On the Subject of Online Passes

I’ll just come out and say it: online passes are b.s. I should probably clarify this assertion. Not all online passes are b.s. The b.s. passes are the ones that lock off portions of the games that you have already bought. Actually, on second thought, I reaffirm my original assertion: online passes are b.s.

For the uninitiated/casual gamers out there, an online pass is pretty much what it sounds like: a pass that allows a game to be played online or allows access to online content. Publishers like EA and Ubisoft have instituted the use of these passes in order to discourage consumers from buying used games and to make up profits “lost” to used game sales; people who buy games new receive the pass for free whereas people who buy games used must pay extra for the pass. Although this practice seems innocuous at first glance, it’s really not. What is worse, though, is the new practice that has begun to appear with some high profile games, in which the online passes are being used to lock content that is not online enabled.

Let’s look at the argument for online passes. The thesis goes that used game purchases hurt publishers because those publishers do not receive payment for sales of used games; all profits go to the seller, not the publisher. Okay, it’s easy to see that publishers gain no profit from used sales, but how does that hurt them? After all, for a game to be sold as used it must have been initially bought as new, which means that the publisher already profited from the sale of that copy; why should they be entitled to additional profits from reselling the game? It’s like selling a used car—or anything second-hand, for that matter. General Motors is not entitled to a chunk of your cash if you decide to sell your old Chevy.

Another claim that publishers make is that used game sales hurt them because they are forced to provide online content to people that did not pay for that content (hence the “online” part of the online pass). For example, the publisher must maintain servers so that gamers can play online deathmatchs against other players. People who bought the game used, the claim goes, are not paying for the upkeep of those servers. Shenanigans, I say. Access to those servers was already paid for by the game’s original purchaser who is no longer using that access. The original purchaser transferred his/her rights to that access along with the property rights to the game disc to the new owner. Publishers are not losing a dime when someone buys a used copy of a game. It’s not like buyers of used games are pirates; they are not stealing.

For the sake of argument, though, let’s say that publishers are justified in their claims. Implementing a pass system that treats an online mode of a game as, in essence, a separate game would not be wholly unreasonable. Online multiplayer, for example, is not really part of the main game itself. It can be argued that it is a bonus, much like the bonus features of a DVD. You do not need access to online multiplayer in order to play or enjoy the main game. After all, you don’t have access to a movie’s bonus features when you see the movie in the theater and not having that access does not detract from the experience. (One obvious flaw in this line of reasoning is that games are not really analogous to movies, but we’ll let that slide. Another flaw is that online modes in games have become an expected part of the gaming experience, but we’ll ignore that too.) If we treat such online components as separate games, then an online pass system is not unreasonable, making it akin to an MMOG’s subscription fee (we’ll further overlook the point that MMOGs have by-and-large abandoned subscription fees as unsustainable). But what is not justifiable are publishers locking portions of the main game itself unless the consumer pays an extra fee for an unlock code.

When the much acclaimed and anticipated Batman: Arkham City was released last October, gamers were shocked to find that they were locked out of the heavily advertised Catwoman portion of the game, which reportedly accounted for twenty percent of the main game. Even though it was possible to finish the game’s storyline without accessing that content, you could not fully complete the game without it. In January of this year, the same controversy arose with the much anticipated Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning when it was learned that an entire quest line that is included with the game will be locked behind an online pass. The owner of that game’s studio, Curt Schilling, went onto his studio’s forums to say,

DAY 1 DLC, to be extremely and VIVIDLY clear, is FREE, 100% totally FREE, to anyone that buys a new copy of Reckoning, ANYONE. If you don't buy new games you buy them used, and in that case you will have to pay for the Day 1 free DLC content the new copy buyers got for free.

It's clear the intent right? To promote early adopters and MUCH MORE IMPORTANT TO ME, REWARD fans and gamers who commit to us with their time and money when it benefits the company . . . This is not 38 [Studios] trying to take more of your money, or EA in this case, this is us REWARDING people for HELPING US! If you disagree due to methodology, ok, but that is our intent . . . companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how . . .

Atrocious grammar aside, Curt, here’s how: a) the locked content is not DLC (i.e. downloadable content) if it’s already on the disk itself; b) it’s not free if it’s included in the purchase price; c) as explained above, you’re company is not losing money from used game sales; and finally, d) you’re not rewarding your supporters by giving them access to a product that they legitimately bought and own. To use the DVD example again, it’s one thing to deny access to a movie’s bonus features (as some studios have begun doing with rental discs, by the way) and quite another to deny them access to a movie’s ending. What Arkham City and Kingdoms of Amalur have done is akin to the latter. Contrary to Schilling’s claims that companies are just trying to protect their interests, they really are trying to take more of their customers’ money.

So what’s the solution? Well, the most obvious solution is for publishers to acknowledge that used game sales do not hurt them and get over it. After all, if you wanted to buy an old NES cartridge you would have no choice but to buy it used and you don’t hear Nintendo complaining about it. The fact is, second-hand sales of many things—including games—have occurred for a very long time and nobody has ever complained of lost revenue from it except for some game publishers. But the cynic in me knows that these publishers will never acknowledge that fact, so other options must be considered. Since the best way of solving any problem is to eliminate its causes, let’s consider the question of why people buy used games. If given a choice between buying something new versus buying it used, people would naturally prefer to buy new. How could they not? The reason people buy used goods is obvious; the new goods are too expensive. Personally, except for games like Duke Nukem Forever that aren’t worth buying new (zing!), I always buy new games. However, except for very rare occasions, I NEVER pay full price for them. When a game costs $60+ at launch and has a 50%+ price cut within six months’ time, can you blame me—or anyone—for not wanting to get ripped off? It’s easy to see the appeal of buying used. The best alternative then is to not overprice the games to begin with and sell them at twenty or thirty dollars from the start. If publishers did that, consumers would feel much better about buying new copies of games.

