from vending machines, the moment they touch your bloodstream lighting or ice or bees grow out of your left arm. This is a videogame, so certain degree of silliness has to be accepted sooner or later. But the fact that the player is meant to treat this with a completely straight face is ridiculous. The whole ecosystem surrounding the plasmids is ridiculous. Their fuel is harvested from dead bodies, which the society just freely leaves lying around on the streets. Then little girls come and use a syringe as big as themselves to suck it all out of those bodies. These little girls are brainwashed to do this because just giving them instructions doesn’t work for some reason.

In one of the tape recordings a character explains that she doesn’t understand why only girls are the ones who have this position. The reason, we all know, is because the player is supposed to feel motivated to rescue them just because they’re girls. The fact that the game’s narrative is constructed around game mechanics does earn it points, but it’s embarrassing when it becomes self-conscious and brings more attention to it by trying to cover it up. The big daddies are arguably worse. They’re humans who are under mind control and with diving suits surgically attached to their bodies. One tape recording complains that Ryan believes they’re too expensive to create. Ryan may be on to something, a bodyguard in a suit of armor and a list of instructions would have been considerably cheaper and more practical.

I write this because BioShock is frequently cited as a landmark achievement. While the exposition may be brilliant for what it is, the rest of the game is a disappointment. I want games to have great worlds because that’s one of my favorite things about games. Perhaps I could have chosen better examples than a novel and a film for comparing with a game, but they’re strong examples and I believe their strengths can carry across media boundaries. I hope more developers put serious thought into the worlds they create, and ask themselves questions like why they’re creating a world. There aren’t a whole lot of imaginary worlds, in games or other mediums, that are truly convincing to me, but I’m optimistic and believe that there’s no reason why games can’t feature the best worlds of all.

Modern Warfare 2's "prestige edition" includes real night vision goggles, a collector's stand, a steel book with a metallic finish, an art book, and last but not least the game and manual. I Am 8-Bit is a collection of art based on interpretations of retro games. Its annual exhibits are created by over a hundred artists and attended by thousands of people. I believe there is a relationship between the popularity of these two seemingly independent phenomena. They both satisfy something that videogames have been hungry for ever since their conception. A whole they continuously have tried to fill but never with lasting success. Videogames are like Pinocchio, by their nature they're virtual but deep down inside they long for a a connection to the real world. Films have their posters, music has its album covers, videogames never established a lasting physical medium.

When I assembled my list of favorite box covers of the decade I experienced a problem: there aren't a whole lot of good ones. In fact there are barely even any decent ones. I had to adjust my standards slightly just to make that list less embarrassingly short. I've always seen myself as a collector of videogames, but this is probably why I've never been a collector of game cases. Cases have always been a limitation for games, it constrains them into physical space, when their real home is cyber space. People still collect vinyl albums in addition to using iPods, and books are a hundred percent tangible so the transition to digital downloads for them has been a slow one. In comparison, digitally downloaded games are completely superior compared to physical media from my perspective. There are just so few cases or disks that I can actually appreciate, that I can look at it sitting on my shelf and get a good feeling. That's all fine, I don't need game cases and I don't think games do either. Yet the whole they try to fill stays empty.

I do have an A Life Well Wasted poster framed and hanging on my wall. Not because it's a particularly amazing piece of art (although I am fond of it) but because of what it represents. I can't hang an actual game on my wall, but my collection of decorative art feels so incomplete without a representative from this hobby of mine.

I hope publishers continue to peruse options for including extra collectables with special editions of their games. Sure, right now they may primarily be just extra overpriced flair to draw in extra profits for publishers. I don't particularly see myself ever spending an extra hundred bucks on a pair of Modern Warfare 2 night vision goggles that I know I'll never use, or hang a cheap tacky poster of a mostly nude and partially deformed CGI girl on my wall. But maybe if these were taken seriously they could help videogames find their identity in this culture. They could help "legitimize" gaming for all the people worried about how the public views their hobby. Think about what would happen if serious artists produced serious art not as fans but as official employees of the publishers. Instead of riding in the wake of the industry, these creative minds could be at its core. In the meantime I'll keep supporting game inspired art to the extent I can.

Myst was re-released on GOG.com the other day. This is hardly a major event since it's one of the best selling games of all time and has been released on virtually every system capable of containing its size. Statistically speaking, if you're reading this post then it's safe to assume you have played this game by now and have made up your mind on whether it's either one of the greatest adventure games or if it's scum that killed adventure games. This single and simple game left such a huge impact on videogame culture that it almost seems pointless to post anything new about it. But this GOG.com re-release is special to me. GOG.com has been devoted to keeping the original games intact (or in this case, the “remastered” version which is essentially equivalent). This means I can load the exact same files that I did all those years ago when I first inserted the Myst CD.

