Games: Are they still games?

Let's face it - if you're reading this article, you can almost certainly categorise yourself as a "gamer". As a gamer, well you play games, regularly. I was pondering the other day why I wouldn't bring this undeniably large part of who I am up in a job interview.

The thing is, between your mates and the forums you post to on the Internet, you're unashamedly a gamer. Yes sir-ee, we love em' and we can discuss the games closest to our hearts for hours at a time. The finer points of where a particular genre is going, why Mario Kart Wii isn't as good as Mario Kart DS and when will the real Pikmin 2 sequel come out.

When is the last time you found yourself in the work lunch room, making small talk with the cleaner as you heat up the Chinese take away you got last night, asking if they've seen the trailer to Red Steel 2? Or finished Twilight Princess yet? You just don't do it! No-one does. Games, for some unknown reason can't permeate into the everyday lives of most people. They are, for all intents and purposes, still a 'toy'. We can discuss, dissect, debate, scream, yell and deny this situation; the fact of the matter is though that they are no where near as ingrained into our daily lives as music or film. Some will argue that numbers tell a different story. The old "Video games are bigger than Hollywood" routine. So? Does anyone really care? Do you want to know what else is bigger than Hollywood, the raw minerals industry. We don't go around talking about the commodities market in general conversation though.

The difference between film and games; films are art, games aren't... yet.

Art,who cares, right? Art has a licence to convey rich and compelling messages; something that can be appreciated beyond it's flat exterior. That message changes from person to person, but often the same piece of art can portray something special to millions of different people. Keep in mind though, art is just a word used to describe this phenomenon. If art doesn't talk to you, then it is boring and lifeless. A waste of your time and essentially meaningless. Don't get caught up in the word 'art' though, focus on it's concept.

Games are yet to fall into this category. Not because they don't deserve the respect of being called art, they do. Games can and often do convey a message to a player. Often much deeper than 'get the ball over the net' or 'collect those coins'. You can most certainly feel emotionally attached to your character and learn much from a gaming experience. MassEffect and Fallout 3 are perfect examples of this. A rich world, high calibre voice acting and serious subject matter where your choices have believable, realistic and sometimes devastating consequences.

Why then are games not considered in the same way film is? Read the back cover of a game box. They attempt to portray the depth and adult nature of the content of the game, yet always follow up with explosive game-play elements. Is that necessary anymore?

Forget about discussing the AI, or how you've got more weapons than ever to select from. Don't worry about framed pictures of the 'mo-cap' technology that was used to make in-game characters look so good and fluid. In fact, stop referring to them as games. We are well past this. They are highly detailed, emotional, plot driven sagas. Don't sell them as games, interactive DVDs or anything else that is already obviously insinuated. When anyone buys a console, we know what we are buying into. People no more need to be told to use a controller to operate a video game than they need to be told a car is a 'user controlled automated movement machine'. We call them cars, we know what we are buying.

Game designers sell the art form as a 'game'. We are locked in this self-perpetuating cycle, because as 'gamers' we haven't been able to find another way to describe the format or express the experience of a particular game, outside of it's generic game-play experience to other people. I know I fall into this trap describing a game to a co-worker in this way. MassEffect for example gets broken down into it's core mechanics instead of the much more engaging and vitally important story elements. I'll talk about how you can carry guns or choose to use biotic powers to blow away aliens, or that they use this cool conversation tree so you feel like you're the one who's talking instead of being carried through a cut scene. This type of description instantly places a barrier up to anyone who isn't game literate. The focus is on how to move your player around, skill trees, inventory management and so on. Imagine describing a movie to someone, instead though of discussing the plot and how it made you laugh, think or scared you to death, you started with all it's technical design. The World War II movie used a gray green filter, most of the camera work was shot with a dolly system, with several on rail shots mixed through, there were around three hundred and fourty extras used, they used 3d max to create many of the special effects, some of the scenes were filmed while it was raining, others were filmed with simulated rain. How compelling. Yet games are most often discussed publicly in these terms. Reviews are written to focus heavily on the technical aspects of a game, relegating the story and characters to often less space than how the game controls and whether the cover system has been tweaked further than it's predecessor.

A review cannot be written without talking about game play and how it is controlled, as that is at it's basis the foundation of a game. What I find is that we trap ourselves unintentionally into categorising these experiences as "games", lumping them incidnetally into the same box as Scrabble or Twister.

We all need to move on to give the format legs and take a step upwards into adulthood. Attention from gamers, game developers and the media now needs to move away from often nit picking technical elements to the story a game tells. Let's also grow up and stop calling the entire medium 'games' to something more respectful of the experience. Hotel Dusk on the DS is a far too intellectual experience in both its setting and themes to simply be referred to as a game. When you start making choices in a 'game' that brings on real political discussion as to whether they should be banned or have it's rating reassessed, there is an undeniable link between the experiences of moden games and their psychological effects.

