Category Archives: Industry

Taking Back “Literature”

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Video games are a category of creative work that deserves consideration and respect as an art form, and to be valued as literature. For nearly as long as there has been art or literature, there have been those who have tried to restrict the terms to only define the works that they have deemed worthy. This has become particularly prevalent in culture since the early Renaissance, with the sanctification and elevation of art and literature as the province of the refined and privileged, a method to further segregate the masses from the intellectual and social elite.[1] In modern society, however, there is no excuse for this segregation to continue. Art and literature can take many forms, and exist on a variety of levels throughout society, yet we continue to delineate only a few “classics” as qualifying for such a lofty term as literature or art. This needs to stop: art and literature are everywhere; art and literature are as varied and colorful as the individuals who create them; art and literature cannot be pigeonholed, categorized, or rigidly defined within a free society. We as individuals need to stand up for creative expression, and take back the language that has been subverted for so many years.

According to the Oxford American Dictionary, literature can be defined as, “written works, esp. those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit”. Given this definition, it is hardly a surprise that there is so much difficulty in defining what is or is not “literature”, and rightfully so: the definition is fluid, and ultimately subjective on what is of merit, as well as in what fashion it may be worthwhile. I believe that it is ultimately the individual’s decision on the merit or worthiness of any given work. Whether or not a work is considered “literature” by some arbitrary group should not dictate the social, intellectual, or legal value of that work. I believe that it’s possible to rephrase the current definition such that the intent of the term remains, but the terminology becomes less restrictive, and I feel that doing so is necessary towards doing away with segregational labels. I believe a better way to think about literature is that it is verbal art.
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Games Are Art

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I recently discovered that a website working to put forward the belief that games are (or at least can be) art was shut down with no prior notice for an erroneous violation of terms of service by Network Solutions. The link for more information is here: Games Are Art!: Censorship.

Network Solutions is hardly one to be trying to take the high road, given their previous actions including wildcarding all .com and .net domains so any non-existent or typo’d domain entered goes to THEIR site, among others. I’m glad that Games Are Art have moved away from Network Solutions (and had I known that’s who their provider had been previously, would have suggested they leave earlier), and hope others will take this as yet another sign that you shouldn’t give Verisign/Network Solutions your business.

Virtual Economies within the Real World

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As much as we might hate to admit it, a major element of social interaction is based around commerce; social hierarchy and structure has formed around it since the days of hunter/gatherer societies, and does not show any sign of changing any time soon. Whether capital based or commodity based, commerce is simply a part of the human social organism. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that commerce has migrated into the online world as well. We are already familiar with using real world finances to purchase real world items via the internet (such as eBay and Amazon, among many others); what has become a hot topic for designers and scholars alike is the purchase of virtual goods with real or even virtual money through virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds is a term that has grown out of a need to describe the communal aspect of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) in a manner that delineates it from the ludological elements of the game. “Virtual World” and MMOG are used relatively interchangeably at this time, though they will continue to diverge as more research and study is performed: a MMOG is by nature a virtual world, but a virtual world needn’t have any ludological element to succeed.

As virtual worlds have grown in complexity and popularity over the past several years, they have begun to take on more and more elements from daily life, including that of commerce. Most virtual worlds have methods for sale and trade of items and virtual currency between players, most often based around the auction house method of sale: you place an item up for bid with a minimum asking price; players bid on the item until the minimum asking price (or more) is offered, at which point the item is sold. Alternatively, player to player private transactions can also be performed. These capabilities have enabled a new type of commerce: trade of real world currency for in game currency or goods. This originated via eBay, with early MMOGs such as Ultima Online and Everquest. These prototypical sales tended to be either in-game currency, or a high level character, selling for anywhere between $100 and $700. As time went on, the trend gained popularity, until it reached a point that people were collecting in-game cash for real world sale as a profession, primarily in parts of Southeast Asia where the exchange value would be maximized. These individuals have become known as “gold farmers,” and are considered a nuisance to players as well as the designers. (According to most End User License Agreements, the sale of in game assets for real money is not allowed, and justification for denial of services.)
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The Role of Writing in Games

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[S]ince the games are generally about power, control, and those other primitive things, the stories tend to be so as well. This means they tend to be power fantasies. That’€™s generally considered to be a pretty juvenile sort of story.

