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What’s Fun Got to do with it?
I have a rant about the dogma of ‘fun’ which goes like this: Brokeback Mountain (or Schindler’s List, or your favorite depressing movie) is a powerful and valuable film, and I’m glad it exists, but I wouldn’t consider it ‘fun’.
Why are games so fixated on being fun, and how much is this hurting us? Fun, they say, exists only for diversion and irrelevance, whereas heavy emotion permeates the most crucial moments of our lives.
That’s obviously an oversimplification, but if we want our medium to be taken seriously, it wouldn’t hurt to demonstrate that both Fun and Not Fun games are equally within our capabilities.
This is easier to rant about than accomplish. Something about being Not Fun goes against the grain of the interactive medium, which explains why Fun games have emerged much more readily than their Not Fun counterparts.
Contemplating this challenge takes us through murky and dangerous waters, face to face with our most poorly understood and shameful topics, so I’d like to devote the next couple of columns to it.
In thinking about what makes a movie fun, we may turn to lightweight material, like birthday parties, talking dogs and entire worlds of sunshine where no one gets beaten to death for their sexual preferences.
Actually, fun movies tend to have one foot in dark topics and cover a wide spectrum of emotion, including desperation, embarrassment, and anger. Take a look at The Last Crusade. Indiana Jones shoots one bullet, killing five German soldiers standing in single file, then blinks at his pistol in comic surprise. Gosh, how silly!
Whether it’s falling out of an aeroplane without a parachute or ripping the still-beating heart from the chest of a sacrificial victim, films get to be fun while depicting things that in real life would traumatise us horribly.
Imagine this: a German widow trembles as she’s handed the telegram informing her that her husband was killed in the line of duty by a renegade American archeologist. She collapses in tears against the stoic delivery man, her small children blinking in confusion behind her. That would be an awkward scene to cut into The Last Crusade, right?
In a Fun movie, you aren’t being asked to believe in or consider the dark subjects, which frees you to see the invigorating and humorous side to a multiple murder. By contrast, a Not Fun movie doesn’t give you permission to blow off the difficult material, it forces you to respect and absorb it. Not Fun places heaviness in the bottom of a topic, whereas Fun deals only with the lightweight top.
So it’s the treatment rather than the topic that creates the distinction. If Not Fun treatments are supposed to examine consequences, that should work in our favour. After all, compared to film, we can give our audience a much more direct relationship with choice and consequence.
This all starts to suggest a formula we could follow. The easiest Not Fun game to make should be one that takes a dark topic, examines it deeply enough to produce valuable insights, applies a serious, accountable treatment, and presents the player with choices that have consequences. Are we up to it?
Well, writing a story is hard, and writing a deep and meaningful one is even harder. Filmmakers have been at it a lot longer and are probably more capable. They also have a much easier task. As a non-interactive medium, they only have to craft one fixed sequence of events that rings true, a single, believable example to investigate the topic. Compared to that, we’re doomed.
To write for the interactive medium is to create an entire possibility space where many stories can exist, ideally all equally poignant and honest. The hardest part is that crafting all of those alternate angles on the same material requires a profound and complete understanding of the topic.
You have to describe the rules that will cause the story to unfold honestly regardless of whatever action the player takes. It’s little wonder that we’ve done our best work on topics like rendering and physics, objective subjects where the rules have been written for us in advance.
Describing the algorithm for something like human hardship and sorrow is a much more daunting and subjective task. Instead we’ve always bailed on some part of the formula. We might choose only light topics, like in a Mario game. We might give dark topics a light treatment, like in Dead Rising. We might treat them seriously but without much depth, like in Eternal Darkness or Max Payne. Or it might not be all that interactive, like in Final Fantasy or Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy).
And even if we followed the formula for a subject we understood well enough to reconstruct with game systems, there would be many unanswered questions. Why would we want our players to feel bad about themselves?
Are difficult topics less appealing in the interactive medium because players don’t want to be that directly involved? Is ‘fun’ in a movie even the same kind of fun we mean when we talk about games?
Why are games so fixated on being fun, and how much is this hurting us? Fun, they say, exists only for diversion and irrelevance, whereas heavy emotion permeates the most crucial moments of our lives.
