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| A PhD in Operation Market Garden? That'll do nicely |
My name is Ed Fowler; I am a long term computer game addict.
There I’ve said it. Not exactly controversial to those that know me but it’s
still a strong statement of position. It’s not a harmless vice, It’s not without
real world effects as well. For example during a blissful three months “gardening
leave” when the dot-com bubble collapsed I had an extended period of doing
bugger all at home. I could have used the time to up-skill, learn a language,
get fit or actually do some gardening. I
spent it getting Zen-good at Return to Castle Wolfenstein. An admirable
investment in total pointlessness I'm sure you’ll agree.
I’ve had access to computer games since I was eight. I
remember typing them from a magazine into my ZX80 which carbon dates me pretty accurately.
Followed by ZX81, ZX Spectrum and the joys of both Archimedes and early PC
games at university. The hours and days I’ve spent on games like Elite,
Valhalla, leisure suit Larry, Doom, Duke Nukem, Civilisation, and then later on
consumed by the Gran Turismo and X universe series have been a formative part
of my life. Not just playing them either, hacking, improvising, modifying and
shaping games has been as large a part of my life as writing and sci-fi*. it's one of the reasons I work in IT. Computer games are one of the foundations of why i love technology and our use of it. Given this, it
might come as some surprise that I don’t have a current game/time Hoover on the
go at the moment. I’ve stacks of games at home, consoles, games PCs etc. But nothing
appeals very much. I buy a game, play it for a bit then give up and grab a good
book.
What’s happened?
Games have got boring, that’s what. It seems that as production values have gone
up, the room for imagination has gone out of the window. There are several factors
at play here. The movement from the single player to the online experience. The
movement from hours of story to short and sweet or even casual player. The emphasis
on fantasy or role playing games rather than complexity and intrigue to drive
the story and the over arching focus on graphics, graphics, graphics rather
than story or world building. I don’t want the real world, I want a game. Something
to take me out of the real world for a bit. I don’t want cinema verity and I don’t
want utterly baffling cobblers either. I don’t want Modern Warfare 3 and I don’t
want Final Fantasy XIII part 2 chapter 4 section b paragraph iii either. I want
a game. A game where I don’t have to go online after 8 hrs play and get my virtual
arse handed to me by some adolescent troglodyte
when I arrive in the game world. A game where I don’t have to identify with
some big haired, androgynous pillock with a ludicrously large sword in a world
so baffling that I have to play the previous four hundred episodes to work out
what’s going on. A game where the learning curve isn’t so vertical that I'm stuck
on level one for the next three years or where I get p0wned the second I get
into the game grid. A game where I don’t spend more time customising and tinkering
with my car/avatar/game persona/weapons load out than I do playing the levels. A
game when I go online looking for hints etc (i.e. cheats) I don’t get flooded
with posts by idiots debating the particular form of fourteenth century assassination
techniques acceptable to the inquisition and/or Ottoman caliphate. I don’t want
cutsey. I don’t want manga. I don’t want to simulate the real world. I don’t
want my billion dollar battleship to lose any XP against coracle borne axe men
and by jiminy when I want to use nuclear weapons against ninth century horse
archers I goddamn well can if I’ve got them.
But most of all, I don’t want you to replace your crappy
deadline driven imagination for my own. The world building and acting in my own
head is far better than anything you can create, no matter how sumptuous your
graphics and merchandising tie-ins. Don’t fill in all the blanks thank you. I can
do that just fine. I don’t want back story, I want you to write the characters
so I can work it out. I don’t want three hours of cut scene exposition (I'm looking
at you Bayonetta) stating the bleeding obvious, I can work it out for myself. I
don’t want prequels, sequels, in the same universe as or reboots. I want a
place for me to play while the girlfriend is out and the child isn’t hogging
the consoles.
Basically I want a game to be a place where I can use my
imagination in the same way I can when reading a good novel. All I want is to
direct the narrative not be forced to consume your stale view of the
world. I blame Hollywood for this. Film
and TV are both media where the use of your own imagination is verboten. The “auteur
is king and the vision is imperator” school of thinking is central to the specialised
bank that is Hollywood. A sales model where the same old content is replayed over and over
again until no more life or money is left in the concept is how they make money
and the games world is becoming the same. Flogging a dead horse is just fine.
Over produced and under authored. No space for someone to
interact with the game in their own way. Don’t use your imagination, you must
use our vision. Not your game to own, our experience to licence. Not just you
to complete, but online, so we can sell you more (hell online so we can take
your credit card immediately like this juicy rumour about the next Wii player
which you can read about here: Wii
U to have NFR payments capability). Not a space to think our space to
bombard you with our imagery and concepts. No message of hope, just dystopia
and nihilism. No reflective subtlety just false complexity. No true freedom
just determinism hiding behind three end cut scenes No rights of man just triumph of the will. No Wealth
of Nations just Hanseatic league. All Da-Vinci and no Robert Hooke. All imagery
and no content. No sex, just porn. Don’t think, just look at the pictures. Don’t
create, just consume our propaganda. No joy, just fun. No achievement, just
gamification. Its no release until you insert coin and certainly no happy
finish unless you by the DVD as well. It’s tied in and switched off and you’re
there to absorb not direct.
Perhaps my blood sugars are low. Perhaps today has
unaccountably dinked my mood or perhaps the latest download from Steam was a
buggy pile of rehashed, soulless, linear crap barely fit for beta test dressed up
as a world beating FPS with eye bleedingly lovely visuals and a world built
like a brick shit house costing sixty bucks. Up yours games producers, right up
yours. No more Mr nice guy. I’ve had enough. Well until X3 comes out
anyway.
*though obviously not as large a part as beer and women have
formed, but still pretty major.
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