You might say, well who cares what we call it. Whether they are called games, interactive movies or some other term, does it really matter? Does it have any real impact on the game industry? The answer is most certainly yes. As adults, we play video games because we played them as kids. We grew up with them, and as children we didn't have to be embarrassed because, just like jumping in the mud or eating our own fecal matter, that's what kids do. Games though are so engaging and important in many of our lives, that we continued on playing well into our teens and eventually our twenties, thirties, forties and so on. What I don't want to see happening is the sterile environment, primarily being pushed by Nintendo at the moment, to dominate. It's so great that families can now get involved and play a simple game of tennis where they don't even have to control the player. Harmless, mindless fun anyone of any age can enjoy. Kids won't get corrupted by this stuff, so mum and dad feel safe in buying it as entertainment for their children. These cheap gimmicks aren't pushing gaming in the right direction at all. We might all think it's great that everyone and anyone can play now, but to what end? Has the actual content of gaming been changed; the stories, emotion and adventure of a AAA title been improved because motion control and Mii characters are now on the market. Absolutely not. Deep and compelling story driven titles have been improved by a multitude of factors, least being motion control. That's not to say it hasn't had an indirect impact. Motion control is not evil, it's great because developers can now sigh with relief and say 'okay, this can be a profitable venture'. It doesn't build great story lines though. In fact the success of mini-game bundles like WiiSports, WiiPlay, BrainTraining and all the rest pushes titles that have seen the heart and sole of developers into a corner, where they have to deliver, or get pushed off the table for cheap and easily reproducable gimmicks that sell so well. It's not fair then that deep, intellectual "games" get lumped in with everything else. If we re-categorize the two types of titles, to the point of seperating products that are now called games to another category, then maybe producers will look at them in a different light.

It is for the reasons above that a games like Six Days in Fallujah are critisised from the get go. The title hasn't even been released yet and the meer fact that it's a video game automatically relegates it in many peoples eyes to glossy, insensitive, glorified entertainment. It may be true. The developer Atomic Games could well produce a completely in-authentic piece with disregard to the hardship both the marines and local civilians went through. All anyone need do though is a little investigating to gain a perspective on what could be achieved.

Atomic were already working with the Marine Corp. to develop training programs; yet during this time the battalion they were working with was sent away to fight in The Battle of Fallujah. This is what Peter Tamt, Automic Games President, told GamePro about this situation.

Tamte later stated that "When they came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do."Tamte further stated that the goal of Six Days in Fallujah is to create the most realistic military shooter possible, and that "Ultimately, all of us are curious about what it would really be like to be in a war. I've been playing military shooters for ages, and at a certain point when I'm playing the game, I know it's fake. You can tell a bunch of guys sat in a room and designed it. That's always bothered me.". Tamte further elaborated in an interview with Joystiq that, "The words I would use to describe the game -- first of all, it's compelling. And another word I use -- insight. There are things that you can do in video games that you cannot do in other forms of media. And a lot of that has to do with presenting players with the dilemmas that the Marines saw in Fallujah and then giving them the choice of how to handle that dilemma. And I think at that point, you know - when you watch a movie, you see the decisions that somebody else made. But when you make a decision yourself, then you get a much deeper level of understanding." Tamte describes the project as "a meticulously recreated in-game version of Fallujah, complete with real life Marines lending their names and likenesses, as well as recreations of specific events from the battle. It's almost like time travel. You're experiencing the events as they really happened."
Source: Wikipedia - Six Days In Fallujah

I'm more than happy for all forms of media to be scruitinised and critisized. But let's also make this a fair and balanced process. Perhaps some sceptics would feel better about games that truely make an effort to delve deeper than the purely asthetic, but pay homage and respect to all of those invovled in war. In turn enriching those who experience the game as well. It is pretty hard at the moment for even the most understanding of people to accept that a harrowing experience can be made into something termed as a 'game' and still be tasteful. This issue revolves around how the video game medium is perceived.

Don't misunderstand this article as a stab at actual games. There are titles out there that need to be relegated into this category. Sports titles and mini-game packs are games. We play them, we enjoy them, and they are one of my most favorite categories of entertainment.

When a game though crosses that line and leaves someone who interacts with it questions on the themes, characters and plot; these are as much a game as a novel is. The over arching engagement of these types of games isn't the button pressing, but much more the setting and themes. Marketers need to re-label these interactive adult themed narratives to something more accurate - call them iNovels or something. Adult enough to bring people over the age of 30, who haven't played a game for a long time, and spark their interest not on simple fun, but for the same reason they'll watch movies or read a good book.

There are so many games now that fall out of the cheap family fun category and are designed to convey a message or tell a story to it's viewers. We need to stop mis-categorizing and give the medium the respect it deserves.