That’s obviously an oversimplification, but if we want our medium to be taken seriously, it wouldn’t hurt to demonstrate that both Fun and Not Fun games are equally within our capabilities.
This is easier to rant about than accomplish. Something about being Not Fun goes against the grain of the interactive medium, which explains why Fun games have emerged much more readily than their Not Fun counterparts.
Contemplating this challenge takes us through murky and dangerous waters, face to face with our most poorly understood and shameful topics, so I’d like to devote the next couple of columns to it.
In thinking about what makes a movie fun, we may turn to lightweight material, like birthday parties, talking dogs and entire worlds of sunshine where no one gets beaten to death for their sexual preferences.
Actually, fun movies tend to have one foot in dark topics and cover a wide spectrum of emotion, including desperation, embarrassment, and anger. Take a look at The Last Crusade. Indiana Jones shoots one bullet, killing five German soldiers standing in single file, then blinks at his pistol in comic surprise. Gosh, how silly!
Whether it’s falling out of an aeroplane without a parachute or ripping the still-beating heart from the chest of a sacrificial victim, films get to be fun while depicting things that in real life would traumatise us horribly.
Imagine this: a German widow trembles as she’s handed the telegram informing her that her husband was killed in the line of duty by a renegade American archeologist. She collapses in tears against the stoic delivery man, her small children blinking in confusion behind her. That would be an awkward scene to cut into The Last Crusade, right?
In a Fun movie, you aren’t being asked to believe in or consider the dark subjects, which frees you to see the invigorating and humorous side to a multiple murder. By contrast, a Not Fun movie doesn’t give you permission to blow off the difficult material, it forces you to respect and absorb it. Not Fun places heaviness in the bottom of a topic, whereas Fun deals only with the lightweight top.
So it’s the treatment rather than the topic that creates the distinction. If Not Fun treatments are supposed to examine consequences, that should work in our favour. After all, compared to film, we can give our audience a much more direct relationship with choice and consequence.
This all starts to suggest a formula we could follow. The easiest Not Fun game to make should be one that takes a dark topic, examines it deeply enough to produce valuable insights, applies a serious, accountable treatment, and presents the player with choices that have consequences. Are we up to it?
Well, writing a story is hard, and writing a deep and meaningful one is even harder. Filmmakers have been at it a lot longer and are probably more capable. They also have a much easier task. As a non-interactive medium, they only have to craft one fixed sequence of events that rings true, a single, believable example to investigate the topic. Compared to that, we’re doomed.
To write for the interactive medium is to create an entire possibility space where many stories can exist, ideally all equally poignant and honest. The hardest part is that crafting all of those alternate angles on the same material requires a profound and complete understanding of the topic.
You have to describe the rules that will cause the story to unfold honestly regardless of whatever action the player takes. It’s little wonder that we’ve done our best work on topics like rendering and physics, objective subjects where the rules have been written for us in advance.
Describing the algorithm for something like human hardship and sorrow is a much more daunting and subjective task. Instead we’ve always bailed on some part of the formula. We might choose only light topics, like in a Mario game. We might give dark topics a light treatment, like in Dead Rising. We might treat them seriously but without much depth, like in Eternal Darkness or Max Payne. Or it might not be all that interactive, like in Final Fantasy or Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy).
And even if we followed the formula for a subject we understood well enough to reconstruct with game systems, there would be many unanswered questions. Why would we want our players to feel bad about themselves?
Are difficult topics less appealing in the interactive medium because players don’t want to be that directly involved? Is ‘fun’ in a movie even the same kind of fun we mean when we talk about games?
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It's tough, really. Tough to be realized, and even if it can, it's tough to be a commercial success. The same goes for movies, 'not-fun' movies tend to have less successful box office revenue compared to the 'fun' ones. It's pretty much natural IMHO, we seek entertainment as a break from reality. Real life already full of crap, thus, less people are interested to add more depressing issues to their already depressed minds. Although it can be a good break too once in a while to watch serious movies, beside for entertainment, it can be a good means for self introspection and learning from 'other's' experiences.
Another point, movies are non interactive media and can be enjoyed in less time span. Thus, the audience don't have to invest as much commitment, time and psychological resources as those with games.
I'm not saying it's not possible, but it would be much more difficult... not to mention getting investment to develop this kind of 'not-fun' genre.
