In the last week I have discovered a few things about popular culture and reviews. Perhaps too much. There is may be no such thing as ignorance being bliss; but at least you can be mildly satisfied that life is one way and that your cool with that fact. What I'm talking about here is that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and X-Men Origins: Wolverine are not as awful as everyone seemed to think. They were both derivative in a very pathetic way. But neither were ACTUALLY bad movies. Like House of the Dead or Dungeon Siege. Which was kind of the impression I was given. Its amazing how an idea gets into popular culture and then seems to be taken as gospel. It will be interesting to see how G.I.Joe really is; except I'm still kind of afraid of that one.
On to more serious matters. The above picture is the FIRST video game I EVER played. Yes, I'm kind of old or maybe I just was too young at the time to pick something really good like Donkey Kong or Defender(I did have an Atari 2600 world record in Defender when you had to mail in the screenshot etc... I think it lasted a few days. I dunno, I killed the game and would probably be happy to kill an arcade version of Defender for you. I was six years old, what did I know). I think my obsession with video games probably never made it out of somewhere around 7th grade or so. I can't remember exactly but at some point I just stopped being interested in them. Perhaps it was my alternative obsession. The writings of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Anne Rice. I wanted to be a horror novelist; really badly wanted to be a horror novelist. But once I reached around eighteen or so I realized that I couldn't write anything beyond around 150 pages or so. Which does not a novelist make. Certainly there were other reasons as well, but hey that isn't something I need to write about here. Anyway...
I picked up video games in my sparest of time along with the odd movie. I was really into a little series called MORTAL KOMBAT!
I was older, had more free time, and had a girlfriend. But every time I had the chance I would play Mortal Kombat and I even frequented arcades where the really hardcore people hung out. These guys would regularly kick my butt at the game and there was even a particular guy that could beat everyone in the arcade on a regular basis. He beat me regularly as well; but for some reason I wanted to beat him, just once; for real. So for the price of a quarter I could take my chances. He was a chain smoker and probably a real jerk. But I could watch him play people for hours and I grew to absolutely hate his favorite character; Sub Zero. Of course, I hated Sub Zero until I finally too was able to pull off every single one of Sub Zero's moves. At the time I preferred Raiden but I took Sub Zero as my second character just to see if I could beat him at his own game. I never did really beat the guy at more than a round or so.
At the time, I never really considered any of this. I viewed video games as most people did at the time. Like sports, movies, or TV. Just something to do to kill time. I guess as a teen or a child you have a lot more free space in your head and these kinds of strategies and complexities that would make most adults say,
"That's too much work just to get good at a game."
The guy lived Mortal Kombat and was a freaking machine. So even today I'm not surprised. But many of my friends were incredibly shocked at how easily I could beat them. For years none of my friends could touch me on Motral Kombat in arcades or on consoles. But I never really pursued this, I just liked Mortal Kombat. That was all. I did however, play EVERY SINGLE version of the game that came out and have up until DC versus Mortal Kombat came out. That game wasn't even something that I was interested in, it seemed more like a marketing ploy to recover an ailing company than anything else.
In general until I was around 25 or so, I hated competition and I also usually hated a challenge. But in video games, this didn't even seem to be an issue. I would play Starcraft and lose horribly only to fire it up and play again. I can't tell you how many times I restarted Super Mario Bros. I really can't; it was more than a hundred, that I can say. I did love playing video games, but I didn't really love a system or a particular game. I was more into just playing everything and having lots of different experiences. Some good, some bad. I didn't care.
All of this however, is really only my introduction to what this article is really about. That being; why I write about video games, why you read about them, and how all of this came about. Because as a kid back in the 80s or 90s I could have NEVER even dreamed of the world we live in today and the games that we are playing today or even this whole console cycle for that matter.
The idea for this article came about not while I was watching Transformers Revenge of the Fallen or while I was watching X-Men Origins Wolverine. No, it came about while I was playing Torchlight and watching television. Torchlight just came out and I was trying my hand at the Diablo style dungeon crawler while watching some cartoons. This is why I love playing SOME games on the PC. I don't have to be totally absorbed in them to have fun. Just absorbed enough to know what's going in both places. Which is wonderful. This was one of the reasons why I initially fell in love with MMORPGs.
I was kind of wondering why I play this way. Why I can play hours of PC games while watching movies or TV and then play hours of console games completely absorbed. Seems vaguely conflicting to me. I mean if I really want to get absorbed in a movie I certainly don't want to be doing something else while doing so. This is probably not the way most people prefer to play. But I have heard a few friends over the years while playing World of Warcraft that do this.
The other side of this coin are the times while playing something so atmospheric and engaging that it demands your full attention. I've also found this to be the case with really complex or dramatic televisions shows or movies. But video games even more so.
Does this make the experience of playing Torchlight or World of Warcraft of a lesser quality or worth than playing something like Bioshock or Uncharted 2 Among Thieves. No, I don't think so. Just different.
