Posted by Video Games are about 50-60 years old now, depending on how you define their conception, and thanks to the exponential advancement of technology, we’ve entered something of a renaissance in game design. Gaming has progressed to an era where the question of “What can we do?” has gradually given way to the question of “What will we do?” While fancy new graphics engines and higher resolutions still dominate the discussion in many ways, it seems we are slowly, but surely, moving towards a market where games like Cuphead, Limbo, and Minecraft can stand side-by-side with your blockbuster AAA games. However, as a whole, the future of the medium faces a particularly difficult barrier, both socially and politically, that holds us back from truly grasping the medium’s potential. That problem, is the question of “Fun.”
It’s a common enough refrain, “Games are supposed to be fun.” Spend enough time on any gaming forum and you’ll no doubt come across the argument in some form or another. It’s why you should play game X, it’s why you shouldn’t play game Y, it’s why this title is “Game of the Year” and that title is “not a real game.” It’s an understandable sentiment; so many games are built around the idea of fun, and they’ve done so going back decades. The earliest games ever programmed weren’t particularly concerned with sweeping vistas or shocking narratives; Pac-Man never aspired to be much more than a fun arcade pastime, and so it’s not exactly surprising to see the public turn its nose up at anything that defies those norms. Not that it’s wrong to dislike a game; if you don’t like a game because it isn’t “fun” in the traditional sense, that’s perfectly reasonable. Issues arise however, when a lack of “fun” becomes not just a fact worth considering, but a trait worthy of condemnation.
It’s particularly an issue when it comes to politics. Our modern world of paperwork and legislation is slow and methodical, and fails to keep up with the rapid pace of technology, and this is particularly noticeable in the realm of gaming. David Cage’s upcoming game Detroit: Become Human, is the most recent victim of this attitude, with numerous UK officials calling for the game to be banned over its depiction of domestic abuse. Chairman of the Culture, Media, and Sports Select Committee Damian Collins went so far as to suggest that “It is completely wrong for domestic violence to be part of a video game regardless of what the motivation is.” [Emphasis mine].
This sentiment was echoed by several prominent UK figures, and from an outsider’s perspective, it may even seem reasonable, but the issue is obvious: This attitude treats video games like toys, meaningless trinkets to entertain and nothing more. It stems from the idea that games are inherently trivial fancies, lighthearted pastimes at best. Yet in books and films we have largely accepted that depictions difficult subjects can be achieved without trivializing them, and likewise, no rational person is going to walk away feeling “entertained” by Cage’s depiction of domestic violence. Not to mention the massive irony in the fact that games have spent years depicting all sorts of gory, horrific murders, excessive violence, and even flat out torture, implying that all other atrocities fall under the umbrella of “acceptable” in our entertainment, but domestic violence is a bridge too far.
The controversy over Detroit is an admittedly extreme example, but this attitude that games are “entertainment” and not art has persisted for a long time now. Germany, quite infamously prohibits, by law, any depiction of Nazi symbols for any reason outside of “art or science, research or teaching.” Games like Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, and Call of Duty: WWII, pre-emptively chose to censor any appearance of swastikas in their german releases, rather than fight any legal battles. Wolfenstein in particular had to go much farther, removing all references to the Nazi party, redubbing the game with new voice acting, and altering the appearance of Hitler himself. Going back even further, moral panics over violent content in games was hardly unusual, Mortal Kombat being perhaps the most recognizable example. Games of all types were in the crosshairs, be it Carmageddon or the original Doom, and the public drifted from game to game as the next example of “dangerous” entertainment, threatening legislation until the founding of the ESRB.
These days politicians don’t talk about video games all that often. However, the idea of games as little more than “entertainment” hasn’t truly faded away, and we can’t pin all the blame on out-of-touch legislators. Truthfully, that attitude is perpetuated by the gaming community itself, and it comes in a lot of different forms. Perhaps the most common is the “not a real game” attitude. It’s a criticism that was quite popularly leveled against titles like Gone Home, Depression Quest, and Kentucky Route Zero, all of which defy the traditional norms of what a game is expected to be. Of course, this plays right into the idea that games are supposed to fit into a specific ruleset, and anything outside those strictly defined ideas is not valid. Very few people in the gaming community would go so far as to suggest these games be outright banned, but such criticism still implies that games should not experiment with new settings, gameplay mechanics, and narratives, for fear they’ll be rejected as “not a real game.”
In response to such attitudes I feel I must point out their hypocrisy: To criticize and ridicule a game or experience for not conforming to expected rulesets is to fall into the same trap Roger Ebert did when he famously suggested that Video Games can never be considered art: It is to box in and constrict an entire medium based on our own preconceived notions of what it can be. While there may be a world of difference between the forum posters who think Gone Home isn’t a real game and the politicians who want to ban Detroit: Become Human, they both share the same starting premise: that all games should fall within a set of expected rules, and anything that defies those rules is bad.
Art is, by its very nature, experimental, constantly shifting and changing with the times and whatever its creator or creators wants to express. If we are to truly elevate gaming as an art form, and not just entertainment, we need to let go of those dismissive attitudes, they serve only to discount a creation without truly analyzing it, throwing something onto the trash heap with little more than a cursory glance. Perhaps to many of those who play games, “art” doesn’t factor into the equation, and that’s fine, but it’s more than a little misguided when those who simply play games for fun turn on their heels and ridicule others for trying to dig a bit deeper.
This piece is not intended to demand a reform, or even to chastise those who expect ‘fun’ from their games. It is more to suggest that the gaming community lacks a significant population that is interested in dissecting and analyzing games on a, for lack of a better term, literary level. Most people who play games are interested in them only on a consumer level, comparing dollars spent to hours put in, and they prize the idea of ‘fun’ over most anything else. Again, I reiterate, there is nothing wrong with that attitude inherently, but it’s about time some of us pushed back against that attitude a little more publicly, and brought to light some of the work to advance the medium as an art form, instead of as a product. By working for a more open-minded attitude, not just among gaming communities, but among the general populace, the medium has everything to gain and nothing to lose.