Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

by Nike Okami

In our first part, we talked about the meaning of guilt in gaming; how gamers want to gain an objective feeling from a non-objective reality (or, real feelings, such as guilt and sadness from a fictional world). This time, we’ll talk about an interesting topic. Rather, we’re going to confront a topic and properly define its existence in the realm of gaming.

Ever read about the reaction for Doom when it first came out? The gushings of an audience enthusiastically mowing down all manner of demonly spawn and inhuman entities is echoed even today. That era of gaming, where first person shooters centered mainly on “kill all enemies, reach the end boss, escort him to his maker, watch credits sequence”, is famous for not only Doom and Wolfenstein, but Quake, Heretic, Unreal, Kiss: Psycho Circus and Duke Nukem, each with it’s own shtick to differentiate it from the crowd. It was only with Mark Laidlaw’s heavily-scripted and compellingly weaved story of Half-Life did we experience anything beyond simple gagging and fragging. Half-Life provided us with a main character with which we could feel compassion for. Gordon Freeman’s predicament was presented in such a realistic fashion in that he had little to no idea what was happening and spent a majority of the game simply killing those who pulled guns/knifes/grenades/green-electricity-shooting tentacles on him first.

We’ve heard it before, I know. The evolution of gaming from straight-forward performance of an action to obtain a goal on a linear, immutable path to a multi-pronged approach to tackling complex problems on a branching path. However, take a look at the analogy again, and study the state of games today. Then think for yourself: When is the last time a game played exactly as you wanted it to, where the experience was tailored by you in every conceivable way, from the dialogue to the gameplay to the story, to reflect the sum of your values within your consciousness? When was the last time you played a game that didn’t so much have multiple endings but resolutions to a still on-going imitation of objective reality?

Simply put, when is the last you played a game that didn’t stop existing? This is different from infinite replayability, for that term implies a game that can be played over and over again, with the gamer playing the same objectives, the same missions, the same gameplay variety (ironic, isn’t it, for variety to repeat within a game?) again and again.

Deep down within us, we know games are fake: they are a recreation of the sum total of a developer’s abstract values and designs into digital entertainment. We encounter games where the universe seems to exist outside of our playing it. For example, as Cliffy B, the lead developer for Gears of War, cited during that game’s development: By naming fictional places and cities that don’t actually appear in the first game, the developer makes the gamer think the world is bigger than it really is. Gamers are already involved in an enormous conflict in a once-great metropolis, but they recognise the global impact of such a conflict being relatively small when taking the sum total of other conflicts into consideration.

If reality as we actually know it were a distorted, cycling series of events imitating the truth, the result would be monotonous for some and insanity-inducing for others.

For gamers, however, that problem never arises because products become obsolete. We close the book on worlds and stories, characters and conflicts, and shift to the next game for our entertainment.

Only when we play a game ceaselessly over a large period of time do we realise how messed up we can be if we replay a game and find it entertaining, each second mapped out before us at a time (this scenario is much less likely in MMORPGs and online FPSes, as they add the element of malleable, human actions to the mix). And once that happens, we pick up a new game or start a different activity. In the worst case scenario, some leave gaming altogether.

A game as a work of art (more on that in the next part) can live longer than a game claiming to contain a large amount of content. A Mass Effect or Okami, despite the inevitable linearities of their gameplay towards thunderous conclusions, can live longer than the supposedly sand-box variants of the same Grand Theft Auto 3 skeleton design and receive more appreciation besides. What dictates a game that can live forever as a sentient being, though this being be nothing more than a collection of predefined values and sum totals of experiences set against an unreal reality? What defines a game as a life, and not simply an existence?

The answer lies in five points: The study and acceptance of existence as such (metaphysics) — a game being more than just a collection of predefined events and programming. The theory of knowledge that studies man’s means of cognition (epistemology) – when a game is sure that what it is representing is the most accurate and truthful representation of reality. The choices and actions that define the course of its life (ethics) — when a game makes the most rational decisions it can to ensure its identity as a life on its own and not as a brain-dead existence.

The principles of a proper social system (politics) — where a game is allowed the freedom of rational thought without bias or baseless objections. Finally, the refueling of man’s consciousness (art) — here, your standard game fulfills its needs for the first three points; your game is moving beyond the realm of static thought into a world of numerous possibilities on its own volition. To prevent games from falling into the inevitable rut of repetition, even if the vision of a truly independent, self-sufficient game is long off, these five points are a must. These five points can be encapsulated into one single branch.

That branch is philosophy. And if gaming is to be the entertainment, the art form, the independent existence that it should be, a major branch of philosophy needs to be evolved.