Doing, Making, Saying and Thinking

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I think I'm finally ready to get into the real heart of the matter.

How can video games be more expressive as art forms?

I would like to show that we can expand our notions of what interaction entails in video games. There are many unexplored ways to express ideas through gaming and make gaming more meaningful.

What you have control over, and the form that that control takes, affects two things: how you experience a narrative, and how developers can express ideas to a player.

The form of interaction enables a player to ask questions about themselves and what the game is trying to tell them. If the player’s interaction takes the form of ____(control over movement, behavior, plot direction, which character to use, etc), then questions could be: How does it feel to ____. How does the story change when I _____ differently? What is my reason for ____ing? Or, as Nico puts it, “It’s not about saying ‘what would it be like to be in someone else’s shoes?' It’s about saying ‘now that I’m in these shoes, what do I do with them?’” The way the player answers such questions, or the degree to which the answers are left open ended, is how video games can express subjective and specific messages to players, either directly or through metaphor and allegory.

It is my belief that just about all stories require a certain kind of participation. We enjoy hearing stories because we project ourselves onto the characters and into events in the stories. The appeal of nearly all fiction and entertainment is escapism and fantasy fulfillment. We imagine ourselves in the world of stories we read about, watch and listen to.

Different types of stories appeal to people differently because they cater to different fantasies.

Action/adventure tends to cater to the fantasies of being in control of exciting situations, performing acts of violence, feeling "alive" by way of adrenaline rushes and risk taking. If you enjoy watching the Governator shoot a bunch of identityless drug runners, you probably enjoy the idea of committing acts of violence without the guilt of being responsible for emotional trauma that such acts would cause in real life (there's nothing wrong with this, btw).

The majority of video games come in the form of action/adventure. There's nothing wrong with action/adventure, but it's near exclusivity in games limits the way a game can be expressive by limiting the types of questions a game can force a player to ask and the way a player interacts with the story.

Horror seems to fulfill the desire to be in a scary or otherwise traumatic experience and survive. Confronting deep rooted fears and being able to survive them and punish those who would inflict them upon you is enjoyable. There's a cathartic pleasure in experiencing things that are uncomfortable, granted you won't be permanently injured.

The reason people project themselves onto characters in a romance seems pretty clear. It's fun to be in a romantic relationship. It's more rewarding when it takes some work, bla bla bla. Having a relationship work is fun.

It’s a little harder to explain why we like drama, but I think it has to do with voyeurism and a really simple fascination with how the lives of other people differ from our own. Watching other people make decisions and go through events gives insight into other people’s minds and into our own. It makes us ask the question “how would I deal with that situation?”

I think it’s a good idea to analyze this because it’s important to see how different story types target different fantasies and change their form to fulfill them. This is what video games should be doing more of and aren’t. In order to effectively express something in games, we should be looking at what it is about a story we think people are going to want to engage in and make control over that the main vehicle of the game’s interaction.

Video games as a medium should be extremely capable of fulfilling these fantasies. Rather than participating in a story indirectly, through projection, players participate directly through the games interactive aspect.

In fact, gaming has fulfilled the fantasy of committing non-emotional acts of violence better than most shoot-em-ups have. I think this is because they allow for more choice. More than most, the action genre isn't about voyeurism and watching someone else’s choices. It's about pretending you are Ahnold. FPS's have done this better than any violent film. They actually let you choose who to shoot and what to do. What they lack now is the desire to use this experience to ask the player questions and make them think. Some games have tried to do this, but I think using the interaction to ask questions should be more of a primary focus of a game. The interaction should be a means as well as an end, not just an end. (sniff sniff, I smell Kant...)

Horror has been fulfilled much more poorly, and romance almost not at all. At least in the States. Action/adventure encompasses nearly the entire gaming repertoire, including children's games. I think the reason for this is that the fantasies of horror and romance are more time consuming to fulfill and require more dedication. The fantasy of shooting something can be fulfilled in a matter of seconds or less, and can be done so over and over and over for as long as a person is still entertained. The fantasy of surviving something traumatic requires much more time. First danger has to be established in some believable, palpable way, then some sort of survival must be achieved in order to complete the fantasy. Resident Evil attempts to do this by utilizing atmosphere , surprising zombies (band name) and guns. Atmosphere presents the danger, zombies/surprise makes it palpable, guns create resolution. It’s not entirely effective since I think there's too much resolution and not enough danger. There’s too much killing of zombies and not enough fear of being eaten. Horror movies work because most of the movie is establishing danger, killing off identifiable people one after another to give you the sense of "oh man, everyone I projected myself onto is dying, I could die in this imaginary world!" and only at the end letting the last person/people survive. A good horror game should take the appealing part of the genre, being placed in trauma and escaping it, and make the game about controlling that.

While talking about this, Nico and I came up with what we think is a good idea for a horror game.

Romance takes forever. In order to fulfill the fantasy, you have to make a relationship. The more complicated it is, the more believable it is, the more it fulfills the fantasy. Part of the appeal is the struggle to get what you want (the other person). The more time it takes, the harder it is, the more rewarding it feels when you get it (them). Dating games that I've seen, particularly dating sims, tend to try to fulfill it too quickly, too shallowly, and appeal too much to the physical aspect of a relationship. For a dating game to be worth playing, it would have to use player participation to immerse a person in the experience of forming a relationship, not just a means to expositorily get from "unlikely meeting" to "first kiss". So how could interaction enhance our appreciation for such a fantasy?

