In an intentionally provocative essay at The Escapist, Roger Travis attack game studies as a very concept. He seems not to understand what he's attacking, though, despite carefully chosen quotes from Espen Aarseth and Ian Bogost. His claim is that "scholars are pursuing game studies to the detriment of gamer culture," and he begins by quoting Douglas Wilson as saying "I hate gamers."
Now, I am a gamer. I've been a gamer since before many of our readers were born, since I was, in the 70s, a board wargamer, the very people who coined the neologism, the first proud game geeks. So it would amount to self-loathing for me to say something like "I hate gamers." Yet there is no doubt that most gamers are plug-ignorant about games. Oh, they may know WoW instances like the back of their hand, or know every spot to snipe from on all the major Counter-Strike maps, but they often know very little about the historical evolution of our field, about the process of development, about the thinking of game designers, about the creatively important people in the medium, or indeed much of anything except the narrow range of genres that they themselves follow.
This is less true of other popular arts; movie fans are typically far more knowledgeable about cinematic technique, the nature of movie-making, the personalities involved, and the history of the medium.
And there's no question that the ignorance of gamers has pernicious effects: they lap up the same old goods repackaged with "IV" on the box, they mistake graphic trickery for advances in the state of the art, they conflate story with design, they push genres toward grognard capture. In a word they are (or many of them are) vidiots.
I have argued in the past that much of the artistic arteriosclerosis we see in today's game industry is due to a combination of Moore's Wall and publisher philistinism -- and that's no doubt true. But most gamers' ignorance of our form, and their lack of aesthetic breadth, compounds the problem.
And I've argued, as well, that disrupting the existing business model, with its relentless focus on best-sellers and unwillingness to fund creative risks, is essential to preserve the field's creative health, and our legacy of innovation; that's true, doubtless, but the other side of the equation is that we need to change gamer culture, to make gamers smarter about games.
Luckily, this is far from a lost cause; it's happening. It's happening in a lot of different ways; one example of how it's happening is, of course, The Escapist, which addresses games at an intellectual level almost unheard of in the game press of days past. But you can see it happening, too, in the level of creativity shown in student projects, in the increasing publication of books about games at every level, in the increasing diversity and level of innovation shown in games at the IGF. This website, too is, in its own modest way, an attempt to push the dialog a little farther, to cast light on interesting games outside of the mainstream -- because the mainstream is now so relentlessly focussed on a handful of genres that innovation, and a broader aesthetic, can only be found elsewhere.
One of the main reasons gamers are becoming more sophisticated, however, is, well, game studies.
Not that many gamers are ever going to read Cybertext or Game Studies; nor need they. But as the ideas expressed by scholars percolate through their students and those who read their work, they spread out into the community of gamers. Ten years ago, if I'd used phrases like "reward schedule" or "resource management" or "player skill vs. character skill" in conversation, I would almost certainly have had to explain what I meant; today, many, though not all, gamers would know what I meant without explanation.
Similarly, ten years ago, if you went looking for anything that talked about game design from a theoretical perspective, about all you'd find would be Chris Crawford's Art of Computer Game Design and one of my essays. Today, you can find hundreds of essays, and scores of books -- and yes, that's a good thing, because theory does make for better design (or if it doesn't, it's not very good theory).
The idea, in fact, that game studies is somehow antipathetic to gamers, or game culture, is absurd on the face of it; game studies is, rather, a natural evolution of game culture, a recognition by the academy that games, and game culture, are now sufficiently important enough to be worthy of, and to repay, study. And since gamers, or the more sophisticated among them, are among the natural audience for the products of game studies, game studies helps to inform game culture -- and, I believe, modify it for the better.
(Also see Ian Bogost's riposte to Travis's article.)
Don't blame the users.
I am not a reader of game crticism in genral but I am learning the critical theorys of television. I am currently studying to be a Radio and Television major at SFSU. What strikes me about your argument is how close it parrelles a popular television crit argument.
The argument goes something like their is bad tv, because viewers like bad tv. I get that sense from your characterization as gamers as "vidiots". I think that their might be another way to look at this situation.
First off the argument that because you think a game is bad, the gamers should think its bad is illogical. Its hard to prove that their is a universally accepted good and bad. So to call someone a vidiot because they like a game you think is bad, is a weak argument. Second, gamers may not be playing games as source of intellectual development. Although it can be argued that alot of development is happening without the gamer knowing it. The gamer though plays the game purely because its fun. This is the same reason many of us choose to watch TV, or movies, read Cosmo, or trashy romance novels. So to try and tell people that instead of having fun they should seek out intelectually challenging is an esoteric view.
But not all is lost, in the world of the commercial and mass, things that are considered good, not just by the masses, but also the informed, do appear every so often. I think in the gaming a world one game that might fit that bill is something like Spore. Which seems to push not only the academic, but interest the everyday gamer.
Wow
YOU are the writer of "I Have no words and I must design"? Goodness, I'm a HUGE fan of yours and wasn't aware of that :x
Man, I really am interested in game design, even though I only started studying it some months ago, trought blogs and articles and eventually some books.
By the way, do you have any books on game design that you would like to recommend a beginner? I'm taking a look at the ones you mentioned, of course, I'm just no sure which one to buy... I mean, there are so many options nowadays... I almost got lost the other day I was surfing trough Amazon.com...
Totally agree, except for
Totally agree, except for the swipe at a certain game with 'IV' on the box. It may be 'the same old goods', but it the same old goods stripped down, rebuilt and polished up. It's highly enjoyable and damn good fun. Isn't that the point?