There's a reason why nostalgia is such a strong force among people who grew up with games. When people grow up with games there's a certain relationship that is formed between the person and the game. Games are like places and people, returning to an old game you played years ago is like visiting the town where you grew up or reuniting with and old friend.

I was one of the thousands of people who spent a significant amount of my childhood immersed in Myst. It was a sensory and cerebral experience. Every frame was a hand crafted digital painting. Ambient sound effects flowed through the environments. I accepted the game's invitation to travel through its worlds at my own pace. I read the journals, clicked on buttons, admired the static pre-rendered water ripples, and let my imagination bounce off of these. There was no motivation other than my inner curiosity to discover everything that I could. Simply existing inside its world was all the reward I needed to keep playing, and that is exactly what I did during most my time playing it.

When I first entered Myst I was not new to videogames, but as a child I was still new to life. The world became a secret space I could visit in solitude, everything was at peace. But this peace, I realized, was not a natural peace. It was a Mysterious, dead peace. This wasn't a virginal island paradise, there were once people living here. But now everyone was gone and all they left was a library of broken artifacts recording their footprint on history. My feelings toward the island grew increasingly uncomfortable as I gradually understood that I was not alone. Ghosts of its past inhabitants haunted the remains. Not just the disembodied holographic heads, but a dormant energy which waited for a trespasser to disturb its grave. I became that trespasser, and spirits were soon unleashed. I can still remember the moment when I first carelessly turned that red valve in the cabin and released a deafening mechanical clatter from outside.

The this unease rippled into an overwhelming anxiety. The understanding crept upon me, there was a malicious spirit haunting these islands. I power greater than my current comprehension. Evil symbols littered the rooms, and deadly toys were strewn carelessly. At first a ghastly holographic mouth speaking a frightening gibberish, then a dagger stashed in a drawer, then severed head, then a skeleton, subtlety was a feature which these islands were quickly being drained of.

Myst turned from an escapist fling with alternate reality into a nightmarish dream. A lucid dream, but every last amount of effort must be spent to fight the creeping terror. Every time I was able to glimpse part of a solution to the puzzle it was overwhelmed by the haunting Mystery, all of the remaining pieces. I was just like Sirrus and Achenar, trapped and struggling to peer through cloudy static.

Today I've grown older. My world has changed but Myst's remains the same. The water's frozen ripples no longer wow me, Atrus' journals aren't the great literature that they were before, and the Mystery of course has long since faded away. None of these matter for me though, the game is still a home to me. Despite the critically superior sequel Riven and the next three attractive but sadly stale additions to the series, I can never feel the same about them as I do when I load the original. In many ways Myst has become a standard for me, I will often subconsciously measure games in terms of their similarities and differences to it. The game's influence on my present life has shrunken compared to its past, but it remains in focus nonetheless. This effect isn't mere nostalgia, this a reconnection with a game from my past. I can continuously return to the island and experience a new chapter of my virtual life's story. Each time I bring with me new creative experiences and reasons for the return. And now I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written.

Descent II contains twenty four main levels, six secret levels, countless secrets inside its levels, ten different types of primary weapons, and dozens of enemy robots waiting for a challenge. There is a certain fascination we have in seeing all of a game's information laid out for us. To see games gutted, their insides pulled out and strewn all over our computer screens. To look at all of the charts and the screenshots and the levels in level editors.

There is a lot of talk about what goes into a game. We worry about all of the features that a game has, what its graphics look like, how many levels it has, and so on. When games are played they are expected to function just as they were programmed. Every detail should be authored, every cliché should be adhered to. It is expected that sometimes the unexpected events will happen. Games are judged based on everything that can possibly happen inside them.

When I played Descent II in the mid 90s I never reached even level twenty, and probably only found about three secret levels. Who knows how many hidden rooms I found or didn't find, or what other details I may have overlooked. It doesn't make a difference to me how many levels there were on the disk, I never saw the last few anyway. But isn't this a very negative way of describing it? My experience is defined by what I did accomplish, not what was possible to accomplish. What happened to me in those virtual mines was my unique experience. It's nice to know what else there was to explore, maybe some day I'll return to it and properly finish the game, but that will be a different story.

Games are like places. I always want to learn about new interesting places to visit, I want to know what's available. When visiting a place I try to get as much out of the experience as I can. Each visit is precious. Only so much can be done, only so many sights can be seen, only so many people can be met before the time to leave comes. After I leave I may reflect on what I did, consider the chances I missed and would like to return to, decide where I would like to go next. In the end what was most important never is what I could have done, or what other people did, but my personal story.