But again, the cynic in me knows that will never happen. So what’s left? Actually, I think Schilling had the right idea of rewarding customers who buy new copies. The reward, though, has to be an actual reward, i.e. a bonus, not SOMETHING THEY’RE ALREADY ENTITLED TO, YOU DOLT!!! (Ahem—sorry about that.) Suppose new copies of games came packaged with vouchers for legitimate DLC, such as extra multiplayer maps or weapons (like existing pre-order bonuses that stores currently give out). This content would be entirely optional, so instead of punishing used buyers by locking them out of online multiplayer (which is really a fundamental component of games today) unless they pay a ransom, they will have the choice of buying that DLC. Companies should reward their customers, not treat them like thieves.

Taking an Arrow to the Knee: 2011 in Review

2011 was a year of disappointments in the gaming world. Sure, the industry as a whole made a lot of money and some games broke sales records, as happens every year. But financial success does not equate to quality or contentment. Modern Warfare 3 may have made Activision even more wealth than it already had, but that wealth does not compensate for losing the Hero franchise of games for the company. While the employees of MW3’s design studios are cashing their fat bonus checks, thanks to Activision’s mismanagement the employees of the Hero studios are cashing their unemployment checks. The point is this: the bad things that happened in the industry this year far outweigh the good things.

Let’s use Duke Nukem Forever as a case in point. Here is a game that no one thought would ever see the light. While most games are in development for two or three years, this game was in development for fourteen years. It was first announced in 1997 and when it didn’t appear within a reasonable time frame, most gamers wrote it off as canceled and forgot about it. When Gearbox Software announced that the game was finally being released this year and actually had a working demo to back up their claims, the anticipation was therefore extraordinary. And then the game was released and the end product was . . . less than anticipated, to put it kindly. To be fair, the game was designed last century, and there is fun to be had in playing it, but it cannot stand up to contemporary games, including those made by Gearbox itself. If Duke Nukem Forever had come out in 1997, it would have been an excellent game. As it is, the game turned out to be a bigger disappointment than if it had never come out at all.

But okay, Duke Nukem Forever is a single game and not every game can be a winner. That is in the nature of creative work. For as lackluster as the game is, that poor level of quality is the product of creative missteps, not corporate mismanagement (although its publishing history is a product of such mismanagement). The quality of the game is not an indicator of the industry as a whole, although the disappointment surrounding the game is indicative of the year’s events. To get a sense of the industry as a whole, let’s go back to the example of Activision. The management—and mismanagement—over at Activision found expression in two notable occurrences this year: the killing of the Hero games (Guitar Hero, Band Hero, DJ Hero) and the company’s ugly feud with EA.

Let’s begin with the Hero games. Activision announced that they were killing the games because the music game genre wasn’t selling well anymore and there wasn’t enough demand for those games. It’s a small wonder why there was no demand for those games: Activision glutted the market with them, releasing multiple iterations of the Hero games of successively poor quality. In fact, the company released fourteen games in the Guitar Hero line alone in only five years, each one worse than the last. The problem Activision ran into is one of basic economics: too much supply of poor quality for too little demand. In order to maximize its profits, the company produced shovelware that caused gamers to turn away in disgust.

Speaking of disgust, Activision’s feud with EA took a particularly distasteful turn this year. Leading up to the release of Modern Warfare 3—part of the company’s Call of Duty franchise which has itself received annual iterations—Activision began disparaging EA’s similar game Battlefield 3 in a very public manner, going as far as to seize a website owned by a Battlefield fan that dared to mock Modern Warfare. For its part, EA descended into the muck as well in order to respond to Activision’s attacks. The whole situation was akin to the immature trash talking found in online gaming except writ large for the whole world to see. It was a prime example of why the gaming industry is perceived as an illegitimate pastime for emotionally stunted shut-ins.

These situations make it clear that Activision puts profits before quality or even common decency. Of course, such corporate greed should come as no surprise considering the current state of the U.S.’ economy. After all, it is just such corporate greed that got us into this mess. It is also just such corporate greed that resulted in the industry crash of 1983 and I fear that if this greed is not checked the industry will experience another such crash.

Of course, when reviewing gaming news stories from this year it is impossible to overlook the problems faced by Nintendo and Sony. I’ve discussed Nintendo’s travails in depth elsewhere in this blog, so I will not repeat that here. I will, however, mention their latest mishap regarding Shigeru Miyamoto’s retirement. After he stated in an interview with Wired that he plans to retire from his executive position so as to go back to a more hands-on role in designing games—which is exactly what he should do—Nintendo quickly forced a retraction of that comment, saying that Miyamoto was misinterpreted. Whether he was misinterpreted or not—I think not—Nintendo’s response just reinforced the impression that the company’s executives don’t know what they’re doing.

But the biggest news story in the industry this year was by far the Playstation Network outage in the spring. When hackers stole passwords and, possibly, credit card data from the PSN, Sony was forced to shut down the service so they could rebuild it. Although this event in itself should not have been a big deal, the way Sony bungled the handling of it made it much worse. Not only did they shut down the service for over a month, which deprived its customers of the functionality they were promised when they bought their systems and cost publishers large amounts of money in lost revenue, the company failed to disclose the problem in a timely manner. The resulting impression was of a company that was clueless and irresponsible at best and outright devious at worst. Sony’s initial handling of the situation prompted lawsuits and even a Congressional investigation and rightly so. Although I believe the company redeemed itself in the end by formally apologizing for the fiasco and offering free games and upgrades to its customers, the damage had been done. The company lost a lot of money and, worse, credibility.

