It has been a distinct pleasure over the last couple of days to be able to sit and read four smart individuals talk about gaming. Yes, the round-table – that staple of Slate’s end-of-year roundups – has come to gaming and N’Gai Croal, Stephen Totilo, Seth and Chris Sullentrope discuss their picks for the year’s best games and their reasons for their choices. What has been remarkable about the discussion is the way in which the writers have sidestepped the usual discussions of the best graphics or weapons and have instead engaged the question of how to evaluate the aesthetic, interactive and narrative elements of gaming. There’s too much to cover in one post, so I’ll break things up into parts. This is the first post, in which I argue that Croal might need to reconsider his perspective on narratives in games.
One of the most interesting things about Slate’s recent round-table on gaming was watching the selected writers start to form a critical vocabulary for evaluating gaming. Reading it, one almost gets the sense that we are witnessing the birth of game criticism proper, rather than the evaluations of economic worth that have passed for game journalism so far. One of the most intriguing discussions that was brought up was Croal’s mention of an oft-cited idea in game studies: that it is simulation and not narrative that is the main ‘expressive mode’ of video gaming, and it is this that I would like to take up here. It would be difficult to posit a hard and fast division of ‘play’ and ’stories’ in games, but it’s certainly true that the thing that separates gaming from other arts is its interactivity. Playing a game like Super Mario Galaxy or Everyday Shooter, it is easy to make the case that the art of game design lies in the actual playing of the title – what the eggheads call a ‘ludic experience’.
That said, as an occasional Marxist, I still believe that art is at its most powerful when it connects with and informs the culture in which it was created. While I agree with the general premise of Croal’s assertion – that gaming must be judged on its own terms and not in relation to other forms – I think we need to consider the position of narrative as fundamental to all human activity. Narrative is how we understand and relate to the world. From grand narratives of nation and identity to our own personal narratives of memory and family, it is our stories that make us who we are. To me, it seems that gaming will be at its most relevant when it places narrative and interactivity on an equal footing in order to create something like Bioshock, a title that blends its elements of story and play into a unique whole. I am not saying that gaming should replicate film; rather in much the same way that film created its own tools to differentiate itself from literature, so too should gaming have its own mode of expressing, experiencing and interacting with stories.
And ultimately, I believe that gaming must create its own language so that it can become culturally relevant. No matter how brilliant Everyday Shooter or Mario are, without narratives what impact will games have beyond being aesthetic experiences? Yes, it’s true that Coltrane or Pollock are ‘merely’ aesthetic experiences – but their introduction to the world was so profound because of their contrast to other works in their form. Gaming does not yet have that luxury of having aesthetic choices become profound statements as is there little context to work in. So while I admire Croal’s passionate defense of gaming and agree in certain ways, I must respectfully dissent – in order for gaming to become a locus of culture or an art form, it must engage and refine its approach to the thing that makes us who we are: narrative.