Games are like people. I'm rarely as concerned with what makes a person as I am concerned in what that person makes. Games don't exist in a museum for us to examine and move on, they are only worth anything as long as they are actively being played. It's the union between a player and a game that creates their worth to us. The player's act of exploring what can be done with the game mechanics and discovering details in the game's environment is what gives them meaning.

The greatest game can be ruined by the worst player. Players have just as much of a duty to play a game well as games have a duty to provide opportunities. When I say “play well” I don't mean to earn the top score or to unlock every secret, I mean to explore the game's possibilities in creative ways. Challenge the game as much as it challenges. Don't passively ride through the game, take control over it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson criticized passive reading in The American Scholar:

One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion.

If reading a book is full of labor and invention, then is it necessary to explain why playing a game would add an entirely new dimension to that? A book is completely authored, any invention happens in the mind of the reader. In a game the invention is not only inside the mind, but is also literal. A new story unfolds every time the game loads. It's impossible to play a good game passively.

Yet some games try to be as passive as possible. I've hated playing Gears of War and similar titles due to the way they are designed against creativity. They're cinematic to the point of being comparable to a giant quick time event, without the artistic touch that makes cinema compelling. There's barely any room available for literal creativity, much less mental creativity. Playing such games are like entering the portal in Being John Malkovich for the first time. Craig Schwartz could see, hear, feel, and sense everything Malkovich could, but he wasn't really in control over the body, he was only along for the ride.

Gaijin Games' Bit. Trip series has with every release captured a different degree of agency a player can have in a game. In Bit. Trip Beat the player could only move along a fixed line and had to hit pixels at just the right moment to create the perfect melody. Bit. Trip Core had four possible directions to move, which allowed a degree of flexibility as to when a few pixels can be hit, but it still mostly required predetermined choreographed timing. The latest in the series, Bit. Trip Void, gives the the player full control over where to move. Pixels can be hit at any time, and their corresponding musical notes as well. The game uses a large element of quantization at work to keep an appealing melody, but the responsibility to elevate the tune from “appealing” to “awesome” is handed over to the player. At a glance the music in Void may seem pale in comparison to it's predecessors, but a player with fast reflexes and musical creativity can produce something far better. And more importantly, invent his own superior experience.

Geoff Gibson observes that there appears to be a ceiling for the price of indie games.

...if Machinarium sold for just $10 more, a price I would still pay for the game, many gamers would instantly be turned off of the title. Not because they don’t feel the title is worth their money, or even because they don’t think it’s worth $30, but, rather, because they are accustomed to getting indie games at super cheap prices, despite how much money, effort, love, and creativity was put into the title.

As a consumer, I have an almost innate inability to sympathize with this. I rarely buy a product and ponder afterwards about about how great it would have been to spend more on it, that would be crazy. Nonetheless, Gibson isn't without a good point:

I just wish there wasn’t this stigma that if it’s an indie game it can’t cost more than such and such; especially when I’ve seen much crappier games come from big publishers and selling for twice as much.

He's right, indie games are unfairly stigmatized. If I stop for a moment and look outside of my own world as a consumer, I can see that prices aren't just about how much money I can save. They're about competition, and right now indie games are simply not allowed to compete with an AAA retail game.

As Gibson (and I) mention, a $20 indie game and a $60 retail game can easily have the same amount of game time available. The oldest argument defending the high price of games is that they offer a high amount of time compared to other kinds of entertainment, but for every new cheap indie game that gets released that argument becomes more and more irrelevant. So what exactly do you pay for when you buy a game for $60? Apparently not a lot of people really know for certain, but here's my personal opinion as a consumer:

• Ten to twenty hours of time spent in front of a screen
• A disk
• A box to put on you shelf
• An instruction booklet you will never read
• All of the trailers you watched
• All of the trailers you didn't watch
• A dozen press events
• A thousand blog posts on topics such as a debate over which platform's version of the game is best
• A million discussions between friends and strangers about whether or not this game is better than last year's $60 purchase

The reason why lots of people see $60 as a fair price is that they buy far more than just ten hours of play time, their purchases are either directly or indirectly supporting the culture of hype revolving around the games. It's fun to be excited, to watch trailers, and to get pumped about release dates. Sites like Kotaku are popular for a reason, people like to get wrapped up in the culture games create. Is this a good thing? The six million people who bought Grand Theft Auto IV during the first week of its release seem to think so.