So is there a lesson in all of these disappointments? I truly do not know. The game industry is still relatively young and youth is prone to mistakes and indiscretions. However, the industry has been around long enough that such issues should have been outgrown by now. So if there is a lesson for the industry, I think it is this: act your age. If you want to be taken seriously and be viewed as a legitimate business that produces a product of legitimate social value, then stop acting like a drunken frat boy.

Nintendo Should Fail

I love video games. That much should already be evident here. Sure, there are specific games and genres for which I do not care, but I do not begrudge their existence. And yet, somehow, I am rapidly becoming a hater of Nintendo.

How can this be? The Nintendo Entertainment System (aka the Nintendo) forms a significant part of my childhood in a good way. I played that thing for uncountable hours and it represents a keystone in my cultural development. I may not remember the names of my elementary school teachers or nearly anyone with whom I went to school, but I damn well remember the Konami code for Contra and which pipes to take in Super Mario Bros. to get to the bonus coin rooms. And no, I don’t remember these things because I was an asocial shut-in with more games than friends. I was an active kid. Nintendo was just such a huge thing back then.

So how can this affection—nay, love—for Nintendo have turned to such revulsion? I suspect it’s for the same reason that I have come to loathe the once-beloved Star Wars: the creators have tampered with the product to such an extent that they have, in effect, raped my childhood.

My disenchantment with Nintendo began with the Wii. As I’ve documented here, I found the Wii to be an ultimately useless device. It is a game system that, unlike its competitors, only does one thing: play games. This wouldn’t be a problem if there are any games worth playing on the system, but there aren’t. Now, even the Nintendo company itself has officially given up on the Wii and is focusing on their next game platform, the incredibly stupidly named Wii U.

My disgust with Nintendo has only grown over the last year. As I said, the NES was an important piece of my childhood. However, when I became a teenager I outgrew that console and video games as a whole. At the time, games were being marketed as kids’ entertainment, as toys, and they weren’t sophisticated enough to hold my maturing interest. As a result, I missed out on most of Nintendo’s other games and systems after the NES (of course, I played Tetris on the Game Boy, but who didn’t?). It wasn’t until I was in college that I was drawn back into gaming by Sony’s Playstation, a device whose mature games were marketed specifically to adults such as myself. It was at that point that I became the avid gamer that I am today. As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve come to miss the things I had in my youth and so I’ve recently become a part of the retro gaming community, seeking out the older games and systems that I enjoyed—or missed—back in the day.

The point is this: my experience with Nintendo’s game systems other than the NES is not colored by nostalgia. I am able to experience them fresh, warts and all. And let me tell you, there are an awful lot of warts.

Nintendo’s mistakes are legendary. This is the company that released a laughably bloodless version of Mortal Kombat, a game in which the appeal lied in its absurd amounts of gore. This is the company that released the Virtual Boy, a portable device that wasn’t really portable and which automatically paused every fifteen minutes to prevent severe damage to its users’ eyes (you know you’ve made a bad game when the game itself forces you to stop playing it). This is the company that released the N64, a console that used cartridge-based games when CD-ROMs were the industry standard and that had the most frustrating and uncomfortable controller ever devised.

And the hits just keep on coming. Although Nintendo has had great success in the handheld gaming marketplace, let’s not forget that they had to redesign the Game Boy Advance twice because they forgot to include a backlit screen and headphone jack, so the GBA was unplayable unless you were sitting alone and in direct sunlight. The Developers’ System (DS) has gone through four full iterations for various reasons. The current 3DS (which is not actually part of the DS series, despite the name) has experienced significant problems due to being rushed to market before it was ready. It is on the brink of failure for three main reasons: it was overpriced, costing more than a home console; it was released with only a handful of third-party games and no first-party support; and it was designed without a second control stick when modern games require two. Nintendo has tried to rectify the mistakes with the 3DS by cutting the price of it and releasing a control stick add-on, but by doing so in less than six months after the device’s release they have admitted effectively that they don’t know what they’re doing. It doesn’t inspire confidence, does it?

And let’s not leave out the colossal turd that is the Wii here. Sure, the Wii was extremely successful for the first few years of its life, consistently outselling every other console by a wide margin. But those days are past. Nobody’s buying the Wii anymore, for two main reasons: a) everyone who wants one has one by now, and b) people who have them—or had them—found out they aren’t worth having. Nintendo’s leaders famously, and correctly, stated that they had done more to bring new people into gaming, but once they had these new people hooked Nintendo did nothing to hold onto them. The vast majority of the Wii’s games were directed only at novice gamers, so once those gamers became more experienced and savvy they graduated to the more mature hardware, just as I went from my NES to my Playstation.

Why has Nintendo sabotaged itself in this way? Why didn’t the company encourage making more sophisticated games for the Wii? Quite simply, it couldn’t; the Wii’s hardware limitations prohibit it. In order to keep the console’s cost low—and thus more appealing to new gamers—the Wii has a smaller memory capacity and less processing power than the other consoles of this generation. The result is a console that cannot support online multiplayer gaming, that has no multimedia capabilities (no CD or DVD playing allowed) and that outputs only in standard definition when HD is the norm in both the game and television industries. The hardware limitations constrain game developers, putting them in the position of having to choose between making games for one limited console with limited appeal or making games that can be released on multiple consoles with wider appeal. That’s not a difficult choice to make.

