With Dragon Age 2 coming out last week, I thought it would be a neat idea to look at the long lineage that led us to this point. The history of the cRPG and really the RPG in general is a long, wide and as I learned when getting the details down, very intertwined. I wont bore you any further with an introduction, because we have a lot to get through. After all the story starts all the way back in 1913.

Wargaming

Wargaming was a hobby derived from tactical schooling and actual military application for decades by this point, but these had been limited to the military and specialized clubs. The niche spread out to include non-war tactical offerings, but it wasn’t until 1913 a book was published that codified a rule set for the general public to use toy soldiers in a war game. Little Wars by H.G. Well (Yes that H.G. Wells. The War of the Worlds, Invisible Man and The Time Machine H.G. Wells.) did just that. It set down the rules and even offered scenarios by which the player could play the game out. Unlike private club installments at the time, Wells believed that the game should not use dice and let what happens happen. The toy soldier sets had spring-loaded cannons and could knock down enemy units.

There wasn’t much advancement in the area of wargaming. It was a niche hobby and soon after there were two world wars and great depression after all. In the 1950s Donald Featherstone wrote the biggest contribution to the genre of game since Wells himself. Wargames and Advanced Wargames among many other books were mainstream publications and inspired many other writers to add their hand to the genre. In 1952 Charles S. Roberts found some success with miniatures, tiles and counter type games. After breaking even with a game called Tactics he founded the game company Avalon Hill. He is now know as the “Father of board wargaming.” The company had success in the 1960s with games that utilized hexagonal boards and historical battles. Things exploded in the 1970s however.

The 1970s brought with it a before untold interest in wargaming. Two new companies sprung up: Game Design Workshop (GDW) and Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). The latter released a game called Chainmail in 1971, a medieval tactical miniatures game that later got a fantasy supplement. And here is where the complexity begins.

Roleplaying Games

Around that time a man named Dave Wesley created a game called Braustein and showed it off to a friend of his Dave Arneson at the University of Minnesota in 1969. It was a wargame set in Napoleonic times where each person would represent an individual instead of division. It wasn’t until a year later they played Braustein again.

Meanwhile, Jeff Derren and Gary Gygax were working on the fantasy supplement to Chainmail. Gygax had codified a new system for resolving combat using dice. Later Arneson got a hold of the Chainmail system and used its combat mechanics in combination with Wesley’s Braustein, but added the fantasy elements of Gygax’s expansion and that combination was Blackmoor. As of 2008 that role-playing campaign is still being run, making it the longest RPG game is history. Blackmoor innovated many ideas at the time including hit points, experience points, character levels, armor class and dungeon crawls. It used many of the same trappings as board wargames, but allowed the players to set their own goals.

Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax eventually got together and developed the system so in 1974 Dungeons and Dragons was released. In addition to the new rule system, setting and purpose of this new genre they added influence of two book series: the Dying Earth novels and stories where they derived the need to memorize spells and Three Hearts and Three Lives which added the concept of alignment, most notable the concept of law, neutral and chaos.

It would take a few years to pick up steam and popularity, but it spawned a cottage industry and many imitators. Some were blatant rip offs while others had their successes like Chivalry & Sorcery and Traveler (Remember the latter one, it will come back up.) In the late 70s a new set of hardcover books were released with a polished system after initial feed back and called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition.

The First Video Games

The 70s also saw the rise of another hobby industry. With Pong released in 1974 and computers coming to universities, video games had got their start. While the arcades were capturing the public imagination, programmers didn’t have a lot else to do with their computer mainframes, because no one knew what to do with them. So they programmed games. Several of those people were looking to bring Dungeons and Dragons to the computer, since there happened to be a lot of crossovers between the two cultures. Some of the games that were directly inspired by Dungeons and Dragons were Tunnels of Doom, Wizardry, and Aklabeth. Each of these was a dungeon crawl game with slightly different implantations. Most used wireframe representation of the dungeon walls and doors or solid blocks of color for the same purpose. Some were shown with a first person perspective, some from an overhead third person perspective. You would create your party of six character, choosing race, class and stats before beginning.  Wizardry went as far as to add a rudimentary alignment system of making your characters Good, Neutral or Evil with gameplay consequences. The combat systems were text input only, as the mouse DID NOT EXIST YET. (All PC nerds get on the ground and thank the technicians at Xerox.)

