Video Game Criticism

[ed]

admin said:

www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/060610_mfe_July_06_Klosterman.html

Oddly enough, the first thing I thought was, why exactly is hip hop relevant? The second thing was, why aren't there going to be newspapers in 25 years? I mean, surely the internet will be everywhere, but it's not a replacement for paper.

I agree with you there. If I can lapse into regular journalistic criticism for a moment, the author's harming his message by throwing in those debatable premises.

And that's tangentially what the my problem with the article is. I think people tend to have this tendency to talk up the idea that games are meaningless and random, but the fact is that even games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion were not prone to random bear attacks, and disposition (or the traditional dialogue tree) can give a lot of meaning to the player.

I hate to say it because the article has a ring of authority to it, but the author totally misses that many - most, actually - story-driven games have a consistent message despite the actions of the player. In Oblivion, the NPCs constantly remind you that they want you to work within the system. You can act as a complete social outcast, but you won't be running any errands for Counts if the guards are fighting you.

This is a false alarm. Games already deal with topical issues: Killer 7, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, and Bad Day L.A. which deals with the chronic shouting in housing causing an epidemic of homeless superheroes. They don't always deal with it perfectly (Killer 7 was a bit pretentious; Resident Evil was a bit silly earlier in its history, Metal Gear Solid is so pretentious that the basic assertions Kojima made are misunderstood by the majority of players, and Bad Day L.A. is something else).

Regardless, though, we see games now that deal with issues that weren't covered well at all in the past. Take Native American issues - I can think of two well-known games that cover aspects of the issue. One was Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, the other is Prey, the blockbuster FPS hit this summer! The obvious answer is that gaming is not seperate in any way from society; the creators of games have artistic aspirations in addition to concrete financial motives.

I guess I'll leave off by noting that the people who argue that "smart games" often are underfunded or under-advertised (which certainly Lorne Lanning thought was the case with EA's campaign for Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath) are off on a tangent; look at the current batch of superhero movies for an example where many comic enthusaists will claim that Hollywood has corrupted vision for profit (although that's another issue entirely, and perhaps I have simplified too much - the superhero movies have been unduly serious, going in a different direction than many would have expected from recent flicks).