Games Do Everything Films Do, So Why Aren’t They As Good?
Games are the new form of powerful communication. Too bad we don’t understand them yet.
Every medium of art has a core that no other medium can use quite as powerfully. It’s a sort of holy grail for artists within that medium, and the ones that can use it best can use it to convey meaning in ways that no one ever could before.
Books use text to convey their character development and pacing, and while lots of other forms of art use text, books own it. Music manipulates our emotions through its layered structures of harmonies and meter. Theater uses acting.
But by blending writing, photography and acting together, we get film. Film can at first blush seem like nothing more than not-live theater. However, there’s one thing film has that no other preceding medium has.
Stanley Kubrick was adamant that the only art form unique to film is editing.
“Everything else comes from something else. Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience.”
Stanley Kubrick: Rolling Stones Interview, 1987
Citizen Kane is held with such high regard, not necessarily because it’s wholly an amazing film, but because Orson Welles went completely bonkers with the editing. He did things with film that had never been done before. It’s bombastic at times, but the power is about the core that films have. Editing.
More recently, Edgar Wright is one of my favorite movie directors, mostly for his editing style. His use of editing make his films more engaging than if the same story had been told on stage, in a book, or through any other medium.
What About Games?
And then there are videogames, which can do all the things film can do and more. Like films+, or something. Does that mean videogames are inherently better than film? Well, of course not. They’re just different.
Is a cutscene in a videogame more than an animated film? No, videogames are filled with animated films. Videogames boast some amazing film work. But past all the usual basics of writing, cinematography, editing, audio, or whatever else… what do games offer?
Meaning, like film and every other form of art, videogames should have some core that only videogames can do. After you strip away everything that other art forms do better, what’s left?
The prevailing consensus across the industry is interactivity. When a game is simplified to its core elements, what’s left is the ability for the participants to affect change within the game’s system.
This isn’t limited to just videogames either. And all kinds of games have interactivity! It’s what makes games games. Interactivity is the core of all sports, board games, gambling games, unstructured play and every other kind of game-style variant.
But herein lies an interesting catch. Raph Koster, one of the industry’s Wise Men, is quick to point out that general interactivity is not unique to games. Every kind of art form, from pottery to improv theater, require some kind of interaction between the participant and the piece of art. Even if that interaction is as simple as letting it move your soul in some experiential sort of way.
“The assumption of ‘exploratory interactivity’ is basically rampant throughout the arts. So I, at least, take this part for granted, and for that matter, don’t think videogames as a form do anything at all new or special here.”
Raph Koster: www.raphkoster.com, 2014
So, does this mean that games don’t have a unique core? Not necessarily!
It means we have to be more discerning. What we’re looking for is not a general kind of interactivity found in other arts, but rather a more specific form only found in games.
“Look… Haaaarder…”
To be honest, no one’s really decided what that is yet. Which is really exciting to me. However, there are still very solid directions to look. Here’s my favorite:
“But there are many games where what the player brings to the table is not ‘choice’ of using a tiny set of verbs on a tiny set of largely irrelevant props, all aiming in the end towards the same predetermined authorial lesson. … It is here where games like The Sims, Eve Online, Minecraft, Universalis, Dwarf Fortress, and even less ‘free’ designs like Core Warslie. And there is a case to be made that in that space are things that only games can do.”
Raph Koster: www.raphkoster.com, 2014
It’s closer to improv than anything else, and focuses on discovery, exploration, curiosity and self-determination. It’s a multi-directional kind of participation where all parties have goals to work towards, but are flexible in how to get there.
Following Koster a bit further, he points towards the industry’s granddaddy Chris Crawford as a potential lead to narrow in on this elusive core.
Crawford breaks it down very simply: a conversation.
Game interactivity, he says, is a literal conversation between a system and all participating players. But rather than use English or any other natural language to communicate, we use a more abstract language. It’s a custom language where the interface is not words, but rather button presses or moving tokens on a board and the feedback received when those actions are made.
When I read this perspective, it felt… right? I’m not sure that’s the correct word there, but I feel it’s at least very close to what the core of games could be. When people say that games are interactive, they are saying something akin to games being an algorithm that you, as the player, literally converse with to extract deeper meaning.
The Human Touch
And that right there is the key that links videogames to the human potential.
Games teach us to listen, interact and participate in elaborately complex conversations. Rational communication is a part of humanity that we bemoan has been reduced in recent years due to technology. But it’s my hypothesis that the technology this generation has grown up with is teaching us to have different conversations, not worse ones… the real problem is that these conversations are structured to look very different than what how they looked fifteen years ago and we don’t what to do about it.
As a culture, we’re not game literate enough to see the benefits, or even the downsides of these systems based types of conversations. Really, at this point, I feel like we’re mostly scared because these conversations are different and we don’t yet have a cultural lens through which to view them.
There’s a lot of research to be done, and a lot we don’t understand, but at least there’s a direction.
If this article was your thing, do me a favor and click that clap button a bunch of times. You can also visit my website for productivity hacks, life design, education, and human potential — all of which are seen through the lens of game design.