Well I say all of that is for suckers.

In the past year I haven't purchased a single game for $60. Every one has been either on sale, second hand, retro, or indie. The most expensive purchase I made was for a new $50 Wii game. Indie and retro games don't have the culture of hype big budget games do, and the little they do have comes free of charge.

Gibson suggests that indie games deserve to be sold for high prices like any other game. My counterargument is that those high prices aren't deserved by any games. We consider a high price tag on an indie game as overpriced because it is overpriced. It's overpriced on a big budget game as well, but the publishers' marketing departments have ways of making us forget about that. Low indie prices shouldn't be judged against the $60 standard, indie prices should be the standard, and you don't have to take my word for that.

While indie games are being discriminated to an extent, envying the success of the latest hot release in GameStop isn't going to help anyone, it just validates that overpriced culture of suckers. I like the indie and retro game culture the way it is, prices and all, and I hope it continues to flourish and expand. The way indie developers refuse to play by the rules of the big companies is what we love about them. Indie games are the new punk, so just throw your middle finger at those evil corporations.

Nature's most beautiful creatures are the most dangerous, and sometimes the cutest and most passive games are the most incredible. As Animal Crossing slid into my disk tray it masqueraded as typical casual game while completely hiding the power held within that polycarbonate. I loaded the game, created my character, and was welcomed to my brand new town. It seemed as simple as its box suggested, but I only had to play for a few minutes when I realized that I was dealing with a game unlike I had ever experienced before.

Although I wasn't conscious of it at first, I have been conditioned by years of videogame canon to believe that content equals physical space and location has a direct relation to time. These apparent laws of games are rarely violated even in non-linear designs. But somehow Animal Crossing casually casts these conventions away. My first instinct was to explore the entire town and see everything it had to offer, subconsciously believing that when I have been to every location I will have reached the “end,” and the game will be “beaten.” In only ten minutes later my quest was complete. “That was it?” I silently and unconsciously asked. It took a moment for the knowledge to sink in. I felt like I should be watching the credits roll. Isn't that how games are supposed to be? You move your avatar through the world until you get to the end, and then the game is over. But that isn't what happened at all. Nothing happened, Animal Crossing just doesn't follow that rule. The world is small and every part is as equally unimportant as every other. You never need to go anywhere, or you can go everywhere. It doesn't matter, and it's effortless to do either.

Time in Animal Crossing is independent of any mechanic within its system. Most games are like the third level of Braid where time is relative to your position in the game. Go back a checkpoint and the past is there waiting for you. Time is manipulated by triggering specific actions. Go through the door, talk to the NPC, and the plot advances. But Animal Crossing has nothing like that tradition of malleable videogame time. Time cannot be controlled by any in-game mechanism, it moves freely by itself.

What exactly is Animal Crossing anyway? It's not a simulation. At least nothing appears to be simulated. The game presents itself as a virtual reality, but it simulates real life about as well as Halo simulates a real war. Sure there are plenty of people, object, and activities in the game which are clearly based on certain aspects of reality, but these are not actually anything like reality at all.

It's not an RPG either. RPGs have stories, Animal Crossing does not. It's not the MMO breed of RPG either, since it's primarily played offline and alone. In RPGs you take on the role of a character. Actually, in virtually every game that has characters makes you take on the role of one. In Animal Crossing you don't pretend to be anybody, you simply are yourself.

It's not a sandbox game either. Although the player is given control of a few certain aspects like a few textures, interior decorations, and snippets of dialog, the player's amount of control is ultimately controlled by the game. These are features rather than the game itself. In fact the vast majority of the game acts independently of the player.

All of those genres, the simulation, RPG, and sandbox, are part of Animal Crossing yet it is bound to none of them. I'm not a believer of strict categorization, but I can't help but be intrigued by games that break conventions like this. The most enigmatic aspect of it is how this game can't be categorized or described easily, yet it seems so familiar and digestible to players.

After my first entry into the world of Animal Crossing I left confused, like I was a character in a science fiction story and had just experienced something that by every law of physics denies as possible. It abode by no rule I could think of. And yet, somehow it existed. And it not only existed, it actually sustained itself, and worked as a videogame. And it's popular too! I had no idea how to easily describe what I had just seen, and I still don't.

A little while ago I took a gamble and pledged to support an as of now untitled potential videogame by indie developer Borut Pfeifer. It will be set in Iran during the recent post-election riots, and will be somewhat a experiment in using games to tell stories about serious reality. I call my pledge a gamble because I'm staying skeptical about how good the game will be. This is important because if a game is going to be about a serious topic, then it runs a high risk of becoming too much of a game and trivializes its subject. I remember how Six Days in Fallujah was supposed to be a realistic portrayal of modern war, but before the project was canceled they showed the press videos of players running amuck and blowing up buildings. It seemed to be nothing more than another action game, and by pretending to be serious insulted the subject matter.