Looking at Nintendo’s history as a video game company has revealed that its success owes more to dumb luck than to business savvy. With all of the costly missteps the company’s made over the years it’s a wonder they’re still in business. Which begs the question: should they still be in business? I don’t think so, and the way things are going for them they won’t be in business much longer. Their decision to jumpstart sales of the 3DS by slashing $80 off the price less than six months after its release has served to alienate the company’s fans and customers. Nintendo tried to offset the damage by giving free games to the 3DS’ early adopters before the price cut took effect, but that plan backfired when retailers dropped the price early, allowing anyone who bought the 3DS at any price to receive the free games. Oops. Nintendo has driven its fan base even further away by ending its support for the Wii this year and releasing the Wii U in 2012. The company claims that the Wii U represents the next generation of gaming and that the company has a headstart on its competitors, but in truth the specs released so far show that the Wii U is really the current generation console that the Wii should have been and that the competitors are really years ahead of Nintendo. Oops again.

The future looks dim for Nintendo as a hardware company. So what is the company to do if it is to survive? The answer is simple: Nintendo needs to follow the lead of Sega and get out of the hardware business and focus instead on making games. After all, making really good games is what Nintendo has always done really well. I mean, come on! The company’s general manager of development, Shigeru Miyamoto, is the creator of Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda! He should be making games, not running an office. The company needs to capitalize on its assets and do what it does best. But so far the leaders of the company have refused to do that. The company’s shareholders have repeatedly called upon its leaders to make games for other, non-Nintendo platforms, notably cell phones and tablet computers. However, those leaders have steadfastly refused to do so. The company’s position has been that Nintendo games will only be made for Nintendo systems. This is yet another costly mistake on Nintendo’s part, the final mistake that I fear will be their undoing. And that is why Nintendo should fail. A company this stupid deserves it.

What's Wrong with the Wii?

(This is an email I sent to X-Play's Adam Sessler. Consider it an open letter.)

Mr. Sessler,

I am writing this in response to your Soapbox podcast of 12/27/07 (“Buy More Wii Games!”). In this post you ask for people to email you regarding reasons why they are not buying Wii games. Please excuse the lateness of this response; I have only viewed the post recently and feel that the topic is still relevant now, a year and a half later.

As an avid gamer I purchased a Wii early last year and have regretted the decision ever since. The reason as to why is that there are very few interesting games available for the Wii, which goes a long way to answering your question. The games that I have enjoyed most have been those such as the Lego games which are available on the other consoles. Considering the superiority of the other consoles in terms of online support, unlockable content and graphical capabilities, there is little reason for playing those games on the Wii. (Incidentally, this is also the reason why I refuse to buy a PS3; there are only a handful of games exclusive to the system that I want to play and since Sony has removed backward compatibility from the system there is no reason for me to upgrade from my PS2. Besides, if paying $250+ for a Wii caused buyer’s remorse, imagine what shelling out in excess of $400 for an extraneous console would do.)

Sure, one can argue that the Wii allows you to download games, including classic NES games, to its built-in hard drive. But so what? The 360 does essentially the same thing and it allows you to try out the games before you buy them so you have an idea of what you are getting. The same cannot be said of the Wii and in these budget-conscious times, in which I for one will not buy a game that I have not played, this lack of consumer support on Nintendo’s part acts as another strike against the Wii.

So what is the Wii good for? The only use I have for mine is playing old GameCube games. I would have been so much better off buying a used GameCube instead! And, as you note, I do not seem to be the only one bothered by the Wii’s pointlessness. In fact, the situation is so bad that my local Blockbuster has ceased to stock new Wii games for rental, presumably because nobody is renting the games they do carry. Unfortunately, they no longer carry GameCube titles either, so I am left to scrounge through used game dealers’ bins instead.

Please pardon me if I have stated anything here that others have stated before. It is probably obvious to game aficionados and professionals such as yourself that Nintendo has squandered the Wii’s enormous potential when it comes to non-casual gamers. I doubt, however, that Nintendo is losing sleep about this loss. They have identified an otherwise neglected segment of the gamer population, the casual, older and predominantly female demographic, and have exploited it to great effect. Good for them. But I fear that the end result is to limit themselves by catering to a niche market which will harm them in the long term. In the short term, though, they know where their metaphorical bread is buttered which allows the company to thumb their noses at the rest of us as they did at last year’s E3. Perhaps you can bring up these issues with the Nintendo folks at this year’s E3?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Why Innovation Sucks

Resident Evil 5 is a betrayal. I have been a fan of the series since 1996 when the original game first appeared. Sure, there’s been some crap over the years (i.e. the first person shooters and the Outbreak sub-series), but on the whole the games have been fun. But with RE5 Capcom has taken the fun and defecated on it, all in the name of innovation.

Innovation has become one the watchwords in the game industry today. Another, equally heinous word is “co-op.” RE5 takes both as its mantra and therein lies the source of its failure. Innovation in particular is not necessarily a good thing. Just look at the classic example of when Coca-Cola changed its formula. Changing something that is good to begin with does not lead to something better. Unless you’re in an abusive relationship, change does not automatically equal good.

Unfortunately, “innovation” has become a too frequent criterion in video game reviews. It has gotten to the point where a game automatically wins points if it does something differently and loses points if it uses tried and true techniques. This is one of the reasons why co-operative gameplay has become so ubiquitous in games, even if the gamers don’t want it. Just because Gears of War’s innovative “stop and pop” control mechanic and co-op mode was successful with knuckle-dragging frat boys doesn’t mean that every developer has to change what they’re doing. But that’s exactly what Capcom did with RE5, throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater in order to appear hip and relevant and get good reviews.