I’m not going to go through every single change, it’s reception, how it interconnects at large and now to PC gamers as it had to wargamers and pen and paper RPG gamer it seems like there are going to be a lot of omissions and dead ends when they really aren’t. Remember this is the lineage of one game, Dragon Age 2, and not everything influenced it.

SSI, a company that mainly dealt with the computer wargaming scene decided to try their hand at tactical RPG genre. Based off Tunnels of Doom they created their third effort at the RPG, their first two being Qeustron and Phantasie, Wizard’s Crown. Wizard’s Crown at the time was described as the most hardcore RPG ever.

Meanwhile, Michael Cranford looked at Wizardry and thought to himself, I can do better than this. Indeed he did, while much of the gameplay is the same, The Bard’s Tale updated the graphics with color and real representation of locals. He wanted the world to feel like a real place in the computer while you were playing, not just a wireframe representation. It came with a map of the town in the box to facilitate this. It also added character and monster portraits to help you identify with the world further.

Again meanwhile, (I swear this will all come together, just be glad this isn’t the whole history.) in 1980 after Aklabeth’s decent reception, Richard Garriot (Yes that Richard Garriot) aka Lord British took his game, almost wholesale, created a new world and story and with a few minor tweaks called it Ultima.

To recap:

DnD -> Tunnels of Doom -> Wizard’s Crown

DnD -> Wizardry -> The Bard’s Tale

DnD -> Aklabeth -> Ultima

Back at SSI, TSR which had published DnD and owned all the rights looked around to see if they could have a company make an officially licensed Dungeons and Dragons game. They liked SSI seriousness to the original material that they had with regards to their wargame adaptations. So TSR chose them. They took Wizard’s Crown as the base design, but also were heavily influenced by the world and nature of The Bard’s Tale. Both games were based off games that were originally based of DnD were now influencing the first official DnD computer game, Pool of Radiance. Known as the first of the Gold Box games it would spawn three sequels and other titles using the DnD license like Eye of the Beholder.

Now we got back to Richard Garriot and his Ultima series. As time went on he made several sequels, some advanced the genre in earth shattering ways like Ultimas III and IV. Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar had a unique design concept that would come back later in all forms of games, the morality meter. The entire game’s goal was about learning to be a moral person to become the Avatar rather than one of killing an evil wizard that nearly all computer RPGs had been up to this point. Others not so much. The big one we are going to talk about is 1992′s Ultima VII: The Black Gate. Ultima VII has one of the best stories of the series, but it also introduced several noteworthy mechanical things about the world. You could pick up and move items on the screen. It did away with the window box that would show the world with everything else being key-coded possible actions and stats. Instead the entire screen was the world and the mouse interface was brand new and allowed direct control of actions. It also had a not quite overhead view that will seem recognizable soon.

That same year at Microprose, designer Arnold Hendrick, who had worked on the board wargames Trireme and Dwarfstar at Avalon Hill (Remember them, they also licensed out their wargames to SSI.) and Sid Meir’s Pirates. The openworld nature and the chose your own objective ideas of the game were his. He convinced his boss to stray from the strategy genre and try and RPG. At the time they were a company with a heavy foundation on history and research and that is what they did. They found a place and time that had not been done before, dark ages Germany, but had certain qualities (ahem, cough, no horses) that allowed for technological limits of the time. The RPG design of the game came from the pen and paper Travelers system (told you it would came up again.) and the open world, open choice nature that made Sid Meir’s Pirates so unique. Darklands is a game with a cult following, but upon release a huge number of bugs, but one in particular rendered it unplayable. It was a memory leak. (It has been since patched out by fans and is worth it if you have the patience of an old school RPG.)