Despite my skepticism however, I'm confident that this new game (if it should receive enough funding and be completed) will do its subject justice. I'm convinced that this project will succeed where it matters. You can read about the project so far and what Borut has planned, after looking it over I was convinced that he knows enough about what he's doing to be trusted with this.

Borut seems to understand that his role as an artist isn't going to be to tell the player something, but to present an environment. The environment in a game is a stage for dynamic events that can be meaningful in many different ways. Borut says that he'll incorporate puzzles also, so my biggest remaining question is what kind of puzzles will they be. However after quickly reading through his blog I have faith that he'll design ones appropriate to the context. I'd hate to be supporting a project that ends up trivializing a serious event, but even if this one falls short of a masterpiece I'm sold that it will be at least a great experiment made by competent people. Who knows, it may blaze a path for other inspired developers.

I recently posted a review of Cursed Mountain so I'll spare this blog all of those details about my opinion on it. Basically though, Cursed Mountain is a game that tried so hard to make me like it but constantly stuttered and tripped over itself in the process. To me it represents what could have been a great game, but for whatever reasons failed. Its story had some great exposition, but sadly none of its more interesting themes ever developed. A competent combat system was designed but was never integrated into the gameplay in a meaningful way. The game lives now in my mind as something that was both fantastically good and deplorably bad. Even though the game is about Buddhism it is more like the yin and yang, equally good and bad, every good part has a flaw, and every bad part has a good touch to it.

Ironically, if I had to sum up most of my dislikes about Cursed Mountain in a word I would say “videogamey.” Cursed Mountain is something that dares to be different from what we as gamers expect. As much as I like conventions and tropes, I also like games that do put and honest effort into breaking free of them. Cursed Mountain's originality is great while it lasts, and when the creativity runs out the game falls back onto clichés.

An ancient fish once grew legs instead of fins and crawled onto land, but didn't have the instincts to survive so it waded back into the ocean where it found that it couldn't swim with the rest of the fish either. Cursed Mountain is forging a new genre of interactive entertainment, but it flails around going nowhere and eventually retreats back to simpler mechanics. Maybe one day it will be seen as a species of game that evolved ever so slightly in the wrong direction and quickly went extinct.

I'm fascinated by the tragedy that is Cursed Mountain. Like a true tragic hero it had everything going for it until it fell to its doom. Now that its act is over, my hope is that Deep Silver recognizes the mistakes it made and learns from them in any future games. Or, looking beyond Deep Silver, I hope that all designers interested in this type of game will play it and use it as an example.

In 1975 Alejandro Jodorowsky was the first to attempt to film Dune. He employed only the greatest talents available for the project. He envisioned an epic ten hour cinematic masterpiece, incomparable to any science fiction movie so far. Ultimately however his project was doomed to collapse. Thus the venture failed in the sense that he never created a finished product, but Jodorowsky doesn't necessarily see it as a failure. The journey is the destination, as the saying goes, and he describes how his unseen Dune was more of a success than we may percieve:

Later, the visual aspect of Star Wars resembled our style. To make Alien, they invited Moebius, Foss, Giger, O'Bannon, etc. The project announced to American the possibility of carrying out science fiction films to large spectacle and out of the scientific rigour of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Dune project changed our life. When it was over, O'Bannon entered a psychiatric hospital. Afterwards, he returned to the fight with rage and wrote twelve scripts which were refused. The thirteenth one was Alien.

Like him, all those who took part in the rise and fall of the Dune project learned how to fall one and one thousand times with savage obstinacy until learning how to stand. I remember my old father who, while dying happy, said to me: "My son, in my life, I triumphed because I learned how to fail".

The developers at Deep Silver worked hard on Cursed Mountain, and their talent is immensely visible. Unfortunately Cursed Mountain's has to many weaknesses to hold up the weight of its strengths. It's obviously more of a success than Jodorowsky's Dune was, after all it was completed. But for every moment the game's design succeeds it fails at another moment. Hope however lies in the possibility that those failures may someday lead to a success. What happens at Deep Silver, and the industry as an entirety, may depend on what we learn from them. Is Cursed Mountain a stepping stone to eventual masterpieces? As the yin and yang symbolizes, good can always come from the bad.

The very first sentence:

Video games won’t be as widely accepted as film unless...

Isn't it about time we all grew out of film envy?