‘Video Games Are Still Bad’

I greatly enjoyed an interview with Kevin Nguyen posted on Don’t Die, a website devoted to ‘surviving video games’ brought to the world by David Wolinsky.

This has been a favorite topic of mine as of late, and to find an entire site dedicated to the weird progression of video games is both fascinating and surprisingly heartening.

Perhaps my favorite section of Nguyen’s interview comes from his insight regarding the evolution of both the video game and the novel. Video games may be progressing much faster comparatively, but that’s because games are in their absolute infancy as a medium. As he says:

It’s just the nature of the fact that the novel has been around for so much longer. And it’s something that more people have made, more people have engaged with, and there is just more of. So, over time, you know, it’s just, like—the early days of the novel, it’s just like every next novel that comes out is infinitely better than the last. And you sort of reach a point where progress and creativity just slows down because we’ve explored so much more of this space.

And videogames, like, they’ve been around for, what, 30 years?

And so, games are still improving by leaps and bounds and I think you don’t see that same leap every year with literature. Although I still feel like books are on the whole getting better and I know that’s a very broad statement, but the rate at which games improve is really impressive because it’s something that a lot of people are working and care about.

Even though progress is happening fairly rapidly, that doesn’t mean that video games have reached a point of transcendence by any means, or are even close. This can be seen, for example, in the way that blockbuster titles pull the wrong cues from their Hollywood parallels — taking all of the action and none of the nuance. Nguyen continues:

At the same time, I don’t know, it still feels like such an immature medium.

Like, we all feel like — I feel like almost everyone would agree that the potential of videogames is nowhere near reached, right? With novels or writing, I don’t think we’re ever gonna hit that point, but we’re getting pretty close to the end in a lot of ways.

Novels are still getting better, but they’re not improving by leaps and bounds. Videogames, on the other hand, are still so young that they’re taking big steps forward each and every year.

As I played through ‘Firewatch’ earlier this year, my hope for video games as a medium began to be rekindled. Kevin Nguyen’s insights give words to what I was feeling, and perfectly encapsulate all that’s great, and all that’s terrible, with games in general.

Video games are still bad—but I grow ever more hopeful that they won’t be, one day soon.