There’s a lot of talk about how videogames are yet to have their Citizen Kane, and how when this game is released, we will be elevated to the same degree of cultural relevance as film and literature. But, recently, I’ve begun wondering if that’s really what videogames need.
Citizen Kane is a feat of cinematographic mastery, but there are many games out there that use visuals, game mechanics, and narrative elements successfully.
Star Trek, on the other hand, while perhaps not as technically impressive, has cultural and future relevance. Each of the serials, from the first one in the 1960’s, explores themes and situations which echoed events of our world which were relevant at the time. The money quote, from Roddenberry himself, is:
“[By creating] a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network.“
Another good one is:
Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive, almost radical political agenda reflective of the emerging sexualized counter-culture of the youth movement. However, his efforts were largely thwarted by the network’s concerns over marketability. Star Trek showed mankind what it might develop into, if only it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by ending violence.
Much of the current discussion on videogames focuses on finding the medium’s own voice with which to tell engaging stories, tying the mechanics of the game to the themes and plot. And while I agree that this is important, I believe it is also increasingly important to move away from the teenage power fantasies of violent domination of faceless enemies, and look for new stories to tell. To continue with the TV references, AAA titles seem to have fallen into the same rut as the A-team, where the formula of the game/show follows a formulaic pattern, with only the slightest variations in settings and situations to differentiate one episode from the next. To use another Wikipedia quote:
“[...]a recognizable and steady episode structure. In describing the ratings drop that occurred during the show’s fourth season, reviewer Gold Burt points to this structure as being a leading cause for the decreased popularity “because the same basic plot had been used over and over again for the past four seasons with the same predictable outcome.“
The major reason why I believe we should aspire to the Star Trek of videogames is that with videogames we can do more than just show people what the future could be like, we can put them there, let them see the sights, interact with the people, and experience what could be. We can craft all manner of utopian and dystopian alternate realities, and craft our games around these ‘what if?’ scenarios. The Fallout series is a great example in that the setting shows us what could have happened if we hadn’t reigned in nuclear escalation, if diplomatic relations between the nuclear superpowers had broken down and spiralled into, to use another quote, all-out thermonuclear Heck.
Apart from being relevant in the subject matter and themes it covers, Star Trek, as illustrated in the two quotes above, also faced similar problems to those we now face as game developers: funding and censorship.
Censorship is perhaps the thorniest of the two. While it would be great to develop a game with poignant social commentary on all manner of relevant issues – unless we are very careful, or apply massive doses of saccharine - to subjects like sexuality, gender violence, bigotry and other current social woes, our game will be whacked over the head with the AO rating, which tends to be the equivalent of a death sentence in the current day and age. There are ways of circumventing the retail ostracising of such a game, but unless major download services like Steam and the like welcome such titles chances are such a game will see limited distribution, commercial failure, and set us back quite a number of years. The other issue, funding, is an equally formidable obstacle. With the global economy in it’s current, sorry state, is it possible to obtain funding for what is essentially a title aimed at a vapourous ‘mature’ audience that may or may not be offended by the content matter?
Despite these obstacles, I feel that to be socially relevant, and gain mainstream acceptance, we need to put the space marines and the big guns back in the toy box, and delve into the conflicts that we as average Janes and Joes have to face on an everyday basis. Conflict, the main engine of narrative and games, takes many forms. It is these forms as they appear to use on the streets of our cities that we must harness in order to appeal to those we share them with.
The game that allows us to overcome these two obstacles will, in my mind, as big a milestone for videogames as Citizen Kane was to movies.
June 24, 2009 at 8:37 am
The ESRB’s use of the term “mature” has hobbled the industry. Also, the notion that truly mature commentary or thought provoking storycrafting will naturally garner an AO rating is incorrect. There is plenty of commentary that can be tucked even within an E rated game. This is because the ESRB notions of what is “mature” and intelligent are so far removed from the rating criteria, and customer expectations have been warped by vapid game design.
I don’t expect complex sociopolitical commentary from something like DOA: Beach Volleyball or even God of War, the commentary in BioShock could have been done within a T rated frame, and an E/E10 game like Kingdom Hearts has plenty of thoughtful storytelling.
In other words, real maturity and careful storytelling operate on a completely different axis from the ESRB’s rating scheme. Until consumers *and* devs realize that, we won’t get very far in game storytelling.
Nice article.
June 24, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Holy shit. A kindred spirit.
As someone who is largely unable to cut through the dryness that permeates Star Trek, my appreciation for the series is purely philosophical, and you’ve hit the nail on the head there. Good literature – to use Aristotle’s definition – is about presenting the world as it ought to be. To make a game in which the player gets to experience an ideal world and understand it from the inside out should be one of our primary goals right now, but ultimately the apocalypse makes for better ass-kicking.
That would, of course, be the videogame EQUIVALENT to Citizen Kane, but much of the industry seems to be looking for a game LIKE Citizen Kane, which would of course defeat the purpose of making a game in the first place.
I’ve been accused of trying to tell utopia stories before, and frankly I’m guilty as charged. But isn’t that the point of art? To illustrate the change you want to see in the world?
Awesome writing, man.
June 26, 2009 at 2:37 am
@Tesh: What we are seeing with the ESRB is essentially the industry forestalling the government from doing to it what it did to comic books. Unfortunately, the ESRB’s ratings are based on a limited set of perceptions, namely those imposed by the pervading cultural mindset. I personally don’t see the ESRB as the enemy, as they provide a useful, and even necessary, service to the industry and parents alike. Like I said when replying to Brian Green’s article on legitimacy, though, I believe the rating system will have to change at some point in the future.
@George: I’m all up for some ass-kicking every now and again, but there is no reason why that ass-kicking can’t be in the name of the utopia, or for a higher cause. A lot of the action heroes I’ve seen in video-games recently are motivated more by primal instincts like revenge or survival than by noble ideals. And I believe the formula for action games can be subverted to serve nobler purposes. In fact, games themselves can and should be used to promote these nobler purposes. As you’ve said yourself, we have the keys to the very essence of culture in our hands, but we’re opening the wrong doors.
Between the two of you you’ve got me thinking: the games we make are the key. Games can be used to change people’s perceptions of the world, in the same way that the books we read as youngsters undeniably mold the way we think until we find ‘harder’ truths through personal experience. Thus, with the right games, it is possible to show kids (and adults) glimpses of a better world, one that they can aspire to help create. Games can be used as tools to shape culture. It is then a matter of identifying the problem we want to tackle, and create a tool to overcome it.
Of course, this then has me thinking that if the ESRB rating system is in itself flawed, it can be viewed as such an obstacle. Looking at it this way, the really subversive thing to do would be to design a game in such a way that it ‘breaks’ the system, and forces change.
Would that fit your definition of ‘revolution’?
June 26, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I don’t see the ESRB as a bad thing *in principle*, since I’m a proponent of self-policing over Big Brother intervention. I’m with you there. What I’m saying is that their terminology has imposed an Orwellian double speak state on the industry, and it’s warped the nature of what devs and customers (and critics) see. It’s done a great disservice to the medium.
They may have good intentions at heart, and as an institution, I agree that they are better than the alternative, but they are just as much of an obstacle to advancing the state of the art as incontinent devs and customers. They set the tone for public perception of games, and the tone they have set is antithetical to the true maturation of the medium.
June 26, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Oh, and as for a revolution, I’d angle to make a serious, thought provoking E rated game, and make it fun enough that people buy it. You don’t need to make Schindler’s List to make a point.