Well here’s some news for Capcom and other developers: many gamers, myself included, hated Gears of War! We fit the demographic of the average gamers: mid-thirties, educated, professional, with a nearly-even distribution of gender. We like consistency in our games. We require substance from games. We don’t like games that entail pointless destruction or violence and we certainly don’t like co-operative gameplay. We grew up with games that provided substantial single-player experiences (games like, oh, I don’t know, Resident Evil?). We play games in order to relieve the stresses of our daily lives and to get away from dealing with people. We don’t want to have to interact with any more jackasses than we have to, which is what co-op games force us to do (refer to the classic Penny Arcade strip “Green Blackboards and Other Anomalies” for an illustration of this principle: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/). The point is that just because something is popular with a subset of the gamer population does not mean it needs to be force-fed to the rest of us. By attempting to do so, RE5 has betrayed those of us that have been loyal followers of the franchise.

The ultimate litmus test for a game is whether it’s fun or not. Look at Resident Evil 4. Yes, it’s innovative compared to the previous games in the series, but it doesn’t innovate for the sake of innovation. RE4 fixed the problems that plagued the previous games and the result is a game that provides a nearly perfect gameplay experience. As the old saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Instead of staying with what worked great in RE4, Capcom broke what was working and, as far as my gaming dollars are concerned, cannot fix it.

Video Games and Philosophy: I Play, Therefore I Am

(I presented this originally at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Far West Popular Culture/American Culture Associations in January of this year. I hope to use it as the basis for a book of game criticism.)

Wrongly considered by many to be strictly a form of children’s amusement, the medium of the video game is actually a rich field for academic inquiry. This field has been exploited rather famously in recent years by psychologists and sociologists studying the effects that gaming may or may not have on human behavior, and the graphic design aspects of games have also been explored to some extent, although there is a certain reluctance on the part of academic and cultural establishments to take that particular endeavor very seriously. Likewise, there has been a general neglect in the field of game studies to look at games in relation to the humanities, particularly philosophy, and yet to anyone familiar with games, they raise profound questions in those areas. While this paper does not seek to correct this neglect, it is with some of these questions that this paper is concerned. Specifically, who plays video games and why? How do games define reality or shape our perception of it? Finally, are games art and therefore valid forms of expression?

The first question: who games? As noted, there is a general belief that video games are the domain of children, or of teenagers at the very least. There is a coincident belief that the people who play games are overwhelmingly male and socially dysfunctional. However, according to the Entertainment Software Association[1], 69% of American heads of households play video games. The average game player, or gamer, is currently 33 years old, with the majority of gamers, approximately 44%, ranging in age from 18 to 49. Gamers aged under 18 account for 31% of the market and those aged 50 and up make up 25%, which is the smallest share. In terms of sex, males currently have a slight majority at 62%, with females at 38%, a difference of only 12 percentage points. This disparity is more likely a matter of marketing than of interest; magazines and television networks and programs that are male-oriented feature prominent game advertising as opposed to those geared to females. In terms of socialization, 44% of gamers play games online in large gaming communities. Gamers constitute a sophisticated culture with its own linguistic norms and code of conduct. Of course, we must remember that these numbers come from a biased source—the ESA is the game industry’s chief public relations organization—but these numbers are generally supported by gamer experience. Gamers can vouch for them.

Why, then, is it assumed in the popular imagination that gamers are children? Certainly, children do play games, though not apparently to the extent that would justify this belief. It has been suggested that since video games are a relatively new medium they appeal to youths and have been a part of youth culture more or less since their inception. This does not make for a compelling argument, however, because since their early days video games have been directed traditionally at an adult market. Pong, for example, the first commercially successful video game, was first installed in bars, which one would presume would be devoid of children. Home gaming consoles have been relatively expensive, even today costing hundreds of dollars, being priced not for children but for adults with disposable income. The vehicle for games, whether it be the home console, the personal computer or the cell phone, is likewise geared to adults. The video game is and has been an adult medium. The notion that it is a medium for children likely comes from a cultural bias regarding the term “game.” “Game” connotes “play” and playing is regarded as juvenile behavior. Video games are toys, the thinking goes, and mature adults don’t play with toys. Of course, we all know that this is completely untrue. Adults have always loved games and toys; the games and toys just get bigger and more sophisticated as we mature. It is this fact that may help explain the appeal of video games to children; children play video games because adults introduced the games to them and to play the games is to emulate adult behavior.

But if video games appeal to children because adults like the games, why do the games appeal to adults in the first place? Why do adults feel compelled to engage in play? Probably for the same reason that children do: play is a form of interaction with our social environments that allows us to identify, formulate and practice our social roles. In his thesis on the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Marshall Smith shows that a society’s leisure activities reflect the forms of work that is done within that society.[2] People in industrial societies which emphasize physical labor tend to spend their leisure time playing and following athletic sports. Members of technological societies, by contrast, whose work is less physically demanding and more mental, play games that likewise employ less physical and more mental exertion, such as board games, cards and gambling, darts and billiards, and video games.[3] The games that we play reflects the work that we do. This is especially true with video games. Gonzalo Frasca, one of the leading theorists in the field of ludology, or the study of play, points out that video games are simulations.[4] They are models that allow us to explore cause and effect, right and wrong, winning and losing. They allow us to do what we cannot do or are discouraged from doing in our everyday lives. This is especially true in MMORPGS, in which gamers fashion avatars to represent themselves more or less out of whole cloth, imbuing those avatars with the characteristics that the gamers want to possess themselves. It is a process of self-fashioning at a most literal level. Games are thus simultaneously a means by which we engage in wish fulfillment and achieve a sense of agency and power that is frequently absent from reality.

