Opinion

Do You Speak Game?

N'Gai Croal considers the value of non-gamers' views on our hobby, and what we as gamers can learn from them.

There aren’t too many things that I regret in life, but one of the few is that, as a first-year college student, I didn’t apply myself more diligently to my Japanese language class. It seemed like a great idea at the time, and as a game design consultant it would come in extremely handy today. But back then, the challenge of learning a different alphabet and new rules of grammar was far too daunting for me to stick with it. And, as useful as it would be in my current line of work, I can’t see myself devoting the time and energy it would require, given the number of clients I tend to and the amount of time I spend on the road.
 
Examined from this perspective, I find myself sympathetic to American film critic Roger Ebert’s July 1 confession – following yet another videogames-can-never-be-art declaration – that he simply didn’t want to spend his increasingly valuable time educating himself about videogames by playing them. This despite the fact that several game developers, readers and friends offered their valuable time to help him get set up with a console and supply him with a few exemplars of the form, of which Ebert wrote, “I knew (1) I had no desire to spend 20 to 40 hours (or less) playing a videogame, (2) Whether I admired it or not, I was in a lose-lose position, and (3) I was too damned bull-headed”.
 
Having not played any games since Myst, Ebert was effectively illiterate in the medium. And as much as developers should be constantly aware of accessibility issues with their games, it’s not a flaw that’s intrinsic to the medium. After all, books would be similarly inaccessible to us if large amounts of time and money hadn’t been invested in teaching us how to read. And the same would be true of TV and movies if we weren’t all exposed to years and years of moving pictures. So again, I can accept that Ebert would rather spend his work time on film and his leisure time on literature; what is something of a loss is that we won’t benefit from his keen eye, the quality of his thought and his outsider’s perspective on games.
 
Fortunately for those of us who are interested in a literate outsider’s take on the medium, novelist Nicholson Baker devoted eight pages in the August 9 issue of the New Yorker to sharing his experience with the top commercial games of the previous 12 months, from Halo: ODST to Red Dead Redemption. By his own admission, Baker had never held a controller until last autumn, yet, curious about this hobby that occupies so much of his son’s and his son’s friends’ time, he plunged into it head first.
 
He reported on his travails and glories with all the naïveté and curiosity of a travel writer or a newly minted foreign correspondent, marvelling at the impressively complicated controllers for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, being taken aback at the length of games (less like a movie and more like an entire season of a TV show) and being taken in by the beauty of the maps and levels in the games that he plays. He pored over game guides, listened to podcasts, experienced the Red Ring of Death and purchased a PS3.
 
The difference between Ebert’s initial volleys and Baker’s essay was that Baker maintained an open mind, while Ebert’s had been firmly, proudly closed. This isn’t to say that Baker didn’t form any opinions about individual games or develop a rudimentary taste. He found Halo: ODST repetitive; enjoyed the performances in Uncharted 2, the lighting in Red Dead Redemption and the cynicism of Modern Warfare 2; respected the daring of Heavy Rain; and objected to the slasher-film amorality of God of War III.
 
And while there’s a strong sense in which Baker wasn’t writing for you or me – who have played many games and are highly conversant about them – it’s invaluable to be reminded just how much interactive literacy high-end console games require; how many conventions and assumptions go unchallenged; how far they have to go and how much the interfaces may need to evolve in order for the medium to become truly massmarket.
 
In fact, Baker is so observant and eloquent in describing his sojourn in gameland that it’s a shame that the New Yorker didn’t grant him even more space and time. I would have liked to experience other games through his eyes: Rock Band, Braid, Brain Age, Desktop Tower Defense, FarmVille. It would have been interesting to get his thoughts on different input devices besides the 360 and PS3 controllers, especially with Kinect and Move shipping this year. And, most of all, I would have loved to have him interview the developers of the games he had played so that he could engage them on aspects of their game from a perspective that they are rarely if ever confronted with.
 
It’s been 12 years since I was an outsider, and at the time I couldn’t appreciate the usefulness of my perspective because I was so busy trying to keep from drowning in a sea of new information. Now that I speak the language fluently, it’s people like Baker who remind me of the importance of looking at games through fresh eyes.