The stories in most video games serve the same purpose as calling the uber-checker a “king.”€ It adds an interesting shading to the game, but the game at its core is unchanged.

Remember:€“ my background is as a writer, so this actually pisses me off. Story deserves better treatment than that. (Koster 86)

I would be hard pressed to state this thought in a more clear or concise fashion. Put simply, the stories in most games tend to be weak compared to their media counterparts (novels, comic books, movies, television). Over the years, there have been a few exceptional stories that span larger issues, or address the nature of power and control itself; a modest number of games have alternatively succeeded in refining the “€œpower fantasy”€ into a more engaging telling, but the underlying principles have remained the same. Stories are tacked on, extraneous except in providing a context for player empowerment. While certainly not the sole issue, this is a fairly damning point when attempting to defend games as a valid form of creative expression.

So what can be done to improve the situation? The short answer is to hire professional writers. The vast majority of companies currently have their dialogue and story written and developed by the game designers, programmers, and artists themselves, rather than spending the money on a professional writer. Take the hint from the media that have come before: games are not that far different from comics, books, or movies, all of which have had significantly more time to develop techniques to tell a compelling and nuanced story, techniques that are effective across media.
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The Next Generation Industry

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GDC is behind us now. We’ve all heard so much talk about the future of video games that it’s beginning to frazzle and run together. So many things, new developments and new ideas and new technology, all in the milieu of rapid political and social change. The idea of predicting the future seem hairy at best. There’s all these factors at work here, and somehow they’ll play off each other. So what are some of the issues and developing trends we’re facing?

We’ve heard many words about procedural game design, player-created content populating the massive environments. There’s that group of people off shouting about middleware and open source gaming cutting the costs that everyone says is gonna blow open with the next generation. Meanwhile, there’s real good reason to look at unionizing the big publishers, but that’s just gonna blow the costs up even more. At least unionization would create some real financial incentives for a growing independant games industry. Next thing you know you’re not a “real” gamer unless you eschew everything from EA “because it’s over-produced crap” and the “artistry” is entirely to be found in indie games. Indie gamers start thinking of GameSpot what indie rockers think of MTV– something for the uninformed masses. Maybe GameSpot is smart enough to capture the zeitgeist and they’ll have an “indie” subsite, maybe not. Regardless, the split between casual and hardcore gamers has already begun. A few years ago, you could reasonably purchase every truly fantastic game, and lots of us did. Yeah, myself included. That is no longer a possibility. You couldn’t play them all. You probably can’t afford to play them all. We’ve got a situation where people are increasingly having to decide where to put their money.

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My Bibliography for the Upcoming Semester

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  • Bartle, Richard. Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders Games, 2003.
  • Bates, Bob. Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games. Muska & Lipman, 2002.
  • Crawford, Chris. Chris Crawford On Game Design. New Riders Games, 2003.
  • DeMaria, Rusel; Wilson, Johnny L. High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003.
  • Freeman, David. Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering. New Riders Publishing, 2003.
  • Friedl, Markus. Online Game Interactivity Theory. Charles River Media, 2002.
  • Glassner, Andrew. Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction. AK Peters, Ltd., 2004.
  • Graham, Paul. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. O’Reilly, 2004.
  • Herz, J.C. Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds. Little Brown & Co., 1997.
  • Koster, Raph. Theory of Fun for Game Design. Paraglyph, 2004.
  • Laramee, Francois Dominic. Game Design Perspectives. Charles River Media, 2002.
  • Miller, Carolyn Handler. Digital Storytelling: A Creator’s Guide to Interactive Entertainment. Focal Press, 2004.
  • Mulligan, Jessica; Patrovsky, Bridgette. Developing Online Games: An Insider’s Guide. New Riders Games, 2003.
  • Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. Arcade Publishing, 2004.
  • Ray, Sheri Graner. Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market. Charles River Media, 2003.
  • Rollings, Andrew; Adams, Ernest. Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams On Game Design. New Riders Publishing, 2003
  • Rollings, Andrew; Morris, Dave. Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition. New Riders Games, 2003.
  • Sheldon, Lee. Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Muska & Lipman, 2004.
  • Tufte, Edward R. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Graphics Press, 1997.
  • Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press, 2001.
  • Zimmerman, Eric; Salen, Katie. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. The MIT Press, 2003.

