I had initially meant to type this as a response to Chungking Espresso but it ended up being far too long so I tried to rework the train of thought here and let her rip. The impulse here was on relevancy as a medium. My train of thought in creating this was fringe creation of a technological innovation that made it to mainstream quickly as a fad, died out from oversaturation, but has managed to become a huge multibillion dollar industry and symbolizes a part of the drive for more resolution on our televisions and perhaps the re-establishment of the idea of "play" in society. The comment took the form of relevancy cannot be achieved if games are too complicated to play, the stereotype of the gamer is lacking romance, and unintended collaboration between game maker and console maker is forced.
I have been wondering about gaming as social commentary lately and this post really touches on some of it. Relevancy as a medium has got to be possible considering how much money is being funneled into the industry but I just can't see it happening any time soon. There is so much that needs to be overcome before anyone can play a game. I seem to be harping lately, on input, but with so many buttons and complex manipulation of the controller, if game companies want to reach a wide variety of people with their message, it's going to take an awful lot to do so. Confusion and distraction with regard to knowing what button to press is incredibly difficult to deal with; especially if it comes during the moment the message of the game is 'revealed.' Beyond Good and Evil created this consequence for me quite religiously.
Perhaps this is my own glaring weakness as a gamer but I felt that BG&E was boring to play; and when the action started it was confusing to understand. I felt like I was playing Lost Vikings or Abe's Odyssey (of course I know this is wrong, but it is what it felt like). I have attempted to play this game something like 20 times but each time, I lose interest quickly and run off to play something else. I know I can play complicated games; I love Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and other simulation games. In any case, it is this sort of thing that ends up being indicative of my critique of gaming as a whole. Also, it seems to me that games, video games, have quite a few things to conquer before they can really get past the "Jack Thompson" solidified stereotype.
I keep wondering why my brain goes to this with regard to critical game studies. I think that it does this because I don't see how games can actually accomplish anything outside of play, fun, or competition, until we manage to really get established as part and parcel of the mainstream pop culture. You could make an argument about games already being there but think about each time a game makes it into the news. Violence, Star Wars premier like behavior at the launch of a console or game, and maladjusted social behaviors that serve to show everyone that 'gamer lives here.'
There is no romance in the gamer stereotype. There is no romance in the game programmer stereotype (in this country). Whereas writers and artists can live in tiny rooms, creating the most amazing things for us to look at and read, a gamer sitting in this tiny room and creating games for us to play are looked upon as losers and idiots (unless you make a game live Cave Story or Braid). Until enough games come along that manage to make critical acclaim in so much that people like Roger Ebert call it amazing, I doubt that the social commentary made will be worth it. The reason I think this keeps on perpetuating itself seems to be that the very idea of play is something that is meant for children and animals (Homo Ludens).
Play seems to be returning and I think that society is read for gaming to sort of allow us to explore our selves more fully in a way that has been unthought of for almost 3 centuries. However, as with every time a spirit of wonder has appeared in the world, war seems to take that spirit away. Many of the things that are around in society now indicate change (we're waking up, beginning to care), but it could just as easily go the other way.
It's nice to see though. A note on generalizations. The problem with generalizations is that everyone is always an exception. My entire career has hinged on learning how to make the proper generalization from enough data. I try to do this but I have a habit of never citing the things I am pulling from. I hope to start doing so once I have more time to really give research to posts as opposed to stream of consciousness. I feel that both exercises are extremely fruitful. Opinions and ideas without solid data allow us to challenge our own beliefs and really look at what is going on. Approaching from bias with possibility of being completely wrong seems to be the only true method to get results, and inform ourselves.
1 comments:
Thanks for the kinds words on my blog, and thanks for this mammoth comment! You know, it seems stupid to me now that I essentially Googled every single word and proper name from the game and read about them for connections for what amounted to nine hours of my life. A lot of the connections I made probably weren't intended on the designer's part. But there are two ways to look at it: maybe one of the many people working on the game *did* think about these things, and wouldn't it be a shame if that fact had vanished into history without anybody writing it down. And second, I'm a firm believer in a slightly more rational version of Jung's collective unconscious: I think our history as a species gets pretty quickly absorbed by our brains in school as children. Thus, it's not surprising if our creative artifacts manifest ancient ideas that we might not have thought about directly.
Of course, if you name your character Jade and your game Beyond Good and Evil, you were probably thinking a little bit about subtext.
I'm so glad to hear somebody else was confused by the beginning of the game. I mean, I think they brought you into the action and the story fairly effectively. But playing it on the PS2 controller instead of the XBOX or GameCube left me sincerely confused as to what I was supposed to press. It was anything but intuitive.
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