Funny Look On Your Face
I’m at Neptune Coffee in Seattle and am approached by a younger acquaintance from the tutoring center down the block. She asks what I’m up to, and I tell her I’m working on an article about video games. I start in on the story’s angle—-I never leave a “what are you doing” query hanging—-when I realize the look on her face hasn’t changed for a few sentences. Like she’d seen her idol picking someone else’s nose.
I pause long enough for her to start in with “I just don’t know about…”
I interrupt. “You mean, you think it’s silly for people to spend their time staring into screens, acting like they’re brainwashed by machines, yes?” She nods. I’m driven to win her over, to compare gaming to TV, movies, and books (just cuz it’s on paper doesn’t make it any less of a meandering timesuck), to posit that interactivity doesn’t neuter artistic impact by default, to talk about the shared experience of the form.
The funny look returns, and with it comes an angle to her neck that can be measured by protractor. “How is it really interactive if everyone’s staring at a screen?”
I’d recently read an article by the President of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), a pro-gamers’ lobby, in which he round-aboutly asks gamers to defend their hobby when afforded the opportunity. He believes gaming will be stuck in the reputation ghetto as long as gamers don’t “take ownership.” But in his article, Hal Halpin goes a little too far, likening anti-gaming sentiment to bullies picking on his son. Hal, the competitive, hostile bent to your piece is all wrong; it’d be rude and condescending to “defend” Adam Sandler movies, so why should making a stink over a twitch shooter like Halo be any different?
Hal’s problem is that he defends an industry whose icons and leading examples are dictated by sales, not artistic impact. And that’s the issue I face when looking back at the angled, squinting face in front of me: that the vocabulary of fine films, books, and television shows isn’t the same as for games. Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, Flower, and Super Columbine Massacre are tangential to the American gaming zeitgeist, yet A Clockwork Orange, Invisible Cities, and Freaks & Geeks are perfectly parallel to their respective forms. My hope to make an impact with namechecks and comparisons is voided by the basic roadblock of vocabulary. Will this always be the case with the learning curve of each separate game, compared to the passive consumption of most other media?
This is why I was excited enough about Natal to post about its debut; that its “gesture to play” mechanic might tear down one wall of gaming’s grammar, in a way that the misleading “motion” control of Wii has yet to do. Movies don’t need instruction books, and I’d hope a game that recognizes hand swipes in the air wouldn’t, either.
Decades into the form’s popularity, I’ve stopped believing that a single hit game will change people’s minds. No, gaming doesn’t need its Gone with the Wind, and it doesn’t need avid fans preaching its gospel. Maybe gaming needs its CinemaScope, a novel approach in which the toy aspects of gaming can be overwhelmed with the inspiring, emotional reactions we have to any life-changing form of art.
I didn’t say any of this to my acquaintance. I say, “Maybe a game will change your mind some day.” She responds, “Maybe.”