Darklands was mostly menu driven city exploration with multiple-choice dialogue when speaking to people. Combat was rendered in an isometric viewpoint with sprite characters and most importantly featured real time combat (Holy wow) that, get this, could be paused to allow the player to adjust tactics by pressing the spacebar. (You should all know where this is leading by now.)

To recap:

Wizard’s Crown + The Bard’s Tale -> Pool of Radiance -> Eye of the Beholder

Ultima -> Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar -> Ultima VII: The Black Gate

Travelers + Sid Meir’s Pirates + Trireme + Dwarfstar = Darklands

From Dead to Peak

In 1996 many people called the cRPG genre dead. The last Ultima game came out in ’93, the other major series were stalling their new releases and SSI couldn’t seem to get their act together and put out a non-junky product like Pool of Radiance or Eye of the Beholder. I still call them reactionary idiots, but call it dead they did. Then Diablo came out. This has no relevance to the lineage, but is instead one of the biggest f-yous to reactionary idiots in video games ever, always good for a laugh. 1997 gave us Fallout. Both have completely different lineages with nothing to do with anything I’ve said so far. Amazing huh, that’s how broad the whole history is.

In 1998 all the games I talked about brought their elements together. Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima VII, The Bard’s Tale, Darklands with the addition of a new copyright license of ADnD 2nd edition came Baldur’s Gate. This is one of those moments in the history of a subject. The first was the original DnD when all the elements before it coalesced into a single thing that then exploded to influence so much after it. Ironic that the second such event would be with a DnD licensed game.

Baldur’s Gate is, let me put this in the only terms I can convey this, the greatest damn computer role playing game ever if not best game every crafted by human minds. It took all before it and added it’s own imagination and fresh perspective in something often ignored in the RPG genre, ironically, story. You can see the influences in the progression and story arc from Ultima VII, but it adds so much. Side quests, actual side quests and dialogue options from Darklands, but expanded and detailed to degree not seen before. And for good measure, probably the greatest critique of the fantasy genre within a fantasy game played for laughs. And then it started off, downplayed at the time, one of the biggest modern trends in video games: the morality meter. It was tied to the DnD alignment you chose and those of your party members. It was limited, but this is where it started. It also broke the trend up to this point in character creation in that you did not create an entire party. Instead you only created the main character, your avatar, and you find your companions out in the world.

And then it spawned a sequel.

Baldur’s Gate not only got a sequel to continue the now epic storyline, but also did so with a villain containing so much flash, distain, methodical cruelty and at times tragic sympathy. All while David Warner’s dulcet tones soothingly terrify you. The original Baldur’s Gate also influenced the other Infinity Engine games like the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. Baldur’s Gate II of course improved the graphics and added wider options, but also introduced us to the now seemingly mandatory romantic options. The game had four, three for male characters and one for female characters. The game also brought back a feature back from the days of Wizardry: the ability to import your character from one game to the next. In Wizardry it was the only way you could progress in the newer titles, here it was for story and character value. This is where we get the next great split.

The Bioware Era

Despite competition in the western RPG from Bethesda and now Lionhead, it is still undoubtedly the Bioware Era, maybe even the Black Isle era, the people who actually made the Infinity Engine games. But I wont spread my wings too much. Have to stay focused, but first we leave Bioware to go quickly dart back to Ultima VII. (I said this was intertwined.)

Richard Garriot and Warren Spector (Yes that Warren Spector.) got to talking while working on Ultima VII about the changing dynamics of the industry and technology. Doom had put 3D on the map as the way to go. Garriot contracted out a side project of Ultima to a then untested studio Blue Sky Productions which then merged with Lerner Research and changed their name to Looking Glass Studios (Yes that Looking glass studios. How many times do I have to do this?) Their first game Ultima Underworld based off the Ultima series and Dungeon Master which itself spawned from Wizardry, probably by now one of the most influential games of all time. Dungeon Master was a first person action RPG set in a dungeon’s corridors with a click interface designed to let you move and turn. Influenced by Doom as well, Looking Glass upgraded to a more fluid movement style that allowed for much more granule movement. This was 1992. This is important because two years later it would become the direct influence of their next game System Shock, this widened the gap between itself and it’s Ultima predecessor. More shooter than RPG it kept many of the elements of its forbearers. It added new ways to convey story through logs and environment. A sequel came in 1999 headed by Ken Levine (Yes that Ken Levine.) Now that we’re all caught up on that front, back to Bioware.