Again, Nico and I think we're clever and have come up with an idea.

When it comes to drama, I think we are too short sighted in trying to come up with game formats. I thought about mentioning GTA or Metal Gear as examples of drama done fairly well, but then I decided that that wasn't true. In action stories, the behavior that we get invested in is the violence, the running around, the action. But in a drama that is simply not the case, and we shouldn't be trying to let a person participate in a drama by having them run around and control where the person goes. Like romance, much of what draws us to drama is dialogue and story events. The interaction should reflect that, giving some control, or at least influence, primarily over the story events and dialogue. The best example of this sort of idea that I can come up with off the top of my head is Black and White, where your decisions affect the appearance and behavior of the game continuously. I imagine an effective drama game doing something similar, having a player make constant decisions and being motivated by being able to see different results from different decisions. The game wouldn’t be about getting the character through the plot, but letting the player determine the plot.

I think video games are thought of as low brow entertainment by lots of people because they have done a very good job of appealing to a very limited set of fantasies. The exceptions, games like The Sims, Katamari, Guitar Hero, Second Life and Hotel Dusk, seem to have felt the pressure to be widely appealing and easily accessible, limiting their expressive potential. One of the few games that I think has really broken the mold, and done a good job of not compromising, is Riven. But that doesn't mean games have to be either artistic or entertaining! Games, like all media, have the potential to be both. We just have to think outside the box a little more.

The Thirty Year Old Art: Part I

Art is a difficult thing to talk about.

As much as it is an extremely old and intimate aspect of society, it is notoriously difficult to define. Disputes about what art is have been the subject of artwork for centuries. I’ve never had an art teacher who didn’t look at least a little uncomfortable when the subject was raised, or an art class that was satisfied with the conclusion. The definition expands and contracts regularly. However, there must be some boundary. If there is none, there is no such thing as art. If everything is art, the word becomes meaningless. I feel that art is one of the most important things in the world. For a person who things the point of living is experience, and I do, nothing seems more meaningful than a human endeavor who’s purpose includes experience for experience sake, and the communication of experiences.

So what is art to me that makes it so easy for me to say that video games are clearly included? Well, for me, art is this (don’t worry I’ll explain): anything presented for consideration of the thing as it exists apart from the rest of the world. An apple eaten as food is not art. And apple looked at as an example of an apple is art. And apple looked at as an example of an object is art. Eating an apple is not art. Presenting yourself eating an apple is art. The taste of an apple is art if the taste is presented as such. Art can be seen to have many purposes, or none, but for me art serves the function of providing experience and conveying information. Words cannot say everything. It may help us understand others, or simply be enjoyable and enhance ourselves and our personal environments. It is essential to understanding our nature as people, and subsequently to be a responsible person.

Art can be anything. Any sense, any object, any idea. Through art we have the potential for self-expression. This, of course does not make everything good art, but the different ways in which human experience can be communicated are limited only to the number of things that can be experienced. Video games often employ so many conventional examples of visual and auditory art that the supposition that they are somehow excluded from the Art umbrella I think is irrational. They create emotional experiences, are often aesthetically beautiful, and certainly require skill and craft to create. So, yea, video games are definitely art.If you don’t like my definition, here are a few more. Video games still fit into them pretty nicely.

“The use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.” Britanica Online
“Any human activity which doesn't grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.” Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
“An application of human creativity that has some form of appreciative value, usually on the basis of aesthetic value or emotional impact.” Wikipedia

I feel like it’s a good idea to explicitly say the purpose of this two part blog rather than just try and convey it in a topic paragraph. The purpose is (inhale) to explore video games as a viable high art form and encourage their expressive potential. Why try to encourage games to be more expressive and artistic? Partly because I love video games, but honestly, video games have become repetitive. As technology grows ever more amazing I see it being used in games the same way it has been used in movies: to make existing ideas more sparkley. Video games, a medium defined entirely within technology, should advances exponentially as technology does. Now don’t get me wrong, it has changed in profound ways! Games have morphed so fast it’s hard to keep up sometimes. From Super Mario Brothers to World of Warcraft? That's petty amazing. But even still, I’m bored with a lot of the next generation games. I’m tired of shooters, RPG’s, platformers, fighters and virtually every established genre feeling like they really haven’t progressed significantly in any way besides their graphics. I still get more of a kick out of my SNES than I do out of my PS2. This is partially nostalgia of course, but is also due to the types of ideas and interfaces that exist in some older games. For example, my favorite shooter remains Doom II, despite playing Half Life, Quake II, Metroid Prime, Halo and Descent (remember Descent? Yea you do!) to name a few. I want to see what video games can really do.

The other reason sounds more pretentious, but I believe in it. Every art medium has something it is able to express about life, experience and humanity that no other can. There are things that can be said through song and sound that nobody can ever depict any other way. There are stories that, when told through a movie format, will be understood in a way a book could never express. There are written ideas that could never be expressed visually or sonically. There is something special about every mode of communication, and video games are capable of expression. This means that they have something special they are capable of saying, and I want to hear it. At this point in the history of video games, I think they’ve been able to show us a lot about ourselves, but I think they’ve been imitating other art forms too much. I remain convinced that they have not really plumbed the depths of their expressive potential.