And that brings us to the issue of reality and our relationship to it. According to Plato, most people have an imperfect grasp or perception of reality, one that is limited by our lack of intellectual rigor. In his Dialogues, Plato articulates what is referred to as the “Allegory of the Cave.” He describes a scenario in which prisoners are chained in a dimly lit cave and are forced to watch shadows projected on the wall; these shadows constitute the conception of reality for these shackled cave-dwellers. Because they don’t know better, because they have such a limited frame of reference, they accept the representation of reality, the projected shadows, in place of the real thing. Now consider how complicated the issue becomes if instead of looking at shadows they played video games. Whereas Plato’s shadows were merely representations of reality, games and virtual reality raise the representation to the level of simulation. Games don’t simply represent reality, they let you interact with it and control it, to experience it in a way that a shadow, or a painting or a film for that matter, do not. Plato felt that representations were dangerous because they tricked people into accepting their false versions of reality instead of forcing people to search for the truth of reality and experiencing the real thing for themselves. What about the simulation? Does it pose a similar or greater threat? Will we come to prefer it to reality, or fail to make distinctions between the two? Opponents and critics of video games think so. We hear horror stories all the time of people who become addicted to games, preferring to interact with virtual people rather than real ones. We are warned that violent games promote violent behavior because gamers, particularly younger ones, cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. This idea is conveyed in the many reports about how the Columbine shooters played a version of Doom in which they had modified the game world to resemble their high school. Can this be true? Can games reconfigure our perception of reality to such an extent that reality itself becomes a simulation?

Aristotle would have said no. Unlike Plato, who felt that the representation served to distance people from truth, Aristotle saw it bringing people closer to truth through the vicarious experience of it. In his Poetics, Aristotle discusses how poetry, specifically tragedy, is an imitation of great men and how these characters’ experiences and changes of fortune are internalized by the audience. Through these characters, the members of the audience are given permission to explore their own darkest desires in a socially acceptable and safe way. The ultimate effect of this exploration is catharsis, the purging of those dark and negative desires and drives. The internalization of the imitation acts as a safety valve, letting the audience blow off steam before they explode. If this is the case, then games should fulfill the same function, but to a greater extent. Because the interactive nature of games makes them more real than mere representations, then the vicarious experiences they impart should result in more satisfying catharsis, one that is potentially even more socially responsible than that derived from drama or other forms of art. It would seem better for people to work out their aggressions in a virtual environment than in the real world. When people cut you off in traffic, don’t run them off the road; just go home and run cars off the road playing Burnout Revenge. The streets will be safer that way.

Of course, this line of thought is likely to raise objections. For one thing, both Plato and Aristotle were considering specifically the value of art to society. There is a reluctance in our culture to consider video games as art, and so it’s questionable whether the arguments Plato and Aristotle put forth can be applied to games. Can games be considered analogous to other forms of art? There is, as has been explained, a fundamental difference between games and shadows or plays: the latter are representational whereas the former is simulational. We don’t consider physics simulators or shooting galleries or games of chess, for that matter, to be examples of art. And yet, video games employ many of the elements that we find in more traditional art forms. There is design, for one thing, although that design frequently has more in common with architecture than painting. Still, architecture is considered to be an art form. Another element is a sense of narrative. Although many games don’t tell stories in the traditional sense, many of them do, and those that do not can be read as narratives, albeit simple ones. Fighting games like Mortal Kombat have characters in conflict with each other; there is a crisis point at which the gamer’s avatar (the protagonist) is in danger of losing; there is a logical progression of events from start to finish that displays a logical chain of causality: if the avatar gets hit, it falls down. Games also convey messages and function as a form of communication. In order to finish games successfully, the gamer must enter the mindset of the game designers and learn their logic.[5] Even the early and relatively simple and primitive games (Pac-Man, Space Invaders) communicated meaning: these games were not about winning; in fact, winning was impossible. The goal instead was to play a good game and earn a high enough score to have your initials recorded for posterity or until someone better came along and beat your score. That’s a profoundly Classical ideal, akin to Achilles setting out to attain glory in the short lifetime that is allotted to him. Finally, the best games showcase creative thought and originality, operating in surprising ways, sometimes even to the designers themselves. The celebrated game creator Peter Molyneux describes an experience he had programming the game Black and White: one of the game’s creatures was programmed to eat the most edible items in its environment, a program that it tried to fulfill by eating its own leg.[6] The game’s AI, or artificial intelligence, showed emergent behavior, taking the rules of game play that he had programmed and interpreting them in an unexpected way. If the purpose of art is to make you think, then that is certainly what happened here.

To be sure, I am biased when it comes to these issues. I love my games and do not like to have my beloved pastime denigrated or disparaged. But even with that in mind, it would seem that video games do meet the criteria for works of art and that games have much to teach us about ourselves and our own world. Descartes famously asserted “Cogito, ergo sum”: “I think, therefore I am.” He felt that the only fact that could be truly knowable, the only thing of which he could be certain, was his own existence, an existence that was defined by thought. For us gamers, existence is increasingly determined not by thought but by play, not by what we think but by what we do. Our avatars provide us with a sense of volition and self-awareness; they are an objectified form of ourselves. For the gamer, Descartes’ maxim is revised to read, “Ludo, ergo sum”: “I play, therefore I am.”

[1] All statistics come from “Game Player Data,” Entertainment Software Association, 20 January 2007.
[2] Marshall David Smith, Ideology and Interaction in Internet Action Video Games (master’s thesis for University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2004), 23.
[3] Ibid., 24-25.
[4] Gonzalo Frasca, “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology” in The Video Game Theory Reader, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (New York: Routledge, 2003).
[5] Mark J. P. Wolf, ed., The Medium of the Video Game (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 4.
[6]“The Frankenstein Factor,” in Video Game Invasion: The History of a Global Obsession, dir. David Carr and David Comtois, 2 hr., Game Show Network LLC, 2004, Digital Video Disc.

