|
|
The only thing more frustrating than a bourgeois superpower stifling a promising artistic medium is a bourgeois superpower stifling the promising artistic medium you intend to make a living out of.
Meet the videogame industry, a form of entertainment held back by those who support it. Of course, the general public couldn’t give a whitabout the games industry. For some, the videogame is an uninteresting novelty; nothing but beeps and whistles and flashing lights. For others, it’s a scapegoat—“My child is violent because the game he/she plays are violent. All videogames are violent. Let’s all ban videogames…” and other such ignorant bullshit that Jack Thompson seems to wield like a painter does his paints. For the rest, they hear about and perhaps briefly play the games that are popular at the time; Halo 2, maybe some Doom 3. Because, quite frankly, the public trivializes the industry. And it’s maddening. But can you blame them when it is the industry that puts these ideas in their heads? Perhapsif a big name publisher supported a fresh, innovative game, the industry might earn some respect! But innovative games are risky. Thegeneral public doesn’t want creativity; they want photo-realistic graphics and gameplay that centers around gratuitous violence. So howdo developers and publishers respond? They throw away the original ideas. They hide the games that can move the industry forward. And they take a mediocre first person shooter, slap a popular license on it, and rush it out the door and onto the store shelves.
And the public goes nuts for it.
Stick the name “Star Wars” in front of a title, and the people will lap it up. And as long as mediocre games sell, and are cheaper—or rather, less risky—to produce than a creative game, what do you think the industry will keep shilling out?
Games have an incredible amount of potential that has yet to be tapped. It’s not as though it is a medium incapable of effectively telling a story or evoking emotion, because it’s been done a number of times before. Take, for example, the 1998 PC adventure gameGrim Fandango. It doesn’t have the best graphics (certainly not by today’s standards), and there wasn’t an ounce of gratuitous violence in the whole thing—but man, did it have style. I have yet to see another game’s art direction get anywhere near matching the quality of this one. A combination of film noir and Mexican folklore, the game tells a story of betrayal and conspiracy that affects the player emotionally; they become connected to the characters throughout the game, feeling pathos, concern, and happiness along with them, and even anger toward the antagonists.
But for some mind boggling reason, people don’t want to think and be that emotionally involved in a game, so it doesn’t sell well.Right now, most games are targeted to the sort of people who want balls-to-the-wall action. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I enjoy shooting a zombie in the face as much as the next guy. But that’s all there is. Now that our industry has more than enough Die Hardsand Terminators, where are our Shawshank Redemptions? Or our Schindler’s Lists? Not that I’m suggesting that we create a game about the Holocaust (somehow I don’t think that would be very fun), but we need games that demand the same sort of respect as those classic movies.We need to create games that expand the main audience from casual gamers to, well, everyone. Everyone likes movies. And while I don’t think the best plan is to become just like the movie industry (it has it’s own problems), I do think the only way the game industry can establish itself as a respectable art form and not just a violent toy is for big name publishers to support the developers who want to try something different. Enough of selling the same tried-and-true formula. That’s no way for a young industry to grow up.
The only solution, of course, is revolution. A sort of gaming renaissance. It’s only a matter of time before people become bored with the current selection of games. Sure, they may be pretty and have a realistic physics system, but where’s the innovation? Isn’t there anything out there that is fun and exciting but also doesn’t center around the gameplay mechanic of killing things? Very soon, the industry will have reached the peak in realism and shiny graphics— and they won’t know where to go from there. People will begin to crave innovation. They’ll ask for games that break conventional gameplay and storytelling standards—games like Katamari Damacy or Shadow of the Colossus. The only choice is to burn the proverbial industry to the ground, and a erect a new one in its place— an industry no longer focused on raising the bar in terms of graphics and realism, but rather one that encourages risk taking and innovation!
Call me a romantic, but I strongly believe it’s possible, and it’s a revolution I would be proud to be a part of. | | |