I didn't take the time to read all the comments (but most) so I may be regurgitating prior viewpoints/responses but I think that many games do eschew the need to be "fun" in the sense of sunshine and laughs, bluecat notes some worthy examples in his first post (Around 5 or 6 posts down). I generally think of a game as "fun" or not according to its gameplay/mechanics (My viewpoint on "fun" corresponds with Jose's very well put discourse in the below post) and if the content was more mature/intellectual/poignant/introspective/relevant/issue based rather than flippant, I would take this in and still find the game fun or enjoyable independent of whether I was depressed because of the content or not, if the story was bad yet the mechanics were deep (Kind of like Final Fantasy 12) I would most likely still enjoy the game (Not as much though). It's like if Brokeback Mountain or any film you really enjoy had the same dialogue and Actors except the cinematography was really bad(Note: many good indie films have "bad" cinematography this can be part of the charm kind of like how Resident Evil's camera sucks but adds to the atmosphere), or a book with interesting content but the writer was a really bad. I would finish watching this film or reading this book and I would not have enjoyed it, maybe I still consider the material in it but as an Art form I would toss it aside. If a games gameplay is no good then it is bad, fullstop. The art form of a game lies in the gameplay, if you're using gameplay as a vehicle for your story but you've failed to implement engaging game mechanics along with the story then you have failed in your delivery.
On that note because you have to conform to game mechanics and conventions to a certain extent it is hard to tackle many subjects. Such as sexuality, I will applaud the game developer who makes something which deals with issues like the difficulties of being a gay cowboy in Southern America, and does it well. I don't think I'll be applauding anytime soon because I think developers think (and in my humble opinion rightly so) that the game community would shun such themes in a game, I was going to say that it would be hard to play as the protagonist, a gay cowboy, if you weren't gay, but we as gamers are pretty used to taking the role of strange characters. However in this situation it is so much more about who the character is,and we are not them,so unless you're gay the actions we would need to take in order to play out a gay relationship would be confusing(hitting on Jake or Heath depending on the character you chose), unless the fact that you're a gay cowboy is irrelevant and what you're really out to do is shoot some shit up, possibly bigots, then the exposition of the character would be done in cutscenes like every other FPS, whereas the gameplay would just be killing stuff the character acts as a kind of justification as to why you're shooting shit, the problem is actually creating a game where the exposition comes out during the gameplay. I think engines like the one for Quantic Dreams game Heavy Rain: the Origami Killer and the game itself are important projects for the development of the game industry. However like ICO, Fahrenheit and other games which did something contrary to populist demand and were critically acclaimed for it yet didn't sell that well are unlikely to get many other publishers buying there engine(s) and creating other games using the merits of their prior development.
Great essay. I've always felt uncomfortable by the use of the word "fun" in gaming discussions. It seems to me that the word is used primarily as a cop-out meant to disguise our inability to articulate or justify our feelings toward a game. "Fun" is what we say when we attempt to justify the purchase of a mediocre sequel ("yes I know it's the same exact Mario Kart...but come on that's a fun game!). Conversely, we often use "not fun" as a way of explaining our disinterest in a game that we perhaps should have played ("I know Harvest Moon has its fans, but farming and virtual courtship are not my idea of fun"). In both of these cases, the word fun is simply used as a way of legitimizing our biases without losing face as "serious gamers."
What is more, we can usually get away with this because "fun" is both central to gaming discourse and a fundamentally ambiguous concept.
No More Heroes, for example, was criticized by some because it forces you to work spectacularly mundane jobs in between the "fun" missions. 'It is pretentious to make us work,' they said, 'games are meant to be fun.'
And yet, these are the very same people who would gladly spend hours running circles around the first town of a Dragon Quest game in order to level-up.
Is that sort of level-grinding that much different than NMH's (satirical) celebration of tedious manual labor? How could one be considered fun while the other is thought to be repetitive and unnecessary? Or perhaps neither one is "fun" in itself but both are essential to their respective games?
Alas, these problems are the direct result of abusing an utterly ambiguous word like "fun," a concept that can literally mean anything--or nothing.
My 1st comment: (^_^).
Very interesting topic and points all around.
Fun and 'Not Fun'.
- "Prince of Tides, huh. is this a fun film?", "No, it's not meant to be."