Baldur’s Gate II spawned a number of little children running with what it accomplished.  The three relevant ones are Neverwinter Nights, Planescape: Torment and most of all Dragon Age: Origins some nine years later.

Neverwinter Nights altered the genre by giving us full 3d environments. The Elder Scrolls and others had done this years before, but Neverwinter Nights was the direct descendant of Baldur’s Gate and itself spawned another great RPG Knights of the Old Republic in 2003. KotOR was a revolution. It is the first to get away from the DnD license and instead used the Star Wars license. It changed the party line-up. Instead of a party of six characters, five of which you find in the world, you gather all the playable characters and can choose whom to take with you at the home base before heading out into the world. It expanded on the morality meter and integrated it more in the conversation and story choices aspect of the game. This time is was Light side vs. Dark side instead of Good vs. Evil.

The shooting gameplay of System Shock 2 along with the Bioware RPG touches and structure of advanced by KotOR is the direct lineage to Mass Effect. But Mass Effect brought about another new change. You couldn’t create your main character, your avatar in the game world. She was already created, Shepard existed, you merely molded her from the clay given to you. Even up till KotOR you were creating your shell from scratch and only once in the game did you mold them. This is where Planescape: Torment’s influence is apparent. Planesecape gave us the Nameless One, as empty a shell as any other, except he paradoxically had a name: Nameless One. In that and other regards he was an already formed character, he didn’t know who he was, but that was part of who he was. His amnesia and ability to not die are apart of him you could not choose and were written by the designers before hand. You could only mold him afterwards.

Conversations took a different turn. Instead of having full responses written out word for word what your character would say, instead you have short snippet impressions of what your Shepard would say. This allowed the main character to be fully voiced in conversation because it wouldn’t be tedious. The morality meter also changed a bit. Mass Effect didn’t use a single scale to determine your place on it, it allowed you to gain both Paragon and Renegade points and the game would give you more or less options depended on those point values.

Mass Effect of course led directly to Mass Effect 2. It was an upgrade and streamlining of the first game. It brought in more shooter elements and faster play. It got rid of inventories and focused more on character.

Back to Baldur’s Gate II. I said before that it was the direct influence to Dragon Age: Origins. I know this because the developer’s tag line for the game was “spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate.” The tactical, isometric, pause/play combat was there as was the full dialogue options instead of Mass Effect’s impression system. The interface is just a shinier version of the Baldur’s Gate one. Even the menus look the same. The biggest changed, which was in the original Baldur’s Gate is how characters in party would react to your reputation level, aka your morality meter. Now each character has his or her own meter, which is moved based on their character instead of overarching world metrics.

Now comes the final moment. Dragon Age 2 is Dragon Age: Origins + Mass Effect 2. Hawk is a predefined character that you do not create, but instead mold. Everything has been much more streamlined from the character creation to the action oriented combat. It ditched the dialogue options in conversation for the Mass Effect impression system, with some admitted upgrades as well. But on the positive note it kept the no overarching morality meter. Instead it keeps the individual party member’s approval meter. Really, the easiest and simplest way to understand Dragon Age 2 is that it is the child of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2.

The Wrap Up

It has been a long road up to this point. Starting in 1913 with H.G. Wells we come 88 years later to arrive at Dragon Age 2. There are dozens if not hundred of games left out from this little sliver of history. So many great games in the meantime and many left off on the periphery that went on to spawn and influence other games and franchises, even entire genres. But for now, focusing on this one game is enough. Hope you enjoyed this little history lesson of where the latest AAA RPG came from.

