Post by *NormalGamer* on Oct 25, 2005 0:00:13 GMT -5
NG: Here's an article talking about where video games are now and talking about the different levels of audiences and more. Check it out below:
technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16376,1595581,00.html
What's in a game?
They are complex, intellectually taxing and often insightful, but we still do not take videogames seriously. Steven Johnson argues for a change of mind
Thursday October 20, 2005
The Guardian
The villagers are restless. I think of them often through the day, during the quiet moments, as I'm walking back from dropping my son off at school, or waiting in line for coffee. I am thinking about their needs: some of them are hungry, and require fresh supplies of grain; some have grown tired of sleeping without a roof over their heads.
I'm thinking, too, of their ambitions: to someday build a great temple in their midst, or a broad stone wall around the village centre to protect it from invading hordes. I am thinking of their demographics: right now, there aren't enough children to sustain the kind of population growth I have envisaged for them. And I am thinking of their devotion - to me. Because I am their god.
I should say at the outset that these are the kinds of thoughts that make me relieved there aren't mind-readers standing next to me at Starbucks. There is something slightly mad trying to figure out how to fortify your worshippers against invaders while simultaneously trying to decide between having a venti or a grande Frappuccino. But it is a madness that any regular videogamer will instantly recognise. Because, of course, my worshippers are virtual ones.
I have been playing Black & White 2, the new game from acclaimed designer Peter Molyneux, in which the player is cast in the role of a deity. The goal, ultimately, is to build your flock: converting whole cities into believers, either through wrath or beneficence, by conquering or clothing them. Or usually, in my case at least, a little of both.
If you are not a gamer, you may be surprised how many otherwise normal-looking adults around you are harbouring comparable thoughts. In the US, the game industry now brings in as much money as Hollywood, and the average gamer is roughly 30 years old. We are fast approaching the point where an ordinary gamer is more likely to have had a child than be one. Since Tetris at the very least, and probably all the way back to Pong, digital games have been lodging themselves in the back of our consciousness, prodding us to think through their puzzles just one more time before going to sleep.
Tricky business
I would submit that the primary reason for that mental screenburn is this genuinely unsung fact: today's games are exceptionally difficult. They tax the mind in ways that would amaze anyone who last played a game in the age of Pac-Man. In Black & White, for instance, the player must simultaneously track hundreds of shifting and interconnected variables. Some of these are emotional and metabolic in nature: each worshipper - and there can be thousands of them - has a distinct set of needs you must satisfy or risk losing their devotion. Some are militaristic: other villages, worshipping rival gods, may be building armies to attack your strongholds. Some needs are environmental: build too many villas for your population and you will burn through the supply of forests surrounding your growing town.
Crucially, each of these elements connects with the others: protect your forests by building fewer houses, and your villagers won't reproduce at the same clip, thereby limiting the size of the army you can build.
Black & White is a relatively highbrow game, of course - but only in subject matter, not complexity. There are moral values explicitly addressed by the game: you can choose wrath or kindness, swords or ploughshares, to win over your disciplines: hence the title. But the mental challenges involved in Black & White are positively routine.
The best-selling PC game of all time, The Sims, involves an equally complex tableau of variables to track, while the ever-popular sports simulations force you to run an entire organisation - making trades, balancing budgets, soothing egos, as well as calling the plays from the sidelines. Even the controversial hit game Grand Theft Auto maps a staggeringly large and complex world: one players' guide to all the variables involved in the game clocked in at 53,000 words, the length of a short book.
But does this complexity, on its own, necessarily mean we should take games seriously as works of culture? That they should be reviewed and dissected alongside books, film and ballet? After all, crossword puzzles are mentally challenging, but we don't generally run reviews of them in the culture pages.
System addicts
I think the answer to that question is a decisive yes, but doing so requires that we develop new aesthetic criteria that are appropriate to the medium. Many games take the player through some kind of narrative arc, but I think, in general, storytelling is one of the least interesting things about gaming. Where psychological depth is concerned, most games are laughably simple. The great majority of gamers, I suspect, don't engage with games because they want to find out what happens, or because they care about the characters. They engage because they want to figure out how the system of the game works, or because they want to explore the space the game represents.