Sounds about right.
or
- "Biohazard, huh. Is this a fun game?", "No, it's not meant to be."
This one, not so much.
I suppose there are three keys in the components that can be drawn from the relation between game and film media to this subject's regard:
1) Subject Matter / Content
2) Activity / Interactivity
3) Immersion / Personal investment
In Film, 1 (subject matter and content) secures the most significance in producing a work that is either fun or 'not fun' than 2 and 3. Fun, as an activity, can be drawn from a 'not fun' film without necessarily affecting the 'not fun'-ness of said film –– with reverse being also true. For example, watching a movie can be a smile-filled, fun parade even though you're watching Titanic. Likewise, the emotional bond created through being immersed and personally invested (3) in a movie like WALL-E (fun) or The Passion of the Christ ('not fun') can be equally enjoyable.
In Gaming, all three components are almost irrevocably conjoined to the degree that developing a Fun and a 'Not Fun' work is contingent on how well the three components coincide with one another. Having a 'Not Fun' subject matter (terminally-viral epidemic), while combining a fun activity ('killing' zombies) within an immersive 'not fun' setting (abandoned old mansion), causes the game to lose much of its 'not fun' status. In order to make a game not-fun and keep the integrity of the "not fun"-ness intact, you'd have to limit the interactivity to allow the content and subject matter to immerse the player/user/gamer; which would be like telling your film's audience they can only see your horror movie at night - which would cause the quality of the game to suffer.
Also, the mediums are different in purpose and application.
Films can be designed, produced and displayed to either inform, entertain, or challenge. It can solely perform one of those tasks or any combination of the three; while a game that merely seeks to inform, and not entertain or challenge, could not truly be defined as a 'game'.
I loved this article when I read it in the mag. Good stuff. Personally I think the term 'not-fun' is a bit far-fetched, I'd have gone with something like intellectual, engaging etc. Games can still move away from the quo and challenge the player on more levels than difficulty and still be deeply rewarding and satisfying to play. Admittedley the serious tones of games that manage to achieve this do tend to be less 'fun', but not in the litteral sense that the word implies.
You still have fun (to a certain degree) playing serious or rather thought provoking games that, rather than simply want to entertain, challenge the player and provoke a response that makes the player want to keep on playing.
If films have taught us anything its that provoking responses from an audience provides them with a far greater understanding of the film. Furthermore being able to appreciate a film for its more artistic merits is far more satisfying than simply sitting back and being able to enjoy it, or say "yeah, that was fun to watch".
Saving Private Ryan wasn't fun to watch, nor was Forest Gump or V for Vendetta, but to me these films are absolutley stunning because they give a different take on cinema as a whole. They break from the status quo and offer something truly unique to their particular medium.
Games need to do more to challenge the quo, rather than simply sit back and create samey games for the sake of reaching profit targets. Developers also need to be willing to become more flexible when looking at content/ subject matter for their games. Instead of asking questions like "what will they like?" or "how can we get granny involved?" they need to start asking "how will this make the player react?" and "what will keep the player immersed?".
I never thought about videogames as "fun", even if a lot of players and developers go on talking about it as it's the only goal to reach when you make a videogame.
But it's not like this. I really think that a videogame must create an Experience, not only fun.
A videogame can simulate every situation you could ever think about: maybe it's hard to do it because it takes a lot of time, but you can really create any kind of Experience.
Fun or sad it doesn't matter.
Well, a lot of developers - the ones not minding so much about money - go on trying to create something innovative. And if you don't look just for fun maybe you can create something new easier.
Anyway, a game which creates and shows the consequences of the things you do is really harder to make - but not to think - then a game where when you kill an enemy he just vanishes and you never heard about him again. There are really a few games where you can see real consquences when you make a choiche, and when it's done in a good way you have FallOut 3 or Heavy Rain.
"Why would we want our players to feel bad about themselves? "
I think it's called catharsis?
Anyway, I really enjoyed this article!
I know "Shadow of the Colossus" is the most overused example of games-as-art, but I really think that it is one of the best examples of a "not fun" game - that still succeeds in beeing a enormously enjoyable (although not ha-ha) experience.
I think that a videogame can be considered fun for several reasons:
engagement, immediacy in controlling it, not repetitive gameplay..
Anyway, it has to offer players structured conflicts not too easy, nor too difficult to pass that challenge their skills.