(This probably needed an editor for clean up and someone to tell me no  with regards to some style choices.)

(Note: After writing this response initially I figured it would be a good idea to take another few days to cool down before editing it, especially after rereading a certain middle section. I am also thankful I took the time for Danc has added a notes section answering some of the comments that arose in opposition to his arguments. I address those responses at the bottom.)

The first constraint he defines as having AI talk like it’s a living human being to interact with. His solution is to instead let players talk to other players. There is no uncanny valley within speaking and that meaningful interaction can form between two people like there would be between a player and an AI.

Two things. First Danc takes several facts that when by themselves are true, but sort of fall apart when combined. Yes players can talk to other players in game over the Internet, for what is the point of talking in-game if they are next to you. Also, yes meaning can come about through person-to-person interaction. That’s not entirely true when it’s: meaningful interaction can come about through person-to-person interaction in game over the Internet. The people who populate the Internet are the people I want to interact with the least. They are anonymous. They are not subject to the consequences of their words or actions. Why? Because they do not regard you as a human being, because you also are anonymous. The people I do willingly interact with in game over the Internet are people I know outside of the game. People create clans and groups with people they know, but their meaningful interactions are not a result of the game. Their foreknowledge of these people is what allows them meaningful interaction, not the game.

Secondly, Danc misstates the goal of single player conversations. These conversations have nothing to do with creating Turin AI so you can have uncanny valley free interactions. It’s about being part of a fiction, a fiction that generally will not hold with other people in the real world, unless it’s a fiction about everyday life. In World of Warcraft people talk completely differently than the NPCs do, because it’s a separate culture from that of the in-game fiction. Additionally, the uncanny valley has nothing to do with what the characters say. It has to do with the work that goes into the game. Good actors and solid writing have already crossed the gap where we can believe in a deep, fictional world ala Dragon Age: Origins or Uncharted etc. The present challenge comes in animation and getting the characters to act realistically while in conversation ala Oblivion and Fallout 3. This sort of thing would help in multiplayer games that use avatars for player interaction. Uncharted has actually made huge leaps in this area. Plus, that’s only if you were attempting towards realism. If the game used a more stylized art direction then these wouldn’t be problems in the first place ala Zelda: Wind Waker and Okami.

The second constraint is that of having a game convey meaningful commentary or artistic representation of the human condition. His response is to get rid of the idea that it has to be strictly authored and allow players into a rule set, let them go and have them create meaningful interactions.

Two things. First is that we already have those games where such interactions he described – forming friendships, joking around and trading quips – happen. They’re called MMOs. The problem is the same as with the conversation constraint. Much of the meaning of their interaction is formed outside of the rule set of the actual game. Human interaction is not a game, if you ever watched to any romantic comedy, my personal citation here would be the end of Hitch, quote: “There are no rules to falling in love,” you would know this. The same is true for any human social interaction. A game by definition is a set of rules. So on even a most basic level, regardless of where it happens, such interactions outside of the rule set are not the game.

Secondly. No single player game can offer any meaning at all? Ever? You say this, but then you spout off two examples: Passage and Gravatron. Excuse me, if you can offer one example of a single player game that can provide meaning that means single player games can provide meaning. Guess what, I’ll offer you a few more: Silent Hill 2, Portal, Braid, Metal Gear Solid, Ico, Marriage, Gears of War. Each of those is about or evokes emotion and not the same emotion either. They evoke fear, confusion, remorse, betrayal, partnership, and machismo. Also, what is up with you saying a film can direct an emotional response from an audience using artistic measures, but a game should and must to do it though technical ones. Films have had plenty of technical achievements over the years, but they all mean nothing without a basic artistic understanding of the medium. Likewise technical direction is not the future of video games in providing meaning. We’re already at the point in graphics, when referring to them getting better, Clint Hocking calls the stage we’re in WGAS: who gives a shit. It’s going to come from artistic direction of designers understanding the medium they work in. Get your comparisons right. Also you say this about coding games: “We can’t simply show a visual trigger that smacks a hardwired emotion button on our monkey brain.” The same is true for movies, books, paintings etc. You can’t have an actor cry on screen and expect the audience to react. It’s the artistic merit of the crying that will evoke an audience reaction as is true for anything. The code is not the answer and is not the place where people are even looking.