This first discussion I am going limit to exploring the qualities of the video game medium and how those qualities relate to art in general. A second blog will follow discussing the artistic/expressive potential and achievements of video games.

Dissecting art into parts is a task often more difficult than defining what qualifies as art in the first place. Most definitions settle around Form vs. Function, or something along these lines. The problem becomes the fact form and functions often merge. Form usually entails the physical manifestation of artwork, and function defines the social impact of a piece, be it intended by the artist or not. Clearly these two get mixed up, since many forms of art explore aesthetics for aesthetics’ sake and form is heavily used to convey information and is integral in the function of an artwork. The two seem inseparable, but I’m going to separate them anyway. A good work of art is one that uses form effectively to achieve a functional goal. I don’t think it can be said that some art has no goal whatsoever, because someone did it for some reason. If it was entirely accidental, it was not presented, and therefore not art by my definition.

I see form in video games as having two major parts: narration and interaction. In point of fact, video games don’t need much in the way of narration, since many abstract video games exist, but I feel like it’s fair to include narration as a basic component of video gaming since so much of the medium’s expressive potential comes from narration. All games have some form of narration, even if it isn’t much. Tetris’s graphics are a form of narration I think, albeit an extremely simple one.

When I talk about narration, I mean anything that allows the game to convey information to the player about the game’s world. This includes setting, story elements, gameplay graphics and sound, extra-gameplay graphics and sound, visual prompts, anything that lets the player know about the imaginary game world. I think it’s fair to say that just about all games, video or not, have some element of narration when considering this definition. The lines of a football field communicate to the players the imaginary world of the game, where imaginary boundaries become meaningful. Board games represent imaginary worlds where one plays with the use of a plastic avatar. What is unique about video games is the vast scope of narrative possibilities. Especially with fourth and fifth generation consoles, the possibility of creating cinematic-quality narratives becomes easily achievable. It isn’t technology though that allows for this communicative ability. Some of the most amazing stories to come out of games have come from 16bit systems. Video games really do have the potential to have stories as complicated and lengthy as any novel or movie, and thanks to the booming market and technological investment, the look and sound of just about any movie as well. Of course, video games are not movies or books. They are separated from being “just games” by their narrative potential, and separated from simply being narratives by their interactive potential.

Interaction in gaming is represented by control schemes, game engines, button configurations, controller layouts, on-screen commands, and what sort of visual perspective the player is forced to take (this last one bleeds into narration a bit, but whatever). The interactive element of gaming is what sets it apart from any other art medium. Interactivity in gaming forces the player into a particular persona and a particular perspective. It also makes isolated aspects of the game particularly intimate to the player. By allowing control over certain aspects of the imaginary world and not others (as must be the case in any video game) game designers force the player to become more familiar with the things they have control over and interact with, and less familiar with elements which are completely beyond their influence or participation. This happens in all art media of course because we can only handle one perspective at a time. When watching a movie, you are forced into the perspective of the camera, and sometimes the person the camera is focused on. When viewing a painting or sculpture you are limited by the object's orientation in space. I think this is more palpable in video games because of the harsh contrast that is sometimes created between what the player can see, and what the player can control. It's important that the player be more focused on their character than on the background textures and the sound effects, else they are likely to make mistakes and fail in the game’s objectives. However, the case may be made that the more blurred the separation between what you can interact with and what you can’t becomes, the more immersive and effective a game becomes. Personally, I think this is a stylistic element of gaming that will not work all the time. Certain games are more effective when you are aware of the fact that you are playing a game, and some require the sense of loosing one’s self in the imaginary world in order to fulfill their function.

In the course of reading up on this subject, the issue was raised that a distinction should be made between interaction and participation. This actually has a lot to say about the nature of games as art. There seems to me to be a fundamental distinction between a situation in which there is a specific narrative which a player is able to have some degree of participation in, as in an RPG, and a situation in which there is some substantial amount of give and take between the established game narrative and the player. The few games that i can think of that are decent examples of this type of interaction are MMORPG's, The Sims (especially the later ones) and that-really-neato-game-Nico-showed-me-at-Warren's-house (TRNGNSMAWH). I’m actually going to leave this for the next blog since I think it has less to do with establishing the nature of video games, and more to do with the specifics of how expressive and valuable video games are and can be.

At the heart of the controversy surrounding video games and art is the next subject. The function of video games. First of all, some comments on my view of the function of any art. I’ve mentioned it before, but I think it bears repeating. Much of the purpose of art is the communication of information. Thoughts, feelings, stories, perspectives, and even objective reporting can sometimes be conveyed more effectively through artistic craft, and I think this is one of the most important reasons that we value art in culture. The words we speak to one another do not allow us to understand each other well enough. But through art, we often get a little closer to the truth hidden inside each person's head. Each art form allows for acute understanding of humanity in a way that the other art forms simply couldn't do. Video games must do this as well, and being such a unique art, must also tell us something special about ourselves that we would never know if they didn't exist. What is that special something?

Art may convey information because the artist intended it to do so, or it may do so without the artist even knowing that it’s happening. It is the case that anything that is consumed conveys to the consumer information. You can’t experience anything without having some impression left on you. So there is no such thing as art which conveys nothing to its audience. However, many many works of art are made with the express purpose of being beautiful. The pleasurable nature of art is for many people its only value, and probably the other reason it is so important to us. Despite the fact that I think this is limiting, it must be accepted that this is also an extremely important aspect of artwork. Unless a work of art is enjoyable on some level, it won't be experienced by anybody.

