Adventure Games. My Thoughts Of Late.

[AndreaDraco]

Before anything else, might I suggest, Simo, an incredibly interesting read? Fun Inc. by Tom Chatfield is an often illuminating analysis on why games are so relevant in our world and on their cultural importance.

Anyway. I agree with some of the things you said: it's true, for example, that a book - despite the recent digital revolution represented by ebooks - is the same today as it was yesterday, providing a kind of universality and a-temporality to the act of reading, and writing literature. It's also true that TV shows and of course movies have embraced their narrative nature earlier and more completely and convincingly than games, and it's equally true that, at least yet, games are limited in the cultural impact they can have because a large part of the population is unable or unwilling to use and make use of them.

Still, I think that things will change, sooner rather than later. Already we see a slowly but unrelenting gamification of other forms of expression (see, for example, some of the most elaborate enhanced ebooks out there, like this one), and many games are starting to embrace their narrative - and by extension communicative - potential. There were of course some prodromes (I'm thinking of games like Fallout or Deus Ex, which was revolutionary for its time, or - to mention a Sierra title - Gabriel Knight 3, which pushed adventure games to their very limit), but right now we're seeing a host of games which put the narrative experience first: Alan Wake, L.A. Noire, Fallout: New Vegas, Heavy Rain and so on.

Paradoxically, adventure games are the genre perhaps least influenced by this change: it seems that, the more the other games put an emphasis on storytelling, the more adventures put it on trivial aspects like puzzles, which should serve the plot, not the other way around. And this is the reason why I haven't played an adventure in a very, long time (outside of the usual GK replay). It took me a long time to venture outside adventure, but I'm glad I did and discovered crpgs like Skyrim or Dragon Age and action games like L.A. Noire. So, despite having less time to dedicate to playing, when I do have it, I find myself quite impressed by the sofistication many titles have achieved.

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

Thanks for the book recommendation, Andrea. I do remain interested in the potential of games despite my current disillusionment with how little of that potential seems to be fulfilled. When I say that, it's admittedly based on very subjective judgments regarding what I look for in works of entertainment.

Some of these subjective ruminations follow... I hope I'll be forgiven for going on at such length. I feel among friends here, and haven't had a chance to stretch my forum-commenting legs in quite some time!

I basically look for works that not only speak to me personally but also have a good chance of communicating from one generation to the next, potentially quite far into the future. While I dearly, truly love many games, like the Gabriel Knight series (all three games) and will be forever grateful for their impact on me personally, I just can't imagine the next generation or the next after that playing them (to say nothing of times further on down the line).

I don't mean to say I base my evaluation of a work of art/entertainment (these are synonyms to my way of thinking) on the number of people who experience it. Again, the value of these games to me, for example, has been enormous, and their makers are among my heroes. (And to digress just a bit more, I want to say how highly I value the friendships I've formed with people in the adventure gaming community. I treasure these friendships even more than the works that brought us together, and hope we will remain in touch for the rest of our lives.)

(And by the way, I do believe it would be fully possible for someone fifty years from now to enjoy one of the classic adventure games if they put in the effort. It would just take some motivation and a little mental adjustment for those silver-suited future humans. )

What I do mean is that despite all the great work that has gone and is going into games, by and large they only really stand a good chance of communicating with the present generation, and not much further. And frustratingly, many of the reasons for that are technical. The content in some cases could have something to say even fifty years from now, but looking at the evidence right now, there's no reason to expect that playing games being made now would be possible then. And even if it were, the mechanics might seem hopelessly frustrating. And so on.

I've also come to really appreciate the elegance and simplicity of the basic experience of watching television. Please, before anyone laughs me off the stage, let me explain that by that I don't mean vegging out for hours on end, watching whatever is on. I haven't done that since I was a kid. (But I'm not condemning it either, because it might be just the thing for someone else, and genuinely beneficial.)

I mean more like selecting an episode or a movie on DVD or Netflix or whatever and just watching that (avoiding exposure to peripheral brain-deadening gunk). There's a lot to be said for getting a fully satisfying experience in less than 30 or 45 minutes. And the experience is not mindless unless your selection of material is terrible and/or you're not making an effort to engage with the material. A good episode of Northern Exposure can leave me at least as stimulated and fired up as one of my favorite games. (I see all works of entertainment, not just games, being interactive this way. Our own attitudes affect what, if anything, we get out of something. I remember us talking about this on the old GK boards many years ago, Andrea!)

