Game Theory: The Awkward Adolescence of Gaming - NYTimes.com

Jenn, Chris, Stephen and Friends,

As I look over our correspondence so far, I see us grappling with what video games mean and how we might best articulate that meaning to the world at large. Yet despite every past attempt to illuminate this sprawling, nebulous new art form, gaming seems to have retained its cloistered air.

Game Theory

Chris Suellentrop, Stephen Totilo, Kirk Hamilton and others discuss the year in video games.

That?s beginning to change. Many of the biggest controversies of 2012, some touched on by Helen, were fallout from the ongoing war between longtime gamers and onrushing agents of change. Video games seem to have entered an awkward cultural adolescence; shoved, grumbling, into a Sunday suit and taken out for the whole town to see. So, how best to go about introducing them to the neighbors?

Chris, you write that gaming is like ballet. To your eye, ?The players of Call of Duty and Halo have more in common with ballerinas than either might like to admit.? First of all: Heh. Second of all: I?ve always been partial to the music comparison myself, but whether we choose dance or melody, the analogy is crucial for understanding how games function, and why they?ve been slow to find mainstream acceptance.

After all, playing a game isn?t like listening to music; it?s like performing music. Playing a game isn?t like watching ballet; it?s like dancing. I imagine introducing a friend to orchestral music by putting on a recording of the New York Philharmonic, handing him a violin, and informing him that if he?d like to hear Joshua Bell?s solo, he?ll have to play it himself. No wonder this stuff has been slow to catch on!

Stephen, you lament, ?If only more modern video games felt more like games and less like wannabe movies!? Yet I felt many of 2012?s best games did precisely that. They eschewed the cinematic trappings of the Call of Duty series and chose instead to drown us in glowing score-counters, abstract rules, twitchy reflex-tests and good old-fashioned high-score challenges.

All of the terrific indie games Jenn highlighted today embrace video-game-ness over cinematic storytelling. In particular, the graphically primitive (fantastic) iOS game Super Hexagon wouldn?t look out of place in a 1980s arcade cabinet. It?s a pure old-school challenge where failure comes fast and often, and mastery is the realm of the touch-screen-savant. Fun? Yes. Welcoming? Not really.

Another of my favorite games of the year, Persona 4 Golden, a newly remastered version of the 2008 Japanese role-playing game Persona 4, also embraces video-game-ness at the cost of accessibility. The setup is irresistible: players assume the role of a high school student in rural Japan who, in addition to juggling classes, exams, girlfriends and after-school jobs, happens to have the ability to travel into his television and fight demons. The game is made by Atlus, the same developer responsible for Lucy?s justly loved Catherine. It weaves elements of ?Twin Peaks,? ?My So-Called Life? and ?Buffy the Vampire Slayer? into something so fabulous that ? well, doesn?t that description alone make you want to play it?

I wish my non-gaming friends could experience Persona 4, but the game comes burdened with all the unwelcoming hallmarks of the most hardcore Japanese games. It?s opaque and fiddly, dense with interlocking systems and at times immensely difficult. The version I played is only available on Sony?s handheld Vita console, and a single trip through the story requires anywhere from 60 to 100 hours to complete. On the surface, Persona 4 seems destined for huge mainstream success. But while the game is indeed something of a cultural phenomenon in Japan, in America it will likely forever be relegated to niche status.

By way of contrast, Journey and the Walking Dead both smartly circumvent gaming?s barriers to entry. The Walking Dead tells a deftly written, emotional story that doesn?t require high-level gaming skills to play and appreciate. Journey removes player failure and focuses instead on exploration and non-verbal communication. I?d recommend both to newcomers without hesitation.

Interestingly, both games also ask more of the player than dexterity and organizational skill. As board-game critic Quintin Smith pointed out earlier this year, video games are still woefully limited in how they engage their audience. For example, they cannot yet challenge our charisma, our leadership, or our ability to lie. Slowly but surely, that?s changing.

At one point in the Walking Dead, I came upon an apparently abandoned car filled with canned goods and supplies. Should my group steal the food, or leave it and go hungry? With no idea what the consequence might be, I decided to steal. That feeling of uncertain leadership, of blindly feeling my way through an unpredictable world, is one of the Walking Dead?s most distinctive successes.

I sometimes feel incapable of looking back at games without also looking forward. To me, 2012 showed an encouraging number of video-game creators experiencing a similar sort of restlessness. Though many iterated and improved upon the ideas of the past, more and more began to move not just forward but outward, engaging their ever-expanding audience in startling, disruptive, unfamiliar ? and welcome ? ways.

?Kirk

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Source: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/game-theory-the-awkward-adolescence-of-gaming/

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