The function of nearly all video games is entertainment as far as i can see. This of course does not mean there is a purely lowest-common-denominator appeal in gaming. Games range from mind-numbing keg-drinking fuck-screaming frat house center pieces to very subtle and sophisticated imaginary explorations. Even so, the function is entertainment. This is, however, the point of most art that exists in any medium. The majority of art is created for its aesthetic appeal, hence the stereotype that art must be aesthetically appealing. And let's not forget that just because the function of a work of art is to be entertaining does not mean that it is necessarily low brow or shallow. Art may seek to entertain by being intellectually provocative, or may couple elements of hedonic enjoyment with more complicated messages. This does exist in the video game world, although examples are often few and far between. Often enough the most complicated alternative function of a video game besides entertainment is to tell a story, which arguably is the same thing. If the point of the gameplay is to be fun, and the point of the story is to be enjoyable, then the game really is only about entertainment. However, just as a very serious movie can use expensive camerawork and special effects to reach an audience, so can a video game have enjoyable gameplay and a very sober plot.

I think one of the reasons that video games become targets of the label "pure entertainment" is that often times there is too much effort going into making the gameplay, the interaction of the game, entertaining and not enough going into making the gameplay and story mesh. When the narration and the gameplay don't make enough sense together, or don't rely on one another enough, they seem like separate entities. Because of this, the gameplay can be viewed as pointless and meaningless. The fact that video games' best defense by the public is "it builds hand-eye coordination" is insulting. You might as well say that's the reason to let your kids try out for Little League. That and callouses. But when a game's narration and interaction are too disjoint or too undeveloped, the game looses the qualities that make video games so amazing and becomes simply objects moving through space at the commands of fingers. Either just a hand-eye exercise, or a hand-eye exercise interrupted by a cartoon. To be expressive and worthy of our time, games need to not only create interesting narratives and gameplay, but merge them together to create one complete work.

An example of a game which I think uses gameplay and story elements together well to serve its point (though that point is agian only entertainment) is Metal Gear Solid. The Playstation one, not the Game Cube version which I think beomes distracting and overly complicated. While it may be argued that the controls, perspective and engine are clunky and difficult to use, I think that this game utilizes different gameplay modes and puzzles to keep the player feeling like they are Solid Snake in the story that the FMV sequences illustrate. The game frequently tries to make all the rediculous little errands you have to run make sense and tries to remind you constantly why your character is doing all this crap. The way the gameplay is set up you really can't diverge much from how one would imagine the story playing out. When you are supposed to be stealthy, you are stealthy. It's not that you can't kill the enemies, but it's very hard to survive if you let people know that you're trying to kill them. Few of the different gameplay elements seem superfluous, and with the exception of battling gigantic robots on foot with a rocket launcher, the game is damn near plausible. Whereas many RPG's could probably be made into books or movies without losing too much of their appeal as stories, MGS's very interesting plot is reinforced by it's gameplay, and the gameplay would be very near unenjoyable were it not for the story. Few games manage to really merge gameplay and narration this way. It is almost more important to make the gameplay make sense with the plot in this case than it is to make the gameplay enjoyable by itself. I think this is a good example of a video game, who's function is still pure enjoyment, executed in such a way that it becomes art worthy of consideration by other art media. Other examples of games that are complete, successful examples of the video game art medium in my opinion are Super Mario Brothers, Doom, Final Fantasy 7, Starcraft, Katamari, The Sims, Riven and Shadow of the Colossus to name a few. I notice when I'm trying to think of examples that I don't include many games with a plot. The absence of plot and the extremely simple narration is one of the things that makes Super Mario Brothers and Doom work for me. Very few games have been able to create a well rounded work of art while maintaining a decent story. I think the reason for this is that a complicated, engaging story requires a level of complex interaction that is very difficult to design, and even more difficult to make enjoyable and appealing to a wide audience. It's much easier to make an exciting story, and pair it with somewhat unrelated but very exciting gameplay.

Where i find video games truly come up short is when I try to think of games who's function is not entertainment. A work can be entertaining without entertainment being it's function (at least as far as the creator's inentions are concerned). For anybody who enjoys abstract shapes and unconventional imagery, cubism and abstract painting are indeed entertaining. But this is not necessarily their function as presented by the artist. Jackson Pollock's work is not so much about showing how pretty and aesthetic abstraction can be as it is about exploring what art is and how art could/should be produced. The function of Pollock's work is to present questions about artistic aesthetics and the process of creating emotionally expressive paintings. For many, his art is downright ugly. Yet even some who don't care for the way his paintings look still have a certain respect and appreciation for what he is doing with paint and canvas. Pollock's work is an extremely well executed merging of form and function, each working together to reinforce the other, a true example of how to express ideas visually. Few games approach the design process with the intention of using the interactive and narrative capabilities of gaming to convey a message to an audience. games like Grand Theft Auto may contain insights about culture and gaming, but the purpose is still to entertain. The only problem with this approach is that it limits the sort of artistic repertoire that games are allowed to make use of. There are established formulas for what is going to excite people and what sorts of game genres are going to entertain a mass audience. Games usually are based in some sort of action or competition with the computer or other virtual beings. control schemes are limited to ones which are consistent, easy to understand and easy to commit to reflex. Again, this is not a bad thing, but games need not be limited to such conventions. Games could make more use of multiple or unpredictable control types, or more exploratory and constructive, less action based gameplay (Katamari, Myst). I wish I could make better suggestions, but honestly it's hard for me to think of how games could achieve a greater depth of expression. Still, I insist that they are limited by so little that they must be able to convey information in their own special way that is as valuable as a novel or a dance.