The Literate Gamer

One of the things that excites me about video games is their capacity for storytelling. Games have the potential to provide for an immersive storytelling experience, one that is intelligent and profound. Many games succeed in fulfilling this potential to such an extent that they border on being great works of literature. Truly, games are poised to become the new great narrative medium and it's exciting to be here at the start of this literary revolution. Can you imagine being there for the creation of the play or the novel or the film? We're there now with the game.

Now I know many people, both those who keep an eye on the game industry and those who don't, will scoff at such an assertion. Games as literature? Games are toys, the thinking goes, with little redeeming social value. This is the snobbery that underlies much of the political debate about games. Those who object to video games do so largely I suspect because their exposure to games is limited to Pac-Man and Donkey Kong—or worse, Pong—back in the days of yore. They associate games with children and are therefore appalled that contemporary games deal with mature and sophisticated subject matter because they don't recognize that the children who grew up with games have, well, grown up. Just as works of children's literature are often bizarrely ghettoized as not being works of serious literature, so video games do not receive their due as serious art.

Games as literature? Yes. What is literature but a narrative that is composed in such a way as to illuminate human experience? If we buy into the Horatian school of thought, great works of literature are those that simultaneously teach and entertain. In the right hands, games can do these things just as well as books and films. There is no credible reason to reject games as literature. Doing so simply reveals a person's ignorance.

Granted, games are different from other works of literature by virtue of being interactive to a much greater extent than those other works. There is a great debate amongst game theorists over whether games are primarily narrative or simulational. I don't see why games need to be one or the other. Why can't they be both? A novel is a narrative that is representational. A play or movie is a narrative that is performative. No one questions the literary merit of these mediums. So why can't there be a narrative form that is simulational?

Part of the problem with viewing games as literature is the apparent lack of literary thought that has traditionally gone into them. Sure, there have been games that tell great stories but those stories seem almost to have been happy accidents. Rather than deliberately setting out to create narrative experiences in their games, designers seem to have lucked into finding narrative techniques. Now imagine the power of a game that is designed with narrative technique in mind, one that fuses narrative theory with game theory. It's not that far-fetched. Many classic works of literature were designed in ways that are remarkably similar to games.

Think about the typical structure of games. Games begin in crisis: monsters kidnap princesses, zombies besiege towns, terrorists steal WMDs. The hero sets out on a quest to save the princess, destroy the zombies or defeat the terrorists. He or she traverses many levels, fighting bosses along the way. Finally the hero triumphs and order is reestablished to the world. Now consider Homer's Odyssey. After Odysseus fails to return home from the Trojan War, Penelope is faced with the negative prospect of remarriage (crisis). Odysseus sets out on the sea to return home to Ithaca and prevent the loss of his kingdom (quest). He travels through many strange lands (levels) where he confronts and defeats figures like Polyphemus, Circe and Calypso (bosses). He makes it to Ithaca where he slaughters Penelope's suitors and regains his position as king (triumph). Is it any coincidence that classic works of literature like the Odyssey are structured like games? Far from it; both games and great literature deal with universal themes and archetypal ideas. Games are perfectly suited to producing great literature.

I don't point out the similarities between games and the Odyssey in order to suggest that the Odyssey should be made into a game (though I think it would be a very cool game and would like to get in on that action. Take note, game developers!). I point them out in order to show that narrative theory can be applied deliberately to game design in a way that is not artificial. We stand at the cusp of a literary revolution. It's going to happen whether we mean it to or not. Let's not squander our opportunity to consciously take part in it.

Why Movie-based Games Suck

It is practically a truism to say that video games based on movies are guaranteed to suck. There are countless examples of crappy movie-based games from which to draw as evidence: Enter the Matrix, Jaws Unleashed, The Godfather. If it's big at the box office, odds are there's a terrible game based on it. The process of adapting a movie into a game is often a paradigm for gaming masochism. But why?

Part of the reason for this suckage is simple greed. Game producers want to capitalize on the success of a blockbuster movie. The thinking is that if you enjoyed the movie you'll enjoy experiencing the action first hand even more. So the producer buys a license to the property, has some programmers slap together something that resembles a game, and then ships it. Such was the case with the infamous E.T. game which set the template for the Movie-Games-that-Suck (MGtS) syndrome. Naturally, the resulting "game" is an unplayable mess because the publisher has ignored that which makes a game what it is.

Games offer a fundamentally different entertainment experience than movies or other forms of media do. A movie, for example, has to be structured according to a plot. There has to be action in the Aristotelian sense in order to engage the audience and allow them to follow the story. While it's possible to make a movie without a plot—horror movie directors have been doing it for decades—those movies unsurprisingly suck. A game on the other hand does not have to be plotted. It can be, of course, and my favorite games are, but plot is not a necessary component of games. Poker has no plot nor does chess. The main component of a game, that which makes it fundamentally a game, is repetition. Repetition is necessary to gameplay because of the very reason that games entail play.

Observe the way children play. A child doesn't play with a jack-in-the-box only once. He or she will crank that handle repeatedly, much to the parents' chagrin, despite the fact that the outcome of cranking the handle is known and always the same. Similarly, hopscotch is simply a series of repeated physical moves that don't allow for deviation. In a baseball game, someone throws a ball, someone else hits it and then runs. Rinse and repeat. This kind of repetition is intolerable in a movie, but is desired in a game. Why? Because unlike a movie, which puts its payoff at the end and rewards the viewer for sitting all the way through it, the repetitious action of a game is a reward in itself. That's why it's play.

Even though video games and movies are both visual media, games based on movies are almost guaranteed to suck because of this fundamental difference between playing and viewing. Indeed, this is why movies based on games are almost as likely to suck as the games based on movies. Whereas games require repetition, movies that are repetitive are barely watchable. The gaming-themed horror movie Stay Alive, produced in consultation with game designer Cliffy B, succeeds in feeling like a video game but is a chore to watch. What makes Uwe Boll think his movies will be any better?