This is true for every kinds of game; but it is true also for music, for example.
When you try to play a drum, you have fun if you are good in it. And when you become more skilled, you try song technically more challenging.
These far activities are so similar that in english [I'm italian] you say 'playing a game' and 'playing an instrument' using the same verb.
About narrative media, they are fun if they make me smile. Or laugh.
But videogame are really distant from movies, and like Will Wright said, videogames are close to sport.
When you play soccer, you have fun if you are able to make something difficult [against your skills].
To be fun [and for the same reason, to be 'not fun'], I don't think videogames have to be narrative, like a movie.
Maybe we can think to evolve videogames into something different, something 'not fun' but that speak to the inner self of gamers.
They won't be videogames, it will be 'interactive media'. Not players, but users.
Maybe you have to reduce the 'game side' of the equation, put it a little aside.
We should create systems in which the following magical word is the Queen: responsiveness. Choice and consequences.
Only interactive media can give consequences to users' actions.
In interactive media, nothing works without user; and we can make the user proud for what she does [Ico] or guilty [Deus ex [I won't spoil that touching moment] or Shadows of the colossus].
Maybe we don't need stories... a rich context could be sufficient. Because humans are really good in filling voids: we see stories everywhere [like Blow said, if I remember well].
Here Fumito Ueda comes back again, with his minimalistic design, attention to details, a really little number of characters.
Or Rock band, in which I always make a story from a static image about my group, me and our van in flame.
“Ops, I forgot to check oil level!”
Maybe another player imagined a completely different situation.
And we are both satisfied because we created the situation behind that image.
Given the problems with humans, we could reduce their number and give them an incredible AI [as Borut Ppeiffer said, with his speech about spielberg-fied characters].
A small number of human can make them memorable and with real treats, recognizeable for what they say, they do.
Maybe we could look at psycology, because we don't have the human perfect algorithm, but psycology tries to 'reduce' humans in cause-effect formulas.
So.. Only questions and 'maybes', by now... : )
We want our player to feel bad about themselves because we don't want only fun for them, but to move inside.
Every way we can.
Giuseppe Trapani [junior game designer, Rainbow spa]
Interesting article.
I guess the medium is bound to evolve towards less entertainment-value based standards, for the better as far as I'm concerned. With the progress in technology, I imagine it would become cheaper to produce a game that would be technically decent and comfortable, yet conceptually challenging and which could afford to aim at more of a niche market.
But how would we know "not fun" was the goal of the creator and not a result of incompetence? Perhaps the creator wanted the game to be fun but was unable to execute. In cases like this the creator's intent is pivotal.
Well, it's partly down to the choice of subject matter. I'd struggle to describe Schindlers List as fun, and the videogame equivalent should be the same.
This doesn't mean a 'not fun' game would have poor controls, or a dodgy camera or something, thats not what should be making it 'not fun' in the same way as those should be well done in a fun game, they should be well done here too.
“We want our players to feel, to have an honest heartfelt reaction to the event. This can be feeling sorrow for a character's death (and anger towards the murderer). The villain being the cause of this pain, how much more satisfying is it to defeat them”
I am yet to experience a game that makes me feel, as you say, even vaguely on a par with what even a half-decent Hollywood film provides. Games industry seems to be in some sort of arrested development, stuck in adolescence, it’s voice not quite dropped, sometimes managing to sound grown-up but mostly childishly mimicking its older siblings.
There are entire films and books, dedicated to exploring the devastating effects of death – for the family/friends, the police and even from the point of view of the killer. Yet most games will have you taking life, at least in some form or another, endlessly and without blinking. Sure there is a parallel to the Hollywood action films, but Hollywood also produced ‘There Will Be Blood’, ‘Taxi Driver’ and any number of serious, powerful films.
Where the f*** is our equivalent to these? The hopelessly inept mimickry of Band of Brothers/Saving Private Ryan by Brothers in Arms? The brave yet stunted effort of Fahrenheit?
It’s time for games to grow up, to know when they can be childish and playful and know when they can be serious. Though I doubt this will ever happen, it is after all supply and demand at its roots. They make childish games, we buy them(me included), they make millions – if it ain’t broke why fix it? What’s the incentive to make serious games?