Before I shut up, I'll mention that I'm not oblivious to the fact that many works of art, video games definitely included, are valuable not because of what the artist intends, but what the artist's work unintentionally says about the world he or she is living in. Such is a value of World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto, Counter Strike and Miss. Packman among many others. By deciphering what it is about playing games that is enjoyable we learn about our own culture as well as what makes us people. A game's artistic function may be completely devoid of any intention, and simply be the impact that it's had upon society.

Video games are an complicated art form, complicated further by the politics of culture and technology. They've only been around for a little over thirty years (Pong was available in 1972). Many of us have been alive during their entire evolution. Only in the last five or so years have video games created such a social impact that the medium has become an issue for discussion and allowed them to contribute to the Art Debate. A hundred years ago music was defined in such terms that much of what we listen to now would not be considered music. The notion of listening to Merzbow would not even have been entertained, it would be valueless. Video games have undergone many evolutions, but like all art in it's adolescence, video games have only been experimented with for a short while. Video games may become different in the future in ways we don't imagine now (ahem, Wii). There's still a lot we haven't played.

Colossal Yarn

The realm of fantasy is boundless.
The worlds we create are reflections of our imaginations and desires. Yet we tend to see similar worlds represented in fantasy, ones we can all understand and relate to. This is by no means a mistake. If nobody can relate to our fantasy, nobody can join us in our world. And so, thanks to well known fantasy epics and centuries of composite folklore, we have a schema for what a fantasy world looks like. Fantasy oriented video games often reflected this.

Our fantasy worlds are full of goblins and dragons, giant insects and fire. There is good and there is evil. You can be what you want, but the lines are there. We fight with swords and we fight with magic. We struggle for make-believe glory and for the greater good of unreal worlds. We find friends and foes, we live life as we expect life to be led, albeit in a place we will never see. We have never experienced anything like Shadow of the Colossus. This game has taken elements of fantasy that are so ingrained that it almost seems like just another take on an old concept. It's not. It's new. All of it.

First it's important to see what makes this game familiar. Young boy protagonist with sword, damsel in distress. Pretty standard. Fantasy world: monsters, magic sword, lack of technology, large European style architecture, vibrant natural surroundings, horse.
Okay I think that's about it for the environment. Now for gameplay. Largely puzzle oriented. Use environmental and behavioral clues to figure out monster's weak spot. Prince of Persia style platform obstacles. Finding hidden items in the world boosts your stats. This is basically the game. This doesn't even begin to describe the game.

Shadow of the Colossus is amazing because of the intensity and complexity of the emotions that the game evokes. Playing creates a visceral, palpable reaction which I feel is more powerful and tagible than in the majority of the games. While it is an important quality of any game to be emotionally engaging (or you simply wouldn't want to play it) Shadow manages to create an environment that is staggering in its emotional depth. While many of the game and environment basics are familiar, the way they are presented makes the game a unique play, as does the multitude of familiar game and genre aspects that are left out.
The way the player interacts with the graphics is different from nearly every other game, especially one with a fairly straight forward platform engine. The vast, beautiful landscapes and haunting, glorious Colossi draw the player in purely on the basis of wanting to touch and experience all that can be seen. The slow, meditative pace of the game (including the absence of plot, believe it or not) forces onto the player an intense focus on the immediate and enables the player's unconscious interpretations of the world and events to exist unchallenged.

One of the most valuable experiences one gets from playing SotC is the mesomorizing effect that playing it has on all who view it. The act of traveling from one places to another in this game is an event. Vast landscapes and monolithic terrain dwarf Wander and much of the time spent moving from one place to another is spent looking at where you are going and what you are passing by. This means that players are less able to think about the act of traveling a means of getting somewhere, and must instead view it as something to be paid attention to in and of itself. From the start of the game, the protagonist's slow trek across the tremendous bridge that separates the game's environment from the rest of the imaginary world sets up the player to anticipate entry to the foreboding castle at the end of the path. Yet because the bridge is so great and the time spent crossing so long, the player must begin to notice the surroundings and the immense bridge itself. This coupled with the fact that the bridge and the path to the castle are so breathtakingly beautiful makes the idea of reaching the end secondary to the wonder of watching the journey to get there. Such becomes the case with all travel in the game. Whether through mountainous valleys or by gigantic cliffs and always through vast open fields, it often becomes necessary to stop and remember where you were going after getting lost in the scenery. Like a zen garden this focus on the immediate small details of the world means that the player becomes more familiar with the world, more immersed in what the character is doing moment to moment. The game environment stops being simply a background to be passed through, and becomes an examination of the sublime nature of things huge and vast. Players are therefore more likely to consider what would in other games be an unremarkable progression of gameplay (such as the arrival at the resting place of a Colossus) to be a more meaningful and powerful event. After riding with Wander, scouring valleys and meadows and becoming lost in the environment, the arival of battle becomes more impactful and more significant. Victory and defeat become more intense when the player is more focused on and invested in the subtleties of the world he/she is playing in.

