2079: WTF is Wrong with Video Games? Absolutely Nothing

Yesterday, social media was abuzz with something stupid that gaming site Polygon published. This is, of course, nothing unusual, since Polygon appears to have shifted its identity from “reinventing games journalism” to “posting the most idiotic things possible in the name of those sweet clicks from people who think we’re dumb, but really they are the dumb ones for clicking on it, oh wait, don’t use archive.is please, stop it, my aaaaad revenuuuuuue”.

Said article was called WTF is Wrong with Video Games? and was, in fact, an excerpt from an e-book of the same name by self-professed “Mean Guy” Phil Owen. As the title suggests, it’s yet another in a long series of navel-gazing articles that suggest video games need to “grow up” if they really want to be respected as art. And the main thrust of Owen’s argument throughout the piece is that “gameplay” gets in the way of “art”.

Dara O’Briain did a good comedy routine about Call of Duty a few years ago in which he commented on the seeming absurdity of a game restricting access to the rest of the story based on your skill — and yet it’s something that, over the years, we’ve become accustomed to. The concept of “story as reward” is a powerful motivation for many game enthusiasts — I’m one of them — and being able to advance an enjoyable story as a result of proving your own skills is often inherently more satisfying than just having a story served up to you passively.

But Owen’s argument is also a gross oversimplification of the situation. Let’s ponder a few things.

The interminable game/not game argument

As a medium, video games have expanded and flourished enormously over their lifetime — far more quickly than any other medium in history. Early games were technically limited and as such tended to focus on the mechanical aspects while making narrative little more than an afterthought. In other words, the technology simply wasn’t there for games to be able to tell a compelling story convincingly, so as such the mechanical aspects were emphasised, because even with primitive technology, it was possible to make something that was fun to play.

Today, of course, there are very few technological barriers to realising a creative vision. Modern 3D technology is more than capable of rendering photo-realistic scenes at convincing framerates; virtual reality allows us to immerse ourselves fully in virtual worlds; and many games have production values that rival the most expensive movies. But at the same time, alongside this improved technology has come the understanding that “video game” these days means far more than its literal definition. “Game” no longer means just something in which you prove your skill or master mechanics; it can refer to all manner of interactive entertainment, whether or not there’s a way for you to “lose” or “win”.

This aspect of things is what gets a lot of self-professed hardcore gamers’ backs up. “Gone Home isn’t a game!” they’ll cry, since Gone Home is the habitual poster boy for being “not a game”. “Visual novels aren’t games! Walking simulators aren’t games!”

Well… yes they are, assuming we’re using the term “game” as is most commonly used these days to refer to any form of interactive entertainment, however limited the interaction might be. They may not be the sort of games you want to play, but that doesn’t make them not games by the popular definition. All they show, really, is that the term “game” has really become woefully inadequate to describe the diversity of experiences we have these days. And none of them are “invalid” or “need to grow up”; some of them simply might not appeal to particular groups. And that is absolutely fine.

Games as art

I’ve been a believer in games as art since I played Final Fantasy VII for the first time, and its story blew me away with its emotional intensity and drama. It may be clichéd and laughable these days, but back on its original release, it was incredible. And I’ve held strongly to the fact that games are art ever since, with my understanding of what this really means changing and growing over time.

The mistake a lot of people make — Owen included — is assuming that “art” is synonymous with “narrative”, and this absolutely isn’t the case at all. Sure, some of the most explicitly “artistic” games out there place a strong focus on their narrative, but there’s plenty of artistry in purely mechanical games, too.

There are few places where this is more apparent than in the more technical side of arcade-style games: specifically, fighting games, shoot ’em ups and rhythm games. Fighting games — good ones, anyway — are precisely and immaculately tuned to be balanced in such a way that skilled players can make the on-screen characters do exactly what they want as the result of split-second decisions. Watching skilled fighting game players going at it is a thing of beauty, and something that relatively few of us can hope to master to quite such a degree.

Shoot ’em ups, meanwhile — again, good ones, anyway — are crafted in such a way as to be intricately choreographed, enemy waves hurtling onto the screen in such a way as to be both positioned in a way for the player to be able to defeat them and to be aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Bullet hell games become a ballet of the player sprite weaving through screen-filling, moving patterns that, although initially appearing chaotic, are in fact orderly, predictable and navigable.

As for rhythm games, well, anyone who has played Project Diva f on Hard difficulty or higher will know well the fact that playing that game is more playing a percussion part for an actual piece of music from memory than paying any attention to what is actually happening on screen at any given moment. Just as shoot ’em ups are choreographed, so too are rhythm games, with player inputs complementing the existing music in such a way as to immerse the player in the creative work in a way that simply isn’t possible if you’re listening in a more passive way.

Games are art, and art doesn’t mean narrative. Deal with it.

WTF is wrong with video games?

Really? Nothing. Nothing at all. There may be some individual games that you, personally, don’t care for or enjoy playing, but that doesn’t mean the amorphous concept of “video games” has anything wrong with it. It simply means that you’re not playing the right games for you.

This, I think, is a key problem with Owen’s argument that the “game” gets in the way of the “art” (meaning “narrative”, in his case). Some people like that. Some people like being rewarded with story, or in-game trinkets, or numbers going up or whatever — and that’s an important part of the gaming medium as a whole. It’s not something that is present everywhere in gaming, of course, and when inappropriate mechanics are shoehorned into a situation where it really doesn’t make sense, it can be jarring and uncomfortable. But a lot of designers these days have a pretty good idea of what elements go well together with what. Naughty Dog made the decision that crafting shivs in The Last of Us complemented the game’s post-apocalyptic storyline, and the game as a whole was well-received for its combination of storytelling and gameplay.

At the other end of the spectrum, of course, we have stuff like The Fruit of Grisaia, which is almost completely non-interactive — there are only five decisions to make in a single playthrough, three of which are totally irrelevant for four out of the five routes — and yet still manages to be incredibly compelling. So the kind of experience Owen is apparently looking for — interactive narrative without any requirement for skill — already exists, and is pretty damn good, too. Not only that, it comfortably exists alongside games that are pure skill — the aforementioned fighting, shooting and rhythm games — without anyone needing to tell each other that what they’re playing “isn’t a game” or that their experiences are somehow invalid.

I think the only W that is TF with video games right now is the unreasonable expectations and preconceptions some people come to the medium with. Video games are not everything to everyone, and neither should they be. No form of art is universally appealing to everyone, and video games are no exception. If you object to crafting shivs in The Last of Us, don’t play The Last of Us. If you object to wandering around a house without killing anything in Gone Home, don’t play Gone Home. It’s not as if you don’t have any other choices as to what you can experience from a medium that has become as incredibly broad and fascinating as gaming in 2015, and it can sometimes lead to pleasant surprises if you step out of your comfort zone and try something new once in a while.

Let’s not water down and homogenise gaming into a single, bland, lowest-common denominator, non-offensive, “universally appealing” form; let’s instead celebrate all the different experiences we can have on our computers, consoles, handhelds, phones and tablets. Let’s marvel in how easy it is for us to explore new worlds, to put ourselves in the shoes of another, to immerse ourselves in narratives more deeply than any other medium, to challenge our prejudices, to show our skills in ways that don’t require physical strength or even mobility and to engage our emotions in everything from a feeling of “fun” to blood-curdling “terror”.

WTF is wrong with video games? Absolutely nothing, so stop moaning and go play something.