So what's the solution? Personally, I think games and movies should remain separate mediums. I wouldn't want a game that I made to be turned into a movie or vice-versa. I'd rather maintain the integrity of the original work. Of course, this sensibility isn't likely to catch on with producers as long as there's money to be made. Moreover, movie-based games need not suck. Anyone old enough to remember the original Star Wars arcade game will recall how fun it was. This game didn't try to retell the story of the movie—not that the software limitations of the time would've allowed it. Rather, this game took a single moment from the movie (the attack on the Death Star) and let the gamer play through it. Repeatedly. Far from being tedious, you actually felt like Luke Skywalker piloting the X-Wing. Of course, the game's interface helped sell the illusion, since you sat inside the game's cabinet like a cockpit while speakers behind your head let you hear the music and sound effects and, occasionally, Obi-Wan telling you to use the force. The game was extremely simple, but extremely thrilling and addictive.

An alternative to such simple satisfaction is to create a game/movie hybrid. Some people are trying this, though not with much success as of yet. Atari's Indigo Prophecy (known as Fahrenheit to the rest of the world) is a case in point. Although this game has an intriguing storyline it plays more like an interactive movie than a game, making the gameplay fairly boring. Another option that has proven more successful is to create movies and/or games that utilize the same characters or environments as their other-medium counterparts but provide distinctly different experiences. This is part of the reason why the Star Wars game worked so well. It wasn't rehashing the story, it was letting you inhabit that world.

All the gamer really wants from a movie-based game is to feel like he or she is playing in the movie's world, not to play in the movie itself. Likewise, the most successful game-based movies—such as the Resident Evil series or to a lesser extent the first Tomb Raider—are those that take place recognizably in the game's world. If the gamers want to see the movie, they've got the DVD player. If they want to play the game, they've got the console. What they want from the game and movie is the fundamentally different experience that comes from playing a game and watching a movie.

The Virtue of Violence

I was watching an episode of the X-Files last night called "First Person Shooter." It was co-written by cyberpunk writers William Gibson and Tom Maddox and was about a killer video game. Naturally, it pays lip service to that tired old debate about media violence. As Scully says, "Mulder, what purpose does this game serve except to add to a culture of violence in a country that's already out of control ? . . . You think that taking up weapons and creating gratuitous virtual mayhem has any redeeming value whatsoever? That the testosterone frenzy that it creates stops when the game does?"

This issue is omnipresent in American culture and not limited to video games. Decades ago the government complained about comic books warping the minds of impressionable children. Then there was the "video nasty" issue in cinema. The music industry wasn't immune either: witness the PMRC insanity. Video games are just the latest form of media to get this inevitable treatment. First there was the Mortal Kombat hysteria and then the "Columbine massacre linked to Doom" witch hunt and now the ESRB's restriction of Manhunt 2 and Hillary Clinton's crusade against games. (I find it odd that it's always the liberals who are opposed to "offensive" content in media: Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, Joe Lieberman, Herb Kohl. The self-righteous conservatives aren't saying peep. You'd expect it to be the other way around). What I find interesting is that all this sturm und drang serves to obfuscate two assumptions that underlie the anti-violence argument: violence is bad and exposure to non-violent media will alleviate violent tendencies.

These assumptions are absurd. Humanity is a naturally violent species. That's why we're dominant; we fought and clawed our way to the top. It's part of our d.n.a. A case in point: the Virginia Tech slayings of April 2007. After Cho Seung-hui went on his killing spree there was an immediate—and expected—attempt to blame his actions on him being steeped in violent media like the Columbine killers. Ah, but there was a snag—Cho didn't watch violent movies or play video games. His need for violence was innate. To think that removing violent ideas and imagery from our culture will result in breeding violence out of the human species is disingenuous. Does anyone really believe that if Cho had only played games full of fuzzy bunnies and cute little kittens he wouldn't have done what he did? I don't think so.

The truth of the matter is that American culture is predicated upon violence. The Puritans were driven out of England because of their little habit of persecuting people, a habit displayed spectacularly in Salem. Then there were the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, showing that we get what we want by violence (Iraq, anyone?). Both capitalism and democracy, the hallmarks of American society, are inherently violent. They both hinge on competition where one company or candidate sets out to destroy another. This is neither good nor bad: it's just the way it is. Recourse to violence is the way we do business. It is our coping mechanism. Consider what happened after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Did people stop and say "Oh, those poor terrorists!" or "I accept it"? No—people were all revved up to go kick some terrorist ass. As Toby Keith put it, "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way" There's a truth in that.

Of course, this will-to-violence isn't unique to American culture but is part of the human condition. So is scapegoating, the ancient process whereby people alleviate their guilt and fear by projecting them onto something else and then banishing it. By getting rid of the scapegoat you get rid of those aspects of yourself with which you do not or cannot deal. It's a powerful drive, but one that is ultimately self-destructive. Look how well it worked out for Hitler . . .

So who's to blame for this culture of violence? No one. That's the kicker. Because of our primal need to assign blame, to ascribe meaning to the meaningless, we are deeply frustrated when there is no one to blame. All that we can do is try to prevent such extreme outbursts of violence by giving our violent tendencies a safe outlet such as playing violent games. Like Mulder responds, "I mean, maybe the game provides an outlet for certain impulses, that it fills a void in our genetic makeup that the more civilizing effects of society fail to provide for us." By acting on our frustrations and aggressions in a virtual environment we are less likely to take violent action in the real world. We must be aware though that there are some people who are so damaged that virtual violence cannot satisfy them. Playing Gears of War won't make up for being raped by a pedophile priest. But that doesn't mean we should take away the potential means of helping these people cope with their rage.