It isn't just the journeys that make the game enchanting though. Because of the game's heavy use of the puzzle-like gameplay needed to figure out how to get Wander up onto the Colossi, it becomes necessary to watch the monsters go about their animations for a few minutes while trying to figure out the solution to a given problem. This is something players are welcome to do, too, since the animation and style of each Colossus is so amazing that we would sit and watch even if it wasn't necessary.

Apart from the hypnotic visuals, the game implants it's emotions in the player with numerous ambiguities and it's considerable lack of exposition. There are next to no clear explanations for the reasons behind any of the events in the game or what is going on at any time. Where many games would begin an adventure with murky questions and slowly reveal details until a clear picture is presented, Shadows maintains its secrecy the entire way through. This is infuriating and brilliant. Like the extensive trecks that are necessary to move about the game, the limited information that is dangled in front of your face throughout serves to force your attention to the task at hand and immerse yourself in the moment. Yet there is just enough information provided to you for you to feel like you know what's happening at some level. Wander is trying to save a girl (don't know who she is or what is wrong with her) and enlists the help of a deity (not sure what sort) who provides him the solution of killing the Colossi in order to save the girl (unknown why this will help). The end of the game does enlighten us to one of these mysteries, which allows just enough closure for the player to not feel cheated. In the mean time, this ambiguity allows the game to be so recognizable, yet so indefinable, that it approaches surrealism. Players are searching the entire game for clues as to what is going on, and as such are paying attention to every detail. Players begin to see Wander's appearance changing, make note of the subtle changes in the game after each conquered boss, and explore the landscape and starting castle for anything out of the ordinary. This search not only strengthens the emotional focus on the immediate, it allows each player to fill in the information slightly different. The plotline becomes largely subjective, and the value of certain tidbits changes from one player to the next when so little is made clear, making the plot very personal to each player. The male-female relationship, the tremendously melodramatic self sacrifice and the utter impossibility of the feats that Wander must face lead the player to search for meaning in the task at hand and form his/her own motivations for Wander. The longer the player plays, the more they become immersed in the world and invested in searching out and defeating the Colossi, the more they stretch to understand what is driving this boy to such a task. By the end of the game, Wander's beaten and deformed body compliments the mental state of the player.

Of course none of this would matter if the actual gameplay, the Colossus battles, were not something special. Well, the Colossus battles are something special. The emotional attachment and intimacy created by these battles completes the effect of the game as a whole. Shadow is nothing if not visually beautiful, and nothing shows this off more than the Colossus introduction animations. The very first encounter the player has with one of the giants is immediately an emotionally complicated experience. Subtle nuances of the game ensure this. The game forces the player, in true Shadow fashion, to watch the beast before being able to engage it. Even when the player is allowed to control Wander and approach the Colossus, it moves to quickly for Wander to catch up. There is no music and no sound save the tiny crunches of Wander's feet, and the enormous tremors of the giant's. The player is likely to be overtaken by awe at this point. The creature is not a threat yet, and the size and creative desing of its body is amazing and unexpected. When the monster sees Wander, the music enters and calm awe turns to "how the hell am I going to kill this". The entire battle is a combination of recurring excitement, anxiety and tension. Once the puzzle is solved and the creature's defeat is only a matter of time, the player is once again able to gaze at the Colossus with an affectionate eye, soaking up the rich detail of its texture and the oddly familiar, aboriginal design of it's character. Excitement heightens as the final blow draws near and as Wander's sword finally plunges into the behemoth's sigil relief and joy washes over the player at the completion of the seemingly impossible task! And then a funny thing happens. That relief is clouded by guilt and sadness as the monster falls. Bittersweet music accompanies the glorious creature as it topples from it's graceful stance. For a moment I become sad and secretly wish I had not done what I spent so much effort doing. I remind myself that it's for a greater cause, which I course I don't understand. With conflicting emotions battling in the player's mind, he/she is sucked back to the starting castle, where numerous bizarre visual recurrences provide a disturbing and confusing congratulation.
Such is the nature of each battle. Each creature is surprising and majestic, each one scares the hell out of you, each is a joy to explore and a feat to destroy, and each time the victory is soured by the destruction of something amazing. Except for the last one. That guy was an ass.

Investment of this sort is next to nonexistent in most other games. The depth and variety of emotion that is interwoven in a careful and sophisticated way makes this game feel like one of the few truly complete games that exists. Nothing feels like it was left out by accident, nothing feels overdone to a fault. The melodrama makes sense when you feel it so clearly. Playing this game expands the notion of what fantasy is and what it means to be part of another world.

The Value of Video Games

I suppose it must be a given that anything created by a culture is demonstrative of that culture’s values and attitudes, but to make a statement that a medium is expressive of a worldview suggests to me that the expression is somewhat specific and significant. What does WOW really say about society? That we like fantasy? That being part of an online community is fun? That we like to talk and escape reality and have attached out emotions to certain characters? That whacking monsters with a club is fun, especially when it lets us whack bigger monsters? Among the profound social messages found within GTA is that we are indeed a people with aggression to vent, and that it is possible to enjoy the fantasy of wrongdoing without becoming criminals. I’m not sure I would really label those as worldviews and values. Games don't tend to have anything to say.

