Welcome.
Here you are, at the root
of another damned blog about video games, some other
thirtysomething male's
time-waster and futile ambition-fulfiller. Or, at least, I'll have
been thirtysomething at the time of my writing this initial post. If
you're from the far-flung future and managed to crawl your way down
the archives, then this probably amounts to the prophetic ravings of
a now-senile old man. That is, if there's still such a thing as the
Internet in the year 20XX. I'm pretty sure the aliens will have taken
over by then.
If
you're here, then my ramblings somehow gathered a small following and
some people actually care to see what I have to say about video
games. I'm but one of many, but my perspective is my own. Agree or
disagree with me, I'll just be happy to know that someone cared
enough to read my words while I soapboxed in front of a crusty
Logitech G510 keyboard. If I manage to entertain you while doing it,
then it's a plus in my book.
So
who's this Tom Magnus guy, and is he really an esquire? Of course
not, Voice in my Head, I'm no member of any gentry and all I've got
going for me is an excessive amount of education. Pick any fast food
joint worker or taxi driver and start asking; you'll find that
degrees in literature aren't always conducive to steady employment.
Suffice it to say, I'm the guy who chose between staying sane and
finishing his master's thesis on H.P. Lovecraft, thereby condemning
himself to an eternity of freelance work as a syllabus-correction
goon. The Higher Ed system spat me out three years ago, and I've been
trying to survive ever since. “Overqualified and underpaid” feels
like the motto for a huge chunk of Millennials, honestly...
The
thing is, I love video games more than I do French Structuralism or
Russian Formalism, and care more about Doomguy or the Dovahkiin than
I do about Leslie Fiedler or S.T. Joshi. I love reading,
and I especially enjoy reading complex stuff – but writing about
it is a huge turn-off.
Intellectualizing a novel deemed to be crucial to a specific analytic
approach is hard work, whereas intellectualizing the Dark
Souls series, for example, is
endlessly stimulating to me.
A
few decades ago, gaming didn't have its theorists. Before Altug
Isigan left his mother's womb and Tom Bissell grew to be old enough
to pontificate on Resident Evil's
influence on his childhood, “game theory” was a term typically
used in Anthropology to define the social roles filled in by a
specific culture's devised amusements. It was also used in Behavioral
psychology to refer to the triggers pulled by gambling mechanics.
Now, however, we have entire papers dissecting design approaches
spanning decades on end, and have developed a rich academic
vocabulary to put to use in describing the various facets of the
medium. We've come a long way since Tennis for Two and
Pong, to the point
where we now have offerings that can elicit profound emotional
responses in players.
Here's
a thought experiment: think of the words “Clementine and Lee”.
Did you feel a pang of anguish or a vague sense of regret? Better
yet, did your eyes start watering? Now think back on the halcyon days
of the early seventies and ask yourself how, outside of D&D
campaigns, you were supposed to capture that feeling. You couldn't,
of course. Unless you had a really good
DM or your text adventure was assembled with the utmost narrative
care, it was impossible to imagine that what we now group under the
term “Gaming” would eventually move people to such a degree.
We
live in a crazy time, come to think of it. I'm writing this in July
of 2016, and the park two bends away from home is the subject of a
small throng of kids and adults. They're not congregating there
because of their pets or because the weather's nice, but because a
phone app told them to. There was a tiny fictitious animal to capture
in the neighborhood's spectral twin, and all the
kids as well as several adults around my age group raced outside to
try and claim it – if not duel each other for it. If they'd looked
disheveled and had been displaying flocking behaviors, I'd have
pegged the scene for something straight out of Stephen King Cell.
Pokémon
Go players and Phoners – même
combat.
Imagine
trying to explain that to Shigeru Miyamoto even as Nintendo's nascent
form is prototyping the first few Donkey Kong cabinets.
