Cultural Relevance Through Non-Innovation

In keeping with the previous posts, I am trying to continue a theme. I wish to refine and redefine the argument I want to make and then write it into a coherent pdf. Where it goes from there, I don’t know.

In any case, I am interested in what people playing video games and people making video games are discussing and maybe not really talking about.

There is a large amount of assumptions that are made when a designer or innovator in any sense of the word, creates a new product / idea / thing. This brings us to our first premise, one that I will illustrate with a quote from Aramis or The Love of Technology:

“By definition, a technological project is a fiction, since at the outset it does not exist, and there is no way it can exist ye because it is in the project phase” (23).

Further, I wanted to say something with this in mind, of the nature of the technological project. Same source:

“No technological project is technological first and foremost.

“What’s that engineer poking his nose into?” you may well ask. “Why is he criticizing society, pursing his own politics, his own urban planning? An engineer answers questions, he doesn’t ask them.” This is the image of engineers held by people who think technology is neutral, or …that technology is purely a means to an end, or…that the only goal of a technology is technology itself and its own further development. Bardet, as we have seen, defines his goals and questions for himself, even if he is defensive about playing “amusing mental games” or making “sterile critiques”. He’s a sociologist as well as a technician. Let’s say that he’s a sociotechnician, and that he relies on a particular form of ingenuity, heterogeneous engineering, which leads him to blend together major social questions concerning the spirit of the age or the century and “properly” technological questions in a single discourse. “ (32-33).

In this statement sits the general idea I have wanted to make but have been struggling to discuss. The issue with video games is that there is not a single engineer that is in charge of this technological product.

Each game requires, like the subject of Aramis, a series of innovations that are not altogether related. There is a trail of associations that begin when the first design discussion happens. How are we going to get A to do B using C physics engine on the D console. How are we going to get A to do B using the controller configuration of the D console? Here is where the limitations of telling a story in a video game start. Jordan Mechner of Prince of Persia, says:

By its nature, video game writing is inextricably bound up with game design, level design, and the other aspects of production. A film screenplay is a clean, written blueprint that serves as a starting point and reference for the director, actors, and the rest of the creative team. It's also a document that film scholars and critics can later read and discuss as a work distinct from the film itself. Video games have no such blueprint. The game design script created at the start of a production is often quickly rendered obsolete, its functions assumed by new tools created to fit the project's specific needs.

While most project specific needs may be met, not all of them will be due to either physical limitations, monetary, or time constraints. Going back to the examples from Aramis, video game makers, the project developers, the scripters (both voice and code), and the people ensuring the code works well with the D console, all need to work together to perform a task that can only be called a technological one. If a video game is a technological product, then the series of translations that occur based on what they feel the industry, their company, their fans, and their soon-to-be fans, need to be accurate. Here is where the social aspects of the game creation process come in.

Once a game is released, the innovators, translators, and associations are put on the table. It is up to consumers to decide if the game is worthy of their attention. Here we will use another quote from Aramis:

“Rather than focusing on the artificial difference between State and industry, the public sector and the private sector, let’s choose the more refined notion of spokesperson, and find out, next, whether the constituent groups turn out to be well represented by those whom have given their mandate. The spokespersons assert that automobiles mst be supplemented, complemented, by Aramis. They are the ones, too, who claim that all their constituents would say, would think, or would mean the same thing eventually, if only people would go to the trouble of questioning them directly. The representatives surround themselves with unanimity. To hear them, the conclusion seems obvious, irresistible…” (42).

Here, Latour is talking about a problem that most industries have, this includes the video game industry. Most creators of technological products need to create products that meet the needs of their users as well as grow their user base in order to meet the ever growing cost of using more and more expensive parts. However, this doesn’t necessarily happen in the video game industry as the things that have made money in the past keep being remade with the innovations created by the D console’s new processing power. Thus, innovation is somewhat removed from the game maker’s hands and placed into the D console’s manufacturer.

This process has been repeated quite a few times now. When a console has been around for a while and the number of innovations decrease slightly in favor of truly tremendous reinnovations of the D console’s apparatus (via a re-translation of the console’s intended use), a new console appears. The console makers have little to lose as reimagining older games in a new light has been as successful as games could be.