The Importance Of Being A Bit Pretentious

In my previous blog post, I talked about the importance of opening channels for independent development and driving down development costs for the advancement of our industry from and artistic standpoint. Shortly afterwards, I read this interesting piece on Beyond Good & Evil. My first reaction was negative - I just couldn't understand why we would need to examine a fun game in the kind of depth shown there.

It was then that I realised that I was becoming part of the problem.

Opening channels and driving down costs for independent developers could do two things. Firstly, it could allow independent developers more room to experiment and come up with exciting new ideas. Secondly, it allows games to reach new, less hardcore-gamer-skewed markets. What it doesn't do is promote discussion and study of game design.

Open up X-Box community games. There's plenty of innovation to be seen there, but how many of those games will be discussed at the GDC next year? Also, how many of those games are experimenting based on currently accepted theories on gameplay design?

Only by examining our own work and the work of others in a style and with a depth that has, until now, seemed pretentious and annoying, can we reach a structured, solid concept of game design. By opening up channels of such discussion, we can hopefully force new developers to consider their designs in such a fashion, and/or provide direction for designers just starting out in the industry.

It won't be easy. Personally, I have a very low tolerance for pretention and (if you'll pardon the french) bullshit. I imagine by trying to promote this kind of discussion, I will, at times, as one great philosopher once stated, "Feel like punching myself", but once you see the importance of it, I hope you'll understand.

Games And Art: The OTHER Debate

So I've blogged a bit about my feelings towards narrative and story in games, and I figured given recent happenings in the game design blogosphere, perhaps I should jot down some thoughts on the other argument, the old Games vs Art debate.  To anyone who has been following my blogs to date, it shouldn't be a surprise that I think the whole debate is pointless.

Games are an art form in the same way graffiti is an art form - if people use it to express themselves creatively, it is an art form whether it is "recognised" as such by the populace or not.  Its a simple case of dictionary definition, there's really no debate to be had.  Whether games carry emotional weight or not doesn't matter; I saw the Mona Lisa  and it didn't move me in any way, but the fact that so many of my friends harvested Adam from the little sisters in Bioshock sickened me a little bit.  The emotional weight of any piece of art is in the eye(s) of the beholder; what we are arguing about is not whether or not games are an art form, but the accessibility of games as an art form, and this seems to me like jumping the gun, since we still have enough trouble with the accessibility of games as entertainment.

The problem then is with those who want to make games more accessible as an art form, and to force this to happen seems like a backwards argument.  Its like forcing two people to love each other because it would make them happier; If they were happy, they would fall in love by themselves.  As we explore ways to express ourselves in an interactive medium, we will find ways to express ourselves in a fashion more accessible to the public.

It seems nowadays that almost every debate to do with games design breaks down to the issue of independent gaming, and the rapid and intense monetarisation of our industry that limits the amount of experimentation that can happen - a topic worthy of its own blog post at a later date.  For now, we need to not only continue opening channels for smaller, independent developers, but consider supporting them in other ways - we need to encourage more developers to be active in academia and non-profit works.  As an industry, we can all benefit from new concepts and theories that will only be found through experimentation and independent development.