I am yet to experience a game that makes me feel, as you say, even vaguely on a par with what even a half-decent Hollywood film provides.
Why not? What games have failed you in that regard? How have some of these movies been more successful?
Arguing this would be getting into "my opinion vs yours", but for me...
It would be in Metal Gear Solid 3, talking to Johnny about his family. He is a faceless soldier, like any who's neck's have been broken or slit, shot and left in the woods by our protagonist (if you chose to)
And here he is, showing you a picture of his family, about the name he'll give to his son.
It's not in-your-face "here's a shot of soldier B's crying family", Metal Gear Solid 3 did not blare with bright neon letters "THIS IS A SERIOUS STORY ABOUT DEATH AND THE AFFECTS ON FAMILY". This was a single cutscene of many in the MGS story. It's impact is dependent on your own feelings over your own actions.
But the thing is, this affect is dependent on how you've played the game. If you've gone in guns blazing blood letting, maybe you will feel bad when talking to Johnny, or maybe you really don't give a shit about the lives you've taken.
If you've used nonlethal means, sleep darts and sneaking, maybe you are reminded "this is why I do this, because these soldiers are people too". Or maybe you just wanted to complete the game on hardest difficulty.
This is an example of how videogames can be engaging in a manner different from movies.
It’s time for games to grow up, to know when they can be childish and playful
it's often children who wish they were adults, or adolescents who do things just to appear adult.
And often adults wish they could go back to being children.
I fear that "emotional narrative" in the future may just mean "here's the crying family, cue sad music, we are hollywood quality now". Of course you've said this is what you're against too, so we're basically in agreement there.
Most recently Bioshock and GTA came the closest. It provided story that was absorbing and a huge amount of incidental detail to flesh it all out. GTA 4, at the moment of the pivotal decision felt on a par with how strongly films/books can affect us. But these moment are few and far apart. Maybe what I mean is that these moments shouldn’t be stand-out moments – the industry should be able to make it a norm.
I don’t want to turn Heavy Rain into a shining beacon, but it seems it is the only game on the horizon to be attempting what I’ve been craving for a long time.
The fact that our medium is interactive hold incredible potential to provide emotional narrative that can surpass Hollywood. However that defining characteristic is also what is holding us back. It must be incredibly difficult to create an environment robust enough to withstand the players presence without losing the plot, so to speak. Still, though, Heavy Rain seems to be going for just that and ‘crossing my fingers’ would be an understatement of the year.
The majority of the population of the world do not find that games speak to them. As you've rightly pointed out, they currently only speak to either those who want a quick, cheap thrill (casual games), those who want to train people or make some political message using inane content and mechanics ("serious" games), and those who want the same platformers, blood-soaked shooters, puzzle games, etc (core games).
Most people don't like to play games because either the interface is too complicated or the subject matter is too violent, physically inclined, or completely foreign to how they do things in real life. Yet these people love to read novels, go to the movies, watch television shows, and browse the internet. I strongly believe that given their interest in dramas, comedies, mysteries, and other narrative genres, games can also attract these people too.
So the incentive is quite obvious. It's completely financial. Embracing genuinely communicative content in interactive products will help the games industry to eventually truly surpass the film industry in all aspects including TV distribution and home video sales, not just box office revenue.
And to address the "we buy them" portion of your comment... If we don't break out of the current mold of shooters, casual games, rpgs, etc, we will be doomed to suffer the same fate of comic books in the West. We will be stuck with a couple of niche audiences with absolutely no opportunities for growth. The "innovation" so many industry people talk about constantly is not what they generally think it to be. The change cannot be technological or game mechanical. The change must be in the way games address the conditions of human life as we know it. As an industry, we simply cannot afford to be complacent about this. We must politely, but firmly, convince our peers to change the way they perceive games. We must make them realize that games are not just an entertainment medium. It is also an artistic and communicative medium.
If we don't break out of the current mold of shooters, casual games, rpgs, etc, we will be doomed to suffer the same fate of comic books in the West. We will be stuck with a couple of niche audiences with absolutely no opportunities for growth.