True, there are casual games that offer shorter playing times. But after all, most people actually want as much playing time from a game as possible. I do too when the story and execution are really compelling. But the thing is -- and I realize I'm getting even further into very subjective, esoteric reactions here -- I look for things that enhance my appreciation and experience of the rest of my life. I'm not looking for something to take my life over. Thirty or forty-five minutes of concise storytelling seems like a better prospect in terms of leaving time for the rest of my life. I don't really look for opportunities to go on "gaming benders" anymore. (Though I did recently, despite all I've said, when I replayed Under a Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive.)

With the passing of time has also come a deepened understanding of our fragility. I've come to realize I don't want to spend any more time in front of a screen than I already do with my writing, social media, emails, and other things like that. It's just a physically unappealing prospect to me, so though I do still play games from time to time, most days it's hard for anything to beat a nice evening walk (do I sound old?) or a bicycle ride or even gym. Or what is often the highlight of my day, watching a really good episode of one of my favorite shows. Yes, that's looking at a screen, but my body gets to rest and stretch (god, I do sound old! ).

[AndreaDraco]

Well, Simo, first of all let me say that I deeply appreciate your thoroughly pondered thoughts, and I'd be glad if you posted more here (even if we often talk on Facebook).

About the issue at hand. Temporal value is an essential facet of every aesthetic judgment. Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary in 1856 and only two years later, in 1858, Ernest-Aimé Feydeau published Fanny, a similar novel which highlighted the same themes as Flaubert's masterpiece. One is still widely read today, the other lies more or less - and justifiably so - forgotten. Why? There's an intrinsic aesthetic value, of course, stylistic and narrative, but there's also a temporal value: in the 19th century, Fanny enjoyed a widespread success but it proved incapable of speaking to the next generation, which in turn found Flaubert's work more akin to the sensitivity of their time.

Above, I described Madame Bovary as "still widely read today". But, we have to ask: is it really true? How many people, today, still read what is arguably one of the most important and well-written novel of the 19th century? And how many people read Ulysses or À la recherche du temps perdu? How many people read Henry James? How many people read Lovecraft or Poe, and those classic novels and short stories that are deeply dear to us? And looking and philosophy and science, how many people read Darwin or Lorenz?

Edit: just a clarification. I mean how many people have read them - really read them -, not just know about them. I guess everyone knows, and will forever know, about Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy, but I reckon not many people have really read the poem, or at least part of it. Even here in Italy, Dante's homeland, many young people today don't have the slightest idea what the Comedy is about, despite knowing the author's name and the title.

Unfortunately, I reckon they're not that many. At least not as many as those who read Dan Brown or the next bestselling author that, unless strikingly (and often randomly) successful, will be forgotten in ten years time. And the same thing, I think, can be said for movies or TV shows: today, not everyone enjoys German Expressionism, or has the time and patience to sit down and watch it without preconceptions, and not everyone is open to watch a TV series more than fifty years old, like The Twilight Zone or classic Doctor Who.

My point is - and I promise: I'm coming back to games - that in every art or entertainment form (not necessarily the same thing, in my book) there's a sort of intergenerational turnover, and this is especially true in the digital age. Memory is not forgotten of course, both thanks to academia and the personal liking of those who love a certain literature, a certain period, a certain genre, a certain author etc. But for many people it's only about the new shining thing: yesterday was J.K. Rowling (an author whose contribution to children literature I really believe will last), today is Suzanne Collins, tomorrow who knows.

And now: back to game. The same thing is true, I think, for games. While the vast majority of people only plays new titles, with up-to-date graphics, others can and will still enjoy the old classics, depending of course on one's tastes: my boyfriend, for example, doesn't really like adventure games and usually play newer games, but since he is a fan of the Vampire pen-and-paper roleplaying game he played both Bloodlines and Redemption (which is now thirteen years old); and since he is a Lovecraft fan, he played Call of Cthulhu - The Waster Land even if it's an idie game with minimal graphics.

Games are also recently entering academia - see, for example, the essay I recommended in my previous post, but there are many others - and this will help preserve their legacy, and - even more important - the way people looks at them. When they will extensively recognized as legitimate art or entertainment form, it will be easy to preserve their history, their memory, and to enhance their lasting influence. And perhaps, fifty years from now, a young gamer will play Gabriel Knight because he knows about it and he has the right mindset about it. After all, I don't think said gamer will encounter a difficulty different than the one a modern reader faces when he first approaches Joyce: the aesthetic values have changed, asthetic fruition has changed (and the attention span, thanks largely to internet, has shortened), but for those who want to experience him, Joyce is still there, and - I think - games will too.

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

Thank you, Andrea, the feeling is very much mutual (I love reading your eloquent posts).

The point you raise about how many people in any generation really experience any given classic work first-hand is a good one. I was musing internally on that topic earlier, but had yet to formulate a clear conclusion on it. I now realize that a familiar saying also applies to my feelings on this topic: enough is as good as a feast.