The third constraint is a matter of reach and how many people are playing your game. Your solution is instead of trying to indoctrinate people into the current gaming culture, we move beyond the boundaries of consoles and high end PC as well as genre constraints of the established culture. That we should move into areas that can reach a wider audience, both technically and contextually.

I threw my hands up at this point, because I absolutely agree. Ken Levine once said, “most designers have seen one movie and read one book and generally its Aliens and Lord of the Rings.” Yes I would love for games to reach a mass audience and to spread beyond the present genres or even the present fundamental institutions of contemporary gaming. But then he offers his solution; so much for absolute agreement.

I’ll get the most minor complaint out of the way first. Most of the stuff on the platforms he suggests are shit. Facebook games I’m not entirely sure they are games beyond having rule set. They have no objective other than performing actions in attempt to allow you to perform the same actions more. Mafia Wars has an additional problem in that it’s about annoying people with stupid requests to play so you can grow in power and influence so you can request more people play. It also undermines the whole point of being social as you end up inviting people not because they’re a person, but a number. Fishville sounds likewise baffling to me as a game, because it enslaves you to not even a real living fish, but virtual ones that force you to live on their schedule with mundane activities. So I’m not really sure about the game part, because it’s a simulation program that seem to fail at the goal part of the game equation. Hell even World of Warcraft has goals and has been ‘beaten.’ The phone games are likewise bad, because they are cheep to make and cheep to sell so the market is diametrically opposed to the idea of quality control. I will admit I have next to no knowledge of the Asian phone gaming market and was thinking of the iPhone app store, exclusively. Please tell me if the Japanese, Chinese and Korean markets are any different.

You bring up an interrelated economic and cultural problem of the games industry and then offer a solution that undermines both goals. So I’m more confused by this suggestion than angry or afraid of it. You’re third bullet point, however, I completely agree with. The last three indie game spotlights and the next few as well all had games that were based in flash or other programs my computer already had. The real challenge is then how to market them. Will the blockbuster games go away? No, because again you are using faulty logic. In saying that games must evolve their content to the broader audience rather than bring the broader audience to the games, why are consoles left out of this shift. I don’t see why a console game can’t be apart of this shift, especially since they already are and not just with Nintendo. The other two companies may be slower, but they aren’t stupid. When the shift for broader game types comes about, they will be there if they want to survive. Trust me, companies want to thrive, not just survive.

Notes Section:

Re: Re: Can’t we continue to explore the meaning in single player games?

I agree that single player games are going to persist not just because they are wanted and there is a market for them, but because they are easier for designers to test out new systems and programs, something Danc seems personally in favor of. He speaks of economics, but it is actually easier and cheaper to create “short consumable experiences” because the system doesn’t require sustained resources from publishers, support from designers and players to constantly use it for it to remain meaningful or even useful. Any multiplayer experience you’ve had I can guarantee was first based on a single player experience. Also, Danc says, “If you like crafted content over games that focus on creative systems,” with snide like cynicism, but creative systems are something that would fall under content. To take it a step further, without content there can be no exploration of the systems that games rely on. The best and longest lasting multiplayer games rely on an influx or altering of content to remain fresh. Team Fortress 2′s nearly weekly updates, World of Warcraft’s expansions and level cap increases, Second Life’s or Little Big Planet’s user created content (something you were in favor of earlier, so I’m confused by this statement) are all longer lasting systems because of more content being pumped into those systems.