Better yet, imagine yourself sitting the Pokémon Company's lead
designer down in the early nineties, and telling him that his
innocent little critters would rule the world not only once – but
twice. The franchise
certainly languished in the late nineties and early two-thousands,
but the shareholder confusion involving the app's ownership is
telling. Nobody cares about who owns Pokémon Go,
the only thing players care about is catching 'em all. If that means
walking to new parts of town, getting mugged or meeting fellow
players and complete strangers, all the better!
That
example aside, gaming is evolving at a pace that literature and
cinema both pale to reproduce. Writing might be done with a keyboard
now, instead of a stylus and a clay tablet, but the practice of it
still remains the same. The mechanics
of writing appear to be either unchangeable, or possessed of a
particular form of grace and efficiency that makes the thought of
changing them laughable. Comparatively, movies are still doing most
of what the silent era used to, as they aren't much more than
captured movements either pressed on celluloid or digitized. The
camera has free range of motion and can shrink and grow as needed,
sound design has exploded in complexity since the 1920s and Al
Jolson's Blackface performance and we can capture vistas and actions
that are thoroughly out of this world – but the guiding principles
are much the same. Comparatively, gaming needed all of sixty
years to develop a narrative
expertise and a grasp of projected three-dimensional space on flat
surfaces, only to now reject
these notions and to be contemplating the gamer's complete physical
projection into their suggested spaces. Pictural art hasn't
fundamentally changed in thousands of years – not since the birth
of Man, actually - whereas its moving and interactive cousin is
mutating and evolving at a breakneck pace.
Consider
the average PC gamer. If you're one of them, like I used to be until
recently, how often did the technological horizon occupy your
thoughts? How often do you find yourself thinking that your rig needs
an upgrade or two, or that it might be time to scrap it all and start
over? We're chasing the horizon, gunning for the future – and
that's something few, if any other medium can hope to capture. Beyond
the materialistic satisfaction of having built this year's Beastly
Rig of Death, there's awe and wonder at the incremental efforts made
by the industry. Console gamers experience it as well, albeit on a
smaller, more gentle hill. The climb is longer, but console advocates
tend not to worry about silly notions along the lines of PC parity.
30
FPS or 60? Or 120, if you're one of the 4K Gaming Prophets? None of
it matters on a fundamental level – all that does matter is that
you're sitting down to play a game.
You're sitting down to experience the awe and wonder of the medium,
to feel yourself converging with a piece of fiction or a historical
re-enactment. You're swinging for the fences or saving the land,
gunning an enemy down or trying to wrap your head around some
Byzantine affair some hoity-toity designer dared to call a puzzle.
Sometimes, you don't even need hardware to experience that thrill.
Common experiences, shared tales, “Oh, snap!” moments retold with
a giddy smile – all these are part of the experience as well.
Gaming also involves what brings you around a table, drinks in hand
or snacks on call, to share in that awe.
Why
do you game, honestly?
You play games because they move you. They touch you.
They mean something to you. We all have a relative who barely touches
a gaming PC or a console and whose experience is limited to yearly
sports releases or the occasional overly-enthusiastic recommendation.
Even this guy has one or two tales tucked away; close shaves and
near-misses that he'll tell you about if you squeeze the proverbial
lemon just so. Honestly, if you sit down in front of a console or
gaming PC for any other reason, or if those other reasons take
precedence, then I honestly pity you.
Skill,
bragging rights, maintained leaderboard dominance or a slavish
adherence to real-time mechanics – all of these factors pale in
comparison to those golden moments that make your eyes go wide and
that pull at the corners of your lips; all those clutch victories
gained at a sliver of health. If you've thanked your lucky stars
after a tough fight and spent a few minutes soaking the scenery in to
calm down, you've experienced part of what gaming has to offer.
That's
what I'd like to talk about here. Games and experiences that moved me
– as well as those that gave it an honest try and fell short.
No
scores, no bullshit – just some guy's opinion.
If
that interests you, then please – feel free to tag along.