Is there evidence that shows videogames are becomine a more niche market? FPS's and sports titles are very easy for casuals to get into, RPG's have been drawing in more of the female audience. Nintendo's Wii and DS are household phenomenons, grandpa waggling with grandson, dad getting in brain training on the metro to work. World of Warcraft is a household name and has been parodied on popular US show South Park. Same with pokemon, which still sells millions worldwide. I don't think the market is in danger of shrinking. If anything, the danger is in dilution through further mainstreaming (has mainstreaming ever meant 'smarter'? We hear this in criticism of movies all the time)
The change must be in the way games address the conditions of human life as we know it.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Is this changing how games are made? Or just convincing other people to enjoy them?
As an industry, we simply cannot afford to be complacent about this. We must politely, but firmly, convince our peers to change the way they perceive games. We must make them realize that games are not just an entertainment medium. It is also an artistic and communicative medium.
We haven't been complacent about this, if anything we've hopped up all over it for the marketing potential. Halo is not just a FPS, it is a HOLLYWOOD EPIC with booming orchestras. God of War is not just a button masher, the creator says IT WILL MAKE YOU CRY. Gears of War is not just about musclemen fighting musclemonsters, it is about DESTROYED BEAUTY.
The same kind of marketing that drives hollywood movies, whether they are live-changing experiences or immature schlock.
Thanks for the interesting editorial Randy. You've raised some really intersting points.
I think when most people think of "fun" they are actually thinking of "engaging." Think of the games that people have lauded for inspiring sympathy and emotion. Was it fun to harvest slugs from little girls in Bioshock? Was it fun to hug your dead family and give them HP in God of War? Was it fun to watch Aeris die in Final Fantasy VII? Was hanging on hopelessly at the end of Shadow of the Colossus fun?
Those are conisdered "fun" games i guess, but they're really remembered for their success in creating a serious and engaging tone.
Most games (and movies and books) strive to be engaging. When developers say that making "fun" gameplay is fundemental (FUNdemental? yeah? yeah?) they typically mean responsive and intuitive gameplay. I don't think they mean that all games should be sunshine and laughs.
I think there have been some successful games with serious themes, and there will probably be more in the future. I just hope that people don't end up equating artistry with subject matter. If you do a story about the Holocaust, it's automatically serious, but it's not necessarily good. I'd hate to see a future where only "serious" games are taken seriously. You can take fun seriously too. For instance, Dr. Strangelove was a fun and artful movie. The Canterbury Tales is a literary classic and also suprisingly hilarious. And as far as games go, I personally feel there's something profoundly moving in how FUN Super Mario World is.
Artistry doesn't have to equate to subject matter at all. And the (nostalgia-tinted) Mushroom Kingdom can happily co-exist with serious games. It’s not a black or white matter, just that it would be nice to experience a serious game once in a while.
I think it's possible to enjoy Mario without reliance on the rose tint of Nostalgia in the same way it's perfectly acceptable for a modern human to enjoy Charlie Chaplin films.
Charlie Chaplin's films came out in the early days of the film industry. He's best remembered for his silent, black and white films. Much of the technology powering films today did not exist in his time, and yet they are still powerful, timeless films. You could say they are primitive in some aspects (they lack sound and color and lengthy dialog) yet they are very sophisticated in what they accomplish, especially within the limits of technology of the time.
And they accomplish far more than just humor. There are parts to "The Kid" that are absolutely heart wrenching. And the Great Dictator is a masterpiece of humor and satire, using them to deliver a very serious message (though that one came later and has talking).
The work of Charlie Chaplin and other early filmmakers can still elicit powerful responses in modern audiences and at the very least they warrant study for their contributions to the craft and to the arts in general.
I think the same can be said of many "classic" games. I agree that classic games and fun games have a place in the world alongside "serious" games. What I disagree with is the tendency for new gamers and games journalists to limit what they take seriously. A game does not have to have obviously serious subject matter to be mature or warrant serious study. Fun games can be taken seriously too.
I'm as excited for the future of games as anyone else, however, as we look forward, we can't just dismiss the past because there have always been people in games who aspired to create art. And many of them did succeed.
but if we want our medium to be taken seriously
I already 'take it seriously', I figure you 'take it seriously' since you're a writer for a videogame news site. But what does 'take it seriously' mean in the first place? Who is this person who's not 'taking it seriously' that we need to convince?
have a rant about the dogma of ‘fun’ which goes like this: Brokeback Mountain (or Schindler’s List, or your favorite depressing movie) is a powerful and valuable film, and I’m glad it exists, but I wouldn’t consider it ‘fun’.