My personal yearning for communication is not on the level of massive popular appeal, but rather perhaps on that more sane level below that -- what might be called cult appeal. When something becomes enormously popular, I have often found myself dismayed by how that affects the general standard of discussion on that topic. For example, I can't read Facebook comments on Star Trek fan pages without getting rather depressed. There's so little real discussion. It's like looking for companionship in a large stadium during a concert. This problem is certainly partly due to the nature of Internet communication in general, but not entirely.

The other, bigger problem with massive popularity is of course the possible (or even likely) deterioration of the intellectual property itself, when money people start running the (figurative or literal) show.

So the healthiest level of success for both a work and its audiences, according to my current thinking, may be modest success. Enough to allow the property to turn a profit for its makers and form a vigorous, healthy following, but not so much that it suddenly needs to cater to the tastes of much larger audiences (often leading to a loss of the work's original identity). Of course I'm talking about serial works of entertainment here. Sorry if this is kind of a digression in that sense.

But what I mean to say is that being part of a small, appreciative audience is enough for me. A feast, really. I was delighted to have the opportunity to swap Shakespeare sonnets with a friend on Facebook a while ago. That didn't take a large Shakespeare following, just two people from different parts of the world.

Still, I can't help feeling that even the best works produced in games thus far still don't have real temporal permanence, at least of the kind that I'm personally looking for. Despite how much I love some of them. I may be wrong, of course, but I feel that gaming still hasn't produced its own equivalents of The Twilight Zone, Northern Exposure, or Columbo -- classic works that I believe can be enjoyed for decades to come not just by the most core group of aficionados, but also by general audiences who may simply stumble upon them at chance and get a fully satisfying experience (without having to go through any technical difficulty).

[Collector]

I can't read Facebook comments on Star Trek fan pages without getting rather depressed. There's so little real discussion. It's like looking for companionship in a large stadium during a concert. This problem is certainly partly due to the nature of Internet communication in general, but not entirely.

This is why I really resent how Facebook has decimated forums. Facebook comments usually are more like drive by comments where real discussions are like hen's teeth. And Twitter is even worse. On a forum a debate can rage for days, if not even weeks. Social media caters to the lowest common denominator where the sheer numbers of the shallow minded drown out everything else.

[AndreaDraco]

The level of popularity you describe is certainly an ideal one. George R.R. Martin enjoyed this kind of popularity before HBO turned Game of Thrones into a smashing hit. Said smashing hit allowed the author to purchase an historical movie theater in San Diego, among other things, but surely worsened the level of discussion concerning A Song of Ice and Fire. And the same can be said, for example, for Doctor Who, whose success widened in recent years, with the result of a fandom deterioration.

In the literary world, there are authors with a dedicated and yet mindful group of admirers - Neil Gaiman springs to mind, or Michael Cunningham, for example -, and I too think that this kind of relationship between author, work and user (reader, viewer, player etc.) is perhaps the healthiest, as opposed to the kind of rabid fanbase a J.K. Rowling, a Stephen King or a Suzanne Collins might attract. These are general considerations, of course, and not at all a judgment on the single fans of such authors or works (I count myself among Harry Potter's fans, for example), nor about their intrinsic quality.

Hugely popular games tend alas to attract precisely such an audience, as the recent Bioware case reveals. I hung out for almost a year on Bioware forums and the level of verbal abuse and childish pedantry I witnessed was pretty stunning, especially on Mass Effect forums. Still, this kind of fandom is quite often synonym of widespread popularity and there certain franchises which have reached a staggering success (I'm thinking of Call of Duty or Gears of War or The Elder Scrolls). Last year, an exhibition was dedicated in Milan to Assassin's Creed, for example, and the games themselves, when reviewed in non-specialistic press, were met with critical acclaim for their storytelling achievements.

Orphan Black, a gorgeous sci-fi TV show, one of the best series I've ever watched, intense and thought-provoking, was watched on Bbc America by 1.03 millions of people, by comparison. And that was just the pilot, because viewership declined in subsequent episode, with the show securing a second season order thanks only to the critical acclaim it attracted.

Far, far, far from me to equate widespread success to quality, but it's undeniable that some games and some game franchises enjoy an unprecedented level of popularity, coupled sometimes with critical consensus, and I think these elements will translate, at least in certain cases, in a lasting legacy. So, back to the point, Orphan Black and certain games (I'm thinking of Bloodlines, for example) may enjoy cult appeal, while Game of Thrones or Call of Duty have a ginormous fanbase and a worldwide success.

So, I guess my point is: I really don't see games being all that different from TV shows, or movies, or (perhaps to a lesser extent) books. They vary greatly in quality and success, just as the other ones, and just as the other ones, some of them will have a lasting effect, while other won't.