The reason for this is likely the lack of intention in the game developing community. It has only been in the last ten years that game consumers have been adults in large enough numbers for games to be marketed exclusively to adults. It almost never occurs that a game is designed without entertainment being its exclusive purpose. There have been only a few games that have the express purpose of conveying a specific idea to an audience, while being entertaining at the same time. (I can only think of a few examples of this, including Oregon Trail, America's Army and educational computer software. More games may be added to this list soon, however.) What becomes thought provoking is analyzing what we are entertained by. The developers create something that is enjoyable, and it is the sociological puzzle of discovering What is it about this game and these characters that holds our attention and imagination is worthy of debate, not the message of the game itself. There is no message in the game itself. Even the most subtle and sophisticated games are designed to be entertaining alone. What becomes exciting is to see what variations of graphic interaction are indeed enjoyable, and what they tell you about yourself. In fact, video games have more in common with pornography than they do with film or literature. They are designed to tap into our hedonic enjoyment of experience without compromise. This becomes increasingly true as games become more adult. And this is indeed their value. They allow us to express our desires and explore what excites us by giving us control over our entertainment.

What becomes unique in video games that is different from any other medium is the intrinsic interactive nature of them. Where as immersion and experience are facets of most other art media, they are seldom the primary objective of them. A truly wonderful video game need not have any story, any characters, any anything except some sort of kinetic interaction. Of course, this is true about games in general. The most significant difference between Tetris and solitaire is the equipment necessary to play them.

The unique aspect of video games that is unmatched by any other medium is the ability to provide the enjoyment of a game, the enjoyment of interaction, with the enjoyment of narration. Arguably the most awesome video game of all time is Super Mario Brothers. Even when discarding its cultural and historic value, Super Mario Brothers couples interaction and narration that is simple enough to be absorbed quickly, and varies both enough to be surprising and continually engaging. Its incredibly basic platform gaming enables any player to understand its rules immediately, and allows for a large degree of play variation. Whether it’s navigating enemies’s behaviors or numbers, or dealing with a level’s design or movement, the game seldom repeats an obstacle long enough for the solution to become automatic and mindless. Similarly the narration, the environment look and character appearance, is abstract enough to be universally surreal and familiar enough to be immediately endearing. Simple graphic design means that minor color, enemy and architecture motifs add an unexpectedly large emotional element to what is essentially a meaningless kinetic puzzle. While the game is addictive and wonderfully entertaining, it is the emotional attachment to the world that has allowed the franchise to endure.

Such is the truth with all video games. Whether it is the emotional attachment to the gameplay or the game environment, it is emotion and not thought that draws us to gaming. We play so that we can feel, not so that we can think. This is perhaps the most unfortunately assumed aspect of gaming, because for us to think and feel together makes us better people.

Blood

Blood is an interesting thing isn’t it? Seldom is there a sense of apathetic acceptance for the presence of blood, save perhaps in the medical and meat packing industries. In most other contexts the presence of blood is met with some sort of emotional response. When seen in the context of a real person it is met with fear and revulsion. On the news it is a magnet for attention, capturing fascination and fascinated horror. If placed in a truly fictional environment it can elicit anything from disgust to elated excitement. Obviously there is something special about blood, but it cannot be chalked up to simply the fact that it is part of our body. We can see images of brains and think them mundane or bizarre. We can see skeletons and be entertained by their humorous visage. The disassembly of the human body is not alone enough to subject us to disgust and fear. Nor is the presence of violence alone enough to satisfy our desire for violence. The presence of the prodigal red liquid is necessary to satiate our bloodlust. Its absence serves to sanitize copious violence. What is it about blood that can instill us with such phobia? Why does the sight of it in flight bring such unparalleled relief to our secret primal desires?

Blood denotes tragedy and violence. It signifies crisis and loss of comfort. It is the aftermath of something horrible, and the beginning of some new horror to come. Moreover, it means something is wrong. It means something in the safe and predictable world has gone awry. Yet it is not always so.

Blood is just under the surface of every part of our bodies at all times. To see it is to know that some membrane has broken; its natural brightness staining and shattering the earth tones of our clothing and living spaces and lives.

It is one of the few untamed liquids in our domestic world. Our environments are composed of solids and shapes. Geometric and manipulateable. Liquids become imprisoned in vessels. The few times when liquids are permitted to leave our control are often regarded with caution and disdain. With few exceptions, blood is never contained. Its arrival is unexpected and surprising. Its recognition is automatic. Once it appears, standard and practiced behaviors come into place. Halt its flow, dispose of its residue, eliminate its threat to our psyche. Blood is to be controlled and disposed of.

Blood is evil.
Yet blood is our life.

To die is to loose the flow of blood in the body. Brain damage, heart stopped, loss of blood flow, loss of oxygen. Heart wound, unable to pump blood, loss of oxygen to cells. Asphyxiation, loss of oxygen, blood is rendered useless.

Blood is our band-aid. Its course is our body’s tried and true method of maintaining its shield from the threats of the external. It is our life and it flows from us, escaping its incarceration in our bodies, betraying its life giving properties as it ventures into the world around us, leaving us behind.

I was cut once at work. A staple punctured my thumb. It managed to miss any significant nerves. I felt nothing. Blood left my finger freely. My first reaction was typical. My heart rate increased and I went for a rag. But the absence of pain changed the situation. Stopping the blood meant stopping the pain. But there was no pain. No reason to stop it.