Those movies may not be 'fun', but they are engaging. You are drawn into the setting, the characters, and their experiences. Fun movies are also engaging, not all engaging movies will be 'fun' as you described.
Final Fantasy as you mentioned, may not be interactive in the sense of choosing 'yes/no' or 'be a jerk/be a nice guy' choices, but it is engaging. We are engaged by the protagonist's story step by step, going through the dungeon, fighting the rivals.
Why would we want our players to feel bad about themselves?
We want our players to feel, to have an honest heartfelt reaction to the event. This can be feeling sorrow for a character's death (and anger towards the murderer). The villain being the cause of this pain, how much more satisfying is it to defeat them
Or the pure frustration of contra bosses. Dying for the Xth time is not what one would call fun, no? But it's the X+1th time when you triumph (due to your own input and not just gambling luck.... although gambling can be engaging too) that 'not-un' translates into fun. Because it is engaging.
Are difficult topics less appealing in the interactive medium because players don’t want to be that directly involved?
The same criticism is leveled at movies all the type, espeically by book reading sorts.
And honestly, how difficult a topic was presented in Brokeback? They're homo cowboy lovers, that's not a very difficult topic to grasp. Jews being persecuted by Nazi's, that is not a very hard topic to grasp. If anything, they are extremely obvious how you're suppose to feel about them.
If anything, a plumber with mushrooms that make him grow big in a land of pipes and turtles... that is a pretty damn hard to grasp topic.
An interactive medium demands involvement. Movies are mostly a passive experience, although there are different storytelling styles that may involve the viewer's thoughts... that's a whole 'nother topic.
A good movie is engaging, some engaging movies are fun. A good game is engaging.
Schindler's List engages you in the world of WWII europe.
Super Mario World engages you in the world of the Mushroom Kingdom.
I don't think games are really lacking anything compared to hollywood in this sense of engagement. Marketing and reputation, that's where things differ.
Thank you for this article. I have long cringed whenever I hear people (especially at the GDC) proclaim that for a game to be successful it must be fun. Like films and literature, games don't have to be "fun," they have to be "compelling."
And concerning possibility spaces, it's frustrating that even if a game doesn't attempt to tell many stories, it's still hard to craft an experience that is consistent no matter how the player behaves. I think that's one of the strengths of Portal - you really can't do anything that breaks the narrative. But compare this to Half-Life 2, in which you are free to run and jump around and swing your crowbar while other characters are trying to have a serious conversation with you (I guess "conversation" should be quotes since you can't actually converse). As soon as we try to deepen a game by adding more characters and drama, we end up breaking the experience somewhat. It seems at the present we are either doomed to sacrifice consistency (HL2) or create worlds that are either vacant of human life (Portal), or filled with characters who are all deceased (BioShock).
Damn good article. Even if it were possible to create play space where all the possible options and permutations a player could affect were viable/believable - who would buy it? You only have to take one look at the industry to see that it clearly is not ready for anything more serious than Hollywood ape-ing.
>>You only have to take one look at the industry to see that it clearly is not ready for anything more serious than Hollywood ape-ing.
But isn't that what this article is suggesting?
To say that Hollywood produces Brokeback Mountain and Schindler's List, then saying games need that 'not fun' aspect to it, is that not aping Hollywood?
To say that Hollywood produces Brokeback Mountain and Schindler's List, then saying games need that 'not fun' aspect to it, is that not aping Hollywood?
Please take no offense when I say this... But see, that statement reflects the "adolescence" that Randy is talking about. Understanding how Hollywood masterfully uses its medium to communicate serious messages and content to its audience is not "aping Hollywood". Nobody is suggesting that we make real-time rendered non-interactive movies. We're simply talking about using game mechanics and all of the other tools at our disposal to communicate serious messages and content to our audience of players in the same way movies have done visually.
I don't ever take offense to thoughtful replies :)
But saying it like that makes it sound like games have never dealt with a serious topic, or delivered any kind of message before, and that hollywood needs to be studied carefully/copied/aped for them to have the same kind of impact as movies.
I guess my main point is... having narrative in games or emotional experiences or serious topics... they've always been with games. It's not a foreign object, extracted from hollywood, to be surgically implanted in videogames.