IV
I agree -- it's a nicely polished title. And as I've said (talking about Blizzard in this regard), there's no shame in taking something and polishing it... But is "IV" all we really have to look forward to? And yes, I'll lay out 60 bucks for it, if only to see its take on New York City, but when you come down to it, it's the same old thing all over again. I'd rather see something novel -- even something novel that isn't polished to a high sheen.
Well, I guess I'm the enemy
Well, I guess I'm the enemy then because the games I look most forward to are the games I already enjoy; but with slight improvements!
Perhaps I'm too busy, but I still haven't picked up Okami and Shadow of the Colossus, and many more I'm supposed to play. But honestly, I'd much rather focus on games I can immediately grasp and spend time on playing them well. I keep making excuses for not playing the latest Zelda DS, but when the latest Advance Wars came out (which only had minor, but excellent improvement), I immediately got it! And the games I'm looking forward to at the moment are Street Fighter HD Remix and Starcraft 2.
But maybe I just don't enjoy single-player games anymore, that could also be the problem. I am looking forward to an actually original first-person-shooter (something like Lost Planet/Tribes, but then even more over the top).
All in all, original games I applaud, but it's the patches I find my money being spent on. If there was a way to make original games less intimidating (like most Flash games), I'd look longer at them.
Polish versus Repackaging
Voidfiles: I think you misunderstand the comment on "vidiots". Read the referenced article. The term isn't being used to say that gamers are stupid or that they like bad games, merely that they are largely ignorant of games as a medium. As a professor who teaches classes about the game industry, I can verify this is the case; I get a lot of hardcore gamers in my class who come in thinking that gaming didn't exist before 1993.
The argument isn't that gamers like bad games. Rather, it's that there are many GOOD games out there that a lot of gamers have never heard of -- games that they might actually like -- that they will never encounter because of their ignorance of the form.
Miwi: Unfortunately, there are a lot of books on game design but most of them are not very good. I've reviewed a number of them on my blog: http://teachingdesign.blogspot.com/2007/06/textbook-reviews.html
Hendar: There's certainly something to be said for polishing and improving a game, but there's also something to be said for innovation. You need both for a healthy market, and right now there's a little too much iteration and not enough revolution in the AAA space. (Blah blah publisher risk-aversion blah blah indie games perform this necessary function blah blah.)
Robert: I'm curious, why do you say original games are too intimidating? In my experience, the more original a game is, the more careful the developers are to make the concept and controls simple and accessible. Katamari Damacy is a great example of this; the first "level" does nothing other than make sure you know the controls of the game, and then it explains to you with a quirky little cartoon what the rules of the game are. It's brain-dead simple. I fear that by "intimidating" you really mean "anything different is scary specifically because it's different", in which case there's not much a developer can do, is there?
How original games intimidate me:
Indeed, anything new will intimidate me because I cannot grasp it immediately. Tricky controls (think: having to learn to walk) also intimidate me. Here's some examples:
Katamari Damacy: My first fifteen minutes I loathed this game: the controls were confusing (why not just use one stick for moving and another for steering like most FPS games?) and didn't feel responsive (I like my avatars always running at full speed, like Mega Man, not having to build up momentum, like Sonic).
The goal of the first level wasn't very clear either: collect X items within X time. Should haven't had the time limit, imo, then you would have time to try things out you couldn't in the tutorial level.
I prefer games that let me focus immediately on the objectives or ways to interact with the game than on the controls/execution. Every time I pick up a new 3D adventure game, I first have to spend 10 minutes figuring out what every button does and trying to program that into my fingers. That part I do not enjoy. I like the way World of Warcraft sort of handles this: they only give you two moves at the start and gradually this increases. Of course, that's not including all the camera/chatting/movement controls and options. Also: by not directly giving a player all the moves, it can take longer before the player can actually start playing the game for real.
Guitar Hero: I immediately got the idea. Besides being as easy as Simon-says, the "controls" I've been practising ever since seeing Bill and Ted. I think alot of arcade games used these two tactics to invite players to throw a quarter into them: keep it easy to understand and use a control device from the real world.
Virtua Fighter: I was used to doing jump kicks and (low) poke moves to win (like in Street Fighter), not contemplate choosing between a high risk launcher or a low risk punch -> mindgame setup. It took me awhile to enjoy Virtua Fighter. This example shows that every strategic game has intimidating barriers.
Many adventure games: They start in towns, I have to talk to people, click through alot of dialogue windows, find out how to save and often have to do a task before I can get out of the town. But what I really want to do is start swinging my sword and solve puzzles. I detested the first hour of Ocarina of Time.
I've worked three years in a videogame store and often had to show new games to customers. I often got embaressed by how long the game forced the player to watch/learn things before they could actually start playing and know what the game is actually like.
So... what can a designer do? I think most of all look at Arcade games and Gameboy games. Cut the loading times, keep the interface simple and make sure that the player is doing something fun within five minutes.
One problem though is that games are very technical these days with alot of moves.
I think the best example of a modern game was the Metal Gear Solid demo: without too much hassle, you'd find yourself near a bunch of bad guys. You had just enough room to try your moves out, but close enough to engage when you feel like it. If you got caught, you could restart pretty fast. That demo got alot of people hooked and wanting to play the complete game.
Original flash games I love, becuase they have little loading times, simple controls, not too much blabla, they just let me play. I might not immediately understand how to, but at least I can quickly learn without too much interference.
Being a gamer makes you
Being a gamer makes you different from the rest? I believe it does and that's because you have a different perspective on things. I know gamers, they are split in few categories from light gamers to hard gamers. I like puzzle games, that would make me a light gamer, even so, playing puzzle games helped have a systematic thinking.