The Internet is flooded with blogs about video games and the video game industry. There are blogs previewing games, blogs reviewing games, blogs churning the video game industry rumor mill, and blogs relentlessly hyping the next big game. Most odorous of all are the sites that offer little else other than space for fanboys to have flame wars over which console/game is better than which.
That’s all well and good, but I feel there’s a significant bit lacking in the discourse over video games. It’s fine to get hyped about upcoming titles (I do it constantly, trust me) and even fanboy debates can be amusing for a while, but whenever I talk to my closest friends about video games, conversation inevitably turns to the past. My friend Matt and I can only talk about the upcoming Bioshock Infinite for so long, as our knowledge of the game is obviously scant, and clearly we haven’t played it. But get us going on Bioshock, and prepare yourself for a long discussion of its themes, its best moments, how it made us feel.
To be clear, I don’t think what’s missing from the video game discussion is nostalgia. In fact there are a ton of great trips down video game memory lane online (Angry Video Game Nerd is a titan, if you ask me). I feel it’s a lack of critical analysis (to be clear, not review style criticism, there is plenty of that) of games and gaming as a whole that’s truly missing online and in print. Now, I know that this is somewhat of a generalization. IGN, for example, often has opinion pieces written by editors, which I find quite refreshing. Michael Thompson recently penned a rather lengthy essay titled The Miseducation of Mario: Galaxy 2 and Limbo that discussed the difference in how both games felt to play. Essentially, this is a discussion of tone. I felt like I was reading an essay or op-ed for a literature class in college, except the subject was not modern vs. post-modern, Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald, but rather Limbo vs. Mario Galaxy! This kind of discussion fascinates me. I have read other analysis type pieces online, and, agree or not, I always thoroughly enjoy them. But they are far too rare. The most common type of critical discussion centers on the “are video games art?” question[1]. This is, I feel, an important debate, and I enjoy it, but there is so much else to discuss. Most books and shows I see on the topic of video games cover the history of the industry. These too are important and interesting, but its only one half of the study of games. A cinema studies course load would never include just the history of the movie industry; it needs analysis of theme, tone, technique etc.
There is a litany of literature critiquing, analyzing, examining, discussing and dissecting books, painting, sculpture, television, music, and cinema available to us. Yet video games remain largely unexamined. Why the discrepancy? No one can really claim that gaming is still in its infancy. Video games emerged 30-40 years ago (depending on your interpretation) and have rapidly developed into a widely recognized and extremely profitable entertainment media. So why does no one take them seriously? I feel its time to start. Obviously, Tetris doesn’t deserve to have tomes written about its deeper meanings. Perhaps no game does. But many deserve to be picked over, not just played through. Like I said, though, I’m not trying to be elitist or pretentious. There will be no Freudian analysis of Duke Nukem. (Actually Duke could use some therapy, probably)
Some people, however, would argue that games are only for fun, purely recreational, and anything further is superfluous. If that is your opinion, I don’t suppose this blog would interest you at all, and I don’t even think I could change your mind. Personally, I wholeheartedly disagree. Games are, first and foremost, fun, but this fact alone demands they be explored. Why is a game fun? What makes a game better or more fun than another game? Especially now, with games becoming more and more “cinematic” (I hate this term, but I’ll use it for now) it behooves us to ask, “what is this game trying to tell me?” and further, “how is this game going about telling me this?” If you don’t think games are telling you something, if you don’t think there’s a good reason you feel something when you play a game, or beat a level, or even get an achievement point or trophy, then you aren’t paying attention. Maybe I can change your mind.
For the rest of you (if there are any of you) I hope you find what I have to say at least somewhat engaging. If not, we can always have a flame war…
[1] I do plan on weighing in on that in a future article (short answer: of course I feel they are) but I’d like to wait; as I said, there are actually a lot of articles about this question out there.
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