Banal narratives and one-dimensional characters sounds like a critique, but only if you are starting with the criteria we use for novels or films. But if you think about games as closer to architecture or environmental art, then it doesn't seem like such a failing. We don't look down on buildings because they don't have strong narrative threads or well-developed characters. The same should be true of games. They are - first and foremost - environments and systems, not stories. The art of making a great game lies in making spaces that are interesting to explore, and systems that are interesting to tinker with - like those teeming villagers in Black & White, with their multiple, interconnected needs.
Game of life
But if games tend to lack storytelling prowess, it doesn't necessarily follow that they lack social relevance. All the complex simulation games on the market - from The Sims, to Civilization, to SimCity, to Black & White - are, in effect, animated theories of how a given society works, whether it is ancient Rome or a modern metropolis. You learn the theory by playing. One of the defining attributes of Grand Theft Auto that has been chronically ignored by critics is how explicitly the game plays as a satire of American inner-city culture - or, more precisely, suburban America's nightmare of inner- city culture. But that satire emerges as much out of the environment of the game - the hilarious radio pseudo-soundtrack, the snippets of dialogue you overhear in the world - as it does from the story that unfolds as you play.
All of this - the economic strength of the gaming industry, the complexity of the games themselves, and their growing relevance as a platform for social commentary - adds up to one inevitable conclusion: ignoring games means ignoring one of the most interesting and innovative cultural forms of our time - not unlike writing off Hollywood in the era of Citizen Kane and Gilda.
In fact, there is more to be said about the connection between early film criticism and the contemporary assessment of gaming. But it will have to wait for another day. I have a flock to tend to right now.
· Steven Johnson is distinguished writer in residence at NYU's department of journalism, and the author of Everything Bad is Good for You, published by Allen Lane. To order a copy for £10 with free UK p&p, call the Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop
stevenberlinjohnson.com
technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16376,1595581,00.html
What's in a game?
They are complex, intellectually taxing and often insightful, but we still do not take videogames seriously. Steven Johnson argues for a change of mind
Thursday October 20, 2005
The Guardian
The villagers are restless. I think of them often through the day, during the quiet moments, as I'm walking back from dropping my son off at school, or waiting in line for coffee. I am thinking about their needs: some of them are hungry, and require fresh supplies of grain; some have grown tired of sleeping without a roof over their heads.
I'm thinking, too, of their ambitions: to someday build a great temple in their midst, or a broad stone wall around the village centre to protect it from invading hordes. I am thinking of their demographics: right now, there aren't enough children to sustain the kind of population growth I have envisaged for them. And I am thinking of their devotion - to me. Because I am their god.
I should say at the outset that these are the kinds of thoughts that make me relieved there aren't mind-readers standing next to me at Starbucks. There is something slightly mad trying to figure out how to fortify your worshippers against invaders while simultaneously trying to decide between having a venti or a grande Frappuccino. But it is a madness that any regular videogamer will instantly recognise. Because, of course, my worshippers are virtual ones.
I have been playing Black & White 2, the new game from acclaimed designer Peter Molyneux, in which the player is cast in the role of a deity. The goal, ultimately, is to build your flock: converting whole cities into believers, either through wrath or beneficence, by conquering or clothing them. Or usually, in my case at least, a little of both.
If you are not a gamer, you may be surprised how many otherwise normal-looking adults around you are harbouring comparable thoughts. In the US, the game industry now brings in as much money as Hollywood, and the average gamer is roughly 30 years old. We are fast approaching the point where an ordinary gamer is more likely to have had a child than be one. Since Tetris at the very least, and probably all the way back to Pong, digital games have been lodging themselves in the back of our consciousness, prodding us to think through their puzzles just one more time before going to sleep.