I let it flow. A thin thread of my life trickled down my thumb and circled my knuckle. Held away from my body, its bright color dazzled me. It meandered over and traced my veins, creating an ironic dichotomy. I was entranced. My fluid inside come to visit my eyes, benign and elegant. Untamed and nimble. The unseen beauty of my body revealed in contrast to the external world in which my body thrives.

Its vivid color. Its unmistakable brilliant crimson glow.
My blood stopped its dance of its own accord and I was genuinely sad for its absence. My coworkers were mortified. I was bleeding. Bleeding! Wash your hands! Nurse your wound! Fix yourself!

Fear of blood has been rationalized by the threat of infection, but exists because of the circumstances that accompany its entrance into our safety. At the same time, the semi-universal fear of blood is met with a semi-universal attraction to it. Whether triggered by hormones or environment, whether it brings delight or simple fascination, people pay attention to blood.

I’m sure not everyone has bloodlust. I’m sure not everyone who seeks blood has a desire to see it. But thirst for violence exists. And violence is not complete without blood. Death is not true without proof of life’s absence. If we desire death, we desire the image of life leaving. Of pain coursing and safety spilling.

At times however, bloody violence can be grounding. A blood-smattered surface is an effective conveyance of a violent act, and is more tolerable than perhaps seeing the act take place, or further, of experiencing the suffering of the victim. It may in fact be soothing to have one’s senses washed with red warmth rather than be forced to endure the empathic sensation of pain.

Yet this is not what I see bloodlust to be. To me, searching for the sight of life fluid strewn on one’s body and environment is not so much the want to create sadistic pain and suffering, but is more a draw to the powerful image of profound destruction.

All the afore mentioned imagery serves to imbue blood with magical symbolism. To draw another’s life from their body is to create an elegant destructive act. It is creation from destruction, control over the untouchable, ultimate freedom from restraining taboos. To see blood is to witness the disassembly of the most fragile and sacred of paradigms. To create blood it is to experience the most tantalizing of destructive acts. To create blood is to witness the reversal of the elusive property of life. To experience dynamic death with eyes and skin and nose is to know elusive life with the same senses in a more tangible way than is ever possible.
However, not all thirsts for blood can be attributed to such a spiritual exploration. There is also a definitive expression of power in killing, and especially in drawing blood. To be in combat can be experienced not only as the fight for one’s self, but as the fight for someone else’s self. Victory exalts the victor in any contest, but in a contest where life is the reward, triumph means the prize of two lives, the winner’s and the loser’s. This relationship may not be experienced clearly without the tangible aid of life lost, the visual and visceral witnessing of life leaving the body. To coerce the life from another’s body, draw the profound red ocean from another’s world, is wearing victory, displaying the fascinating macabre of your own mortality in front of your own eyes, holding your own death before you while maintaining the safety of life. It is selfish in the utmost.

A final interpretation of this bizarre enjoyment harkens back to the idea of destruction as creation. Whether correlated to hormones or to gender specific child rearing behaviors, like the thirst for violence an enjoyment exists which focuses on the chaotic destruction of objects.
Breaking things is fun. It is a pleasure that may be related to that of careful dissection of objects, an endeavor viewed as much more benign. The fascination with how things are constructed is one that is not at all uncommon. Engineers often regale friends with tales of their earliest interest in taking machines apart to see how they work. Few children have never felt a sense of fascination for a diagram of their own muscular structures in a biology book. Knowing how things are put together is interesting. Taking them apart is entertaining. Breaking them can be exciting. Watching an object smash into pieces, seeing the textures and weights and viscosities mix and interact can be fascinating. The act is violent. It requires force, creates noise. Muscles flare and hormones churn. The result is a temporal sculpture. Dynamic artwork with the element of surprise as one of its rewards. Objects which are familiar and plain become transformed into dancing arrays of novel shapes. Tensions are released as plastic coverings shatter and wheels tumble into space. The rigidity of the world is stressful. Objects resist our will and obstruct our desires. The physicality of the world around us exerts a sort of power in the sense that we are unable to change it. Breaking objects fills some of us with a sense of control over our environment that nothing else can match. Not only control, but dominance. Nothing alludes to power the way destruction does. Whether it is a fallacy or not to associate the destroyed with the weak, the destroyer with power, it is done. The powerful have the power to tear us apart.

Among the objects in the world which exert more power over our free will, which limit us in infuriating ways, is our own human form. Our body constricts our desires and imaginations. It is our most intimate possession and our most intimate obstacle. The fear of pain and death suffocates our behavior and puts blinders on our willingness to act. Yet this fear cannot lessen the desire to destroy, to master and control and rule, the human form. In fact, it may even serve to heighten it. How exciting to command control over the human body. How freeing to separate one’s self from the confines of height and weight, breath and pulse, hunger, thirst, thought. The fantasy of disembodied life endures in religion and folklore. Persistent thought and experience after death is life’s reward for many. When reason falters in the face of emotion and passion overtakes the mind and imagination, murderers become triumphant knights of the human condition, triumphing over humanity and surpassing the human form. To destroy the body can be to vicariously liberate one’s mind and free the ethereal self from flesh for the brief moment that act is in progress. Creating gore may for a brief instant exalt a mortal to a position of spirit. To destroy a body might feel like conquering all of humanity.