big-ideas posts

Do you remember your first video game? I do; it was Space Wars, or a version thereof, where two spaceships do battle around a central sun or black hole. It was graphically crude, but there was nothing else like it at the time, and that was enough to set me on the path of a lifelong pursuit of gaming joy.

Fast-forward some thirty-odd years later, and that joy is still going strong. However, if I'm being honest with myself, I'll admit that my passion for the genre will probably never approach the strength of what it was from the late 70's to early 90's. There was a kind of persistent evolution occurring in games during those decades that was exciting to watch and play that doesn't seem to be in effect these days. It was a golden age of video games for me, and I'm still waiting to re-experience that "wow moment". Let me explain what I mean.

I've written before about the utility of the death penalty mechanic in video games. More and more these days it seems that the consequence of death just doesn't hold the same weight it once did. After purchasing a game, no developer in their right mind would penalize a player with the threat of permanent death. There are always ways to continue to play after defeat.

So if death itself is meaningless, why is it still put into games? More to the point, what are the alternatives?

Raph Koster, author of "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", has famously said "The single-player game is a strange mutant monster which has only existed for 21 years and is about to go away because it is unnatural and abnormal." He makes the claim early on that we all learned to play games with other children, and that such play is inherently social and "normal".

But what about those times when we played alone? When we entertained ourselves with a puzzle, or building blocks, or happily invented our own games with our own rules, playing against ourselves for the sheer imaginative force of it? I don't for one minute believe that the single-player game is either unnatural or abnormal ... nor do I believe it's doomed.

Video games are definitely maturing as the medium grows older. What once might have been a simple diversion has become a massive industry, rivaling Hollywood in scope and budget. Though the mainstream media -- and therefore much of America -- might still see the very concept of playing games as juvenilia, it's clear that games are able to willing to broach nearly any subject matter, including some that might be controversial.

Is there any topic that is beyond the scope of a video game? What's taboo these days?

It's said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it is a completely subjective experience, dependent upon the taste of each particular viewer. This is palpably evident in the video game industry, where one man's trash is another man's treasure. One need only review the relatively recent controversy over Diablo 3's color palette to realize the truth of this.

Have we evolved a different set of standards for the concept of beauty in a video game? Is there ever one prevailing standard, apparent and provable to all? Why is beauty so hard to define?

I well remember the days of the early 80's, spending a lot of my free time in the local arcade. My excitement over playing the latest and greatest machines was tempered by my limited finances. Getting to a certain level of proficiency in those days was often a costly endeavor. Fortunately, a high school friend of mine would soon purchase his first home computer, an Apple IIe. I ended up transferring my arcade time to time spent at his house, playing some of the greatest games I've ever had the privilege to encounter.

Thinking back to those games, one phenomenon stands out: their inherent difficulty, compared with that of today's games. It seems as though games in general were just more challenging then -- but surely that's just due to my poor recollection? Could games really have been getting easier since their humble origins? Have we lowered the barrier of entry to the point of making things too easy?

No matter how many times it's been reiterated, we just can't seem to leave the fantasy genre behind. It seems to be the default setting of both RPGs and MMOs, as witnessed by the fact that it's always a surprise when a new one of those comes out and it's not set in the fantasy milieu.

For my money, very few developers have used the fantasy setting to tell truly fascinating stories -- or, rather, stories that could only have been told in a fantasy setting. There are so many limitations inherent in the genre that don't offer a concomitant benefit that I don't know why we haven't moved on to doing more games in the modern urban setting instead. But let's take a look at what that genre offers us.

Crysis. The name just means photorealism in graphics these days. It's what people expect from Crytek now, and there's no going back for that company. They've built their brand around the latest and greatest rendering technology, so full of buzzwords that it virtually takes a degree in advanced mathematics just to understand how amazing the tech is.

But is all of that realism worth the effort? Does it really matter if you can see individual grass stems waving in the wind? Sure, the ability to see individual pores on your opponent's face is kind of cool, but does it make for a better game?

I was listening to a gaming podcast recently, and during a discussion of a game the speaker had reviewed, the term "game-y" was used. By this I understood the word to mean any game mechanic or situation that exists outside the conceit of the game itself, such that it calls attention to the fact that you're playing a video game.

I knew what the speaker meant by calling out the mechanic in that way, but it was the negative connotation that struck me. Surely, when playing a video game it's excusable to encounter phenomena that are endemic to its being a game? Sooner or later you'll have to hit "Save", or do a double jump, or fast-forward through a cutscene; are those things inherently bad? What's wrong with being game-y?

We've seen it so many times now it's become standard: the prevailing attitude among the mainstream media that video games are harmful. If we believe what we read, video games are responsible for school shootings, poor academic test scores, obesity in the young, and a general trend toward subpar performance.

However, it's easy to demonize something you know nothing about. Every chance I get, I try to spread the word that not only are video games not harmful, but they're actively good for you. And you'd be surprised who agrees with me; one person in particular may change your mind about this whole issue. Read on to find out who.