Tricky business
I would submit that the primary reason for that mental screenburn is this genuinely unsung fact: today's games are exceptionally difficult. They tax the mind in ways that would amaze anyone who last played a game in the age of Pac-Man. In Black & White, for instance, the player must simultaneously track hundreds of shifting and interconnected variables. Some of these are emotional and metabolic in nature: each worshipper - and there can be thousands of them - has a distinct set of needs you must satisfy or risk losing their devotion. Some are militaristic: other villages, worshipping rival gods, may be building armies to attack your strongholds. Some needs are environmental: build too many villas for your population and you will burn through the supply of forests surrounding your growing town.
Crucially, each of these elements connects with the others: protect your forests by building fewer houses, and your villagers won't reproduce at the same clip, thereby limiting the size of the army you can build.
Black & White is a relatively highbrow game, of course - but only in subject matter, not complexity. There are moral values explicitly addressed by the game: you can choose wrath or kindness, swords or ploughshares, to win over your disciplines: hence the title. But the mental challenges involved in Black & White are positively routine.
The best-selling PC game of all time, The Sims, involves an equally complex tableau of variables to track, while the ever-popular sports simulations force you to run an entire organisation - making trades, balancing budgets, soothing egos, as well as calling the plays from the sidelines. Even the controversial hit game Grand Theft Auto maps a staggeringly large and complex world: one players' guide to all the variables involved in the game clocked in at 53,000 words, the length of a short book.
But does this complexity, on its own, necessarily mean we should take games seriously as works of culture? That they should be reviewed and dissected alongside books, film and ballet? After all, crossword puzzles are mentally challenging, but we don't generally run reviews of them in the culture pages.
System addicts
I think the answer to that question is a decisive yes, but doing so requires that we develop new aesthetic criteria that are appropriate to the medium. Many games take the player through some kind of narrative arc, but I think, in general, storytelling is one of the least interesting things about gaming. Where psychological depth is concerned, most games are laughably simple. The great majority of gamers, I suspect, don't engage with games because they want to find out what happens, or because they care about the characters. They engage because they want to figure out how the system of the game works, or because they want to explore the space the game represents.
Banal narratives and one-dimensional characters sounds like a critique, but only if you are starting with the criteria we use for novels or films. But if you think about games as closer to architecture or environmental art, then it doesn't seem like such a failing. We don't look down on buildings because they don't have strong narrative threads or well-developed characters. The same should be true of games. They are - first and foremost - environments and systems, not stories. The art of making a great game lies in making spaces that are interesting to explore, and systems that are interesting to tinker with - like those teeming villagers in Black & White, with their multiple, interconnected needs.
Game of life
But if games tend to lack storytelling prowess, it doesn't necessarily follow that they lack social relevance. All the complex simulation games on the market - from The Sims, to Civilization, to SimCity, to Black & White - are, in effect, animated theories of how a given society works, whether it is ancient Rome or a modern metropolis. You learn the theory by playing. One of the defining attributes of Grand Theft Auto that has been chronically ignored by critics is how explicitly the game plays as a satire of American inner-city culture - or, more precisely, suburban America's nightmare of inner- city culture. But that satire emerges as much out of the environment of the game - the hilarious radio pseudo-soundtrack, the snippets of dialogue you overhear in the world - as it does from the story that unfolds as you play.
All of this - the economic strength of the gaming industry, the complexity of the games themselves, and their growing relevance as a platform for social commentary - adds up to one inevitable conclusion: ignoring games means ignoring one of the most interesting and innovative cultural forms of our time - not unlike writing off Hollywood in the era of Citizen Kane and Gilda.
In fact, there is more to be said about the connection between early film criticism and the contemporary assessment of gaming. But it will have to wait for another day. I have a flock to tend to right now.
· Steven Johnson is distinguished writer in residence at NYU's department of journalism, and the author of Everything Bad is Good for You, published by Allen Lane. To order a copy for £10 with free UK p&p, call the Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop
stevenberlinjohnson.com