I’m also planning to subscribe to The Journal of Game Development and Game Developer’s Magazine.
It’s going to be an awesome semester. Hard, but awesome. It’s an exciting time to be getting into games, as anyone who has been following the GDC proceedings will attest. I can’t wait.

The Cost of Enlightenment

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There is an adage that states, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” It is meant to remind monks that true enlightenment is not something that can be purchased or even given, but must come from within. It is somewhat ironic, then, that we consider our society enlightened. While it is true that we have made significant advances in human wellbeing in the past century, it has come at the cost of the only true freedom that exists: personal responsibility.

Rather than holding the individual accountable for their actions, we mitigate and deflect that responsibility by blaming those actions on the ideas and words of something or someone else. This offense is further compounded by efforts to use the actions of the individual to dictate the rights of everyone. The moment a book, song, movie, comic, or game is censored or banned, we have sacrificed an essential liberty, and hammered another nail in the coffin of personal responsibility.

The logic behind censorship is fundamentally flawed:

  1. Censorship protects no one; ideas are rooted in the culture that spawns them, they cannot simply be turned off like a faucet.
  2. The only truly free society is an informed society: if you’re worried about a new idea taking over, maybe you should re-examine your own beliefs.
  3. Personal beliefs do not equal law: the sacrilege of one person may be the gospel of another.

Despite these flaws, people continue to try and censor others, with increasing success rates. We have found our roadside Buddha, and he’s offering censorship wrapped in the pretense of enlightenment. We need to collectively realize that it’s a false promise; cultural enlightenment, like spiritual enlightenment, begins and ends with the self. The true cost of enlightenment is personal responsibility.

Where is Our Frank Zappa?

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Back in the early 80s, a conservative watchdog group lobbied for the ban or heavy regulation of music with explicit lyrics involving sex, drugs, or violence. There was a vocal outcry against this movement within the music industry, spearheaded by several prominent musicians, notably Frank Zappa and John Denver. It may seem like an odd pairing, but that served to help drive home just how unacceptable these restrictions were.

The Gaming Industry is now faced with a similar situation. Games, game developers, and even retailers are being targeted unfairly by lawyers and the media as the culprits for individual irresponsibility. Lawmakers are taking notice, but not in a positive manner: several states, Washington and California included, currently have bills in committee to ban the sale of violent games. Rather than finding other solutions, or viewing the larger problem that this is only a symptom of, legislators would prefer to restrict the rights of game makers.

There are several significant issues with the video game ban ideology, but from the reading I’ve done on the subject, most of their reasoning hinges around one fundamental flaw in their logic: games aren’t just for kids. The largest and fastest growing gaming demographic is the 18 to 34 year old age range; it is unreasonable to deny the ability to develop for that group. The game industry has voluntarily self-regulated by placing ratings on every game produced, indicating the content and suggested age range for view or play. This takes no more effort on the part of the parents (and retailers) than the movie rating system, and yet the industry as a whole is being blamed for violent games falling into the hands of children. Demanding that the game developers not make games with mature content is unreasonable on several levels, not the least of which is the violation of first amendment rights. What needs to happen is education. We need to educate parents about the systems that are in place to help them, as well as the need to pay attention to what their kids are doing. We need to educate retailers about sales ethics. We need to educate everyone about personal responsibility.

We need someone who can speak for the game industry as cogently as Frank Zappa and John Denver did for the music industry. The question is, who? Where is our Frank Zappa?