But this doesn't end here. Because while we certainly all play video games in inevitably similar ways. They have grown to matter to some of us in more extraordinary ways. The same way in which media like movies and music have mattered to our peers and parents. I don't think there will be a Rolling Stone Magazine equivalent for video games. At least not for a while and we will probably have to wait a few years before there is truly a Lester Bangs or Chuck Klosterman of video games. Probably I won't be around to see the Roger Ebert for the video game industry. Seems today the most recognizable and popular voices in video game journalism are probably Morgan Webb, Adam Sessler, and Geoff Keighley. There are probably about ten other notable folks but no one who doesn't work in the industry in one way or another would probably be able to name them or recognize them on the street. That kind of celebrity basically comes from being on television.
Few people reading this have probably seen the above picture of Chuck Klosterman before; some may have read his work and others may just know that he used be the editor of Spin Magazine. So Chuck Klosterman is famous for what he has written and essentially who he is. Which is a rarity in video game journalism. Probably only Ngai Croal is an analog and he is no longer a video game journalist as much as a consultant to developers. What Ngai Croal hasn't done is written a book about video games that has made enough money and hit a high enough readership to give him cultural cache.
No matter how much we wholly believe that video games MATTER. Video games usually end up being filed somewhere between Saturday morning cartoons and porn. If you can figure that one out your better off than I am. I have seen comic books become more socially acceptable than video games. While Chuck Klosterman can make money talking about the musical and cultural relevance of Kurt Cobain. No one wants to hear anyone's opinion on why Uncharted 2 Among Thieves is a breakthrough for the video game industry and storytelling as a whole.
Why do we feel differently than everyone else on this topic. By we, I mean; the people who grew up playing Atari 2600, NIntendo, or heaven forbid Playstation. The people who didn't need to start fiddling with their Wii to know which way the wind was blowing in 2001-2002 when the new consoles were coming out. You know who you are.
Are the reasons simply that games hooked us. Like some kind of addiction like smoking or pot? Does this make us some kind of strange advocates by absentia? If only it were that simple. Whole subcultures have grown up around World of Warcraft, Halo, and certainly the grindfest Asian MMORPGs that seem to have no end or any positive purpose other than grinding away for the next thing.
So how can so many people love something so much, even so much as to dress up like their favorite characters and other people just not care at all. To such an extent that they even brand this thing that they don't get as bad. To some degree this can be discounted as a generational disparity. But I believe this to be more about the not enjoying than about the not seeing a cultural relevance in it. I don't seriously believe that everyone will one day be as interested video games as the people who are hardcore fans now. But I do hope that one day when someone refers to something in a video game that people actually know what they are talking about and have the feeling that it is cool. The way that people think that Chuck Klosterman is cool when he waxes philosophical about Kurt Cobain.
I'm not sure how many years this will take or what will have to happen. As I can remember it; when I was young and you talked about something in Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter people by and large knew what you were referring to. Nowadays this isn't really the case. Unless they have seen the movies or something. Considering the general penetration of the market that the average console has you would think that more people than ever would have this affinity for video games. I suppose I was living in video game Avalon or something because when I was growing up everyone I knew had a console or at least had a love for arcade games. But I guess this was not so for other people. I have had the strangest conversations about video games in the past few years. Here and there someone will know exactly what I'm referring to and we will have a nice conversation. I even had a friend that was so into pinball that we could talk for hours about it. I know something about pinball but this guy was in deep. Then other times I get a blank look like the last time someone talked to them about video games they were talking about Pac-Man.
So why do video games matter to us and why do we play them and write about them. I've come up with only one real reason. Video games do for us what other forms of media cannot. They make us a part of whatever activity we are participating in while we are playing them. We are a treasure hunter, a martial artist, a race car driver, or perhaps a member of a troop of Space Marines. This is completely and wholly unique. One can watch a hundred movies, read a hundred books, or even watch as much television as anyone can stand. But you will never be a part of any of them. Movies, television, and books are windows while games are actually the act of you being outside that window.
These experiences, because that's what they are in the end. Are so important to us because they are just that, experiences. This isn't a story someone is telling. This is something that is happening to you. Which is why all of this matters so much to us. Perhaps this is also why we are stilling toiling away in the action movie genre rather than moving on to more mature material. Because all most all of us have the fantasy of being in said action movie. This is what video games are good at, wish fulfillment. As the industry matures and as we find we need more than simple wish fulfillment we will assuredly begin to see more mature material being dealt with.
What will this gain us? Will we find the critical diversity and artsy recognition that I was talking about earlier? Perhaps, but this is crystal ball gazing of a type that is really worthless. If I anyone would have told me ten years what technology would look like today I would have called them crazy. So to know what it will look like in another ten is pointless to try and predict.
In closing I would like to thank the reader for putting up with my philosophical ranting. Until next time, enjoy your gaming "experiences."
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