I take umbrage with his language towards single player games as if they are some blight on the landscape that he has to be resigned himself to allow existing. Phrases like “turning games into warped shadow of cinema” and “culturally meaningful games will trickle in at a depressingly slow pace.” He talks about people being afraid of losing their hobby and being opposed because they, as a minority, don’t like multiplayer games. I’m not afraid, I love co-op games and the occasional friendly challenge; I can’t stand competitive games, or the anonymity that the Internet affords in games, preferring to play my friends on the couch. I’ve written the last three and half pages not out of fear, but out of being insulted at Danc’s frank disregard on an entire section of the video game community because of his own perceived notion that that community is disregarding his beliefs. From that I offer these arguments partially as a counterbalance, but also to remark how fucking stupid many of them are. Yes, multiplayer games are the next era or new cultural wave of creativity, but to think one is intrinsically superior or that the old is inferior because it isn’t new is just as bad an argument as looking at games and thinking space marines killing alien Hitler is as culturally relevant or meaningful as games can become. It really is the same argument that games are pointless, little time wasters, just coming from the opposite end of the spectrum.

Re: Re: Emotion in multiplayer games

While the rating of things is entirely subjective, despite what the Internet may have you believe, so I can accept that. It is after all an opinion and not part of my counter argument. The extrovert/introvert argument is the one that came up early and is in part why I waited so long and rewrote this several times to make sure I wasn’t being overly biased, as I personally skew to the introverted side of things (it is impossible to eliminate bias to think otherwise is folly). As for wider and more intensely felt emotions, I believe I’ve addressed that above. Such emotion when dealing with people in a game is a reaction to the people not the game. The game is a conduit. Was the game meaningful in those respects? I think not, the interaction with people is what was meaningful. Both positive (crying jubilation, love) and negative (griefing) are both caused by players not the game, and while the distinction is a fine one, it is an important one when talking about games as cultural works.

And this is where I wished you stopped talking and moved to the next point, so it would only be mild disagreement on the position of your argument, but then you had to say something like this: “If there are two products on a shelf and one offer[s] a fun level of 3 and the other a fun level of 4, which one will you pick?”

First of all fun is not the factor in which we rate a game’s message, validity or purpose of existence. There are games out there that are not fun, but people play because they have some other factor that makes them desirable. Silent Hill 2, Fatal Frame 2, The Path and other like horror/cerebral games are not fun in the traditional sense, but compel us in the unconscious depths that psychological films, gothic novels and surrealistic paintings all tap into. A lot of the appeal of The Sims comes not from “fun” but from the value of either the player’s sadism or a new medium in which to create. Any serious creator will tell you the actual act and drudgery of creation and fine-tuning is not fun. It is satisfying, but in no way do the majority classify it as fun.

Secondly, rating one game as a 3 and another as a 4? It’s a stupid enough concept when reviewers do it because of contractual obligation, but to rate fun, one of the most if not the most subjective experience in the range of human emotion. The very fact you talk about the differences between extroverts and introverts 4 paragraphs previously should show you that not everyone values or gets the same worth of experience out of a game that you will.

Re: Re: But it is just a chat room

Not a lot to say here, because I agree with that statement, but I need to response to head off any misconceptions that might arise from my earlier arguments on the area of communication. The issue is not communication between players would just be a chat room; it’s the dichotomy that can and will arise when the “fiction” of a game and the connection players make in the game necessary for communication are not in sync. You bring up the idea of a ball sitting in a field versus playing soccer as well as with the idea of Internet poker you infer with ideas of communication intent and bluffing. These work because the fiction of playing these games against other people is consistent with the reality that the players are interacting as if they are playing soccer or poker. The problem is when the fiction and reality do not match up. World of Warcraft has a fiction of a fantasy realm and people going about their lives in this world, but players interact not as fantasy beings, but as people playing at their computers in a fictional matrix. (I wish I could use another example, but it’s so perfect for showing the differences in all these arguments.) It’s not that they’re just chat rooms, it’s when the games display ludonarrative dissonance in regards to communication that they trail behind single player games focused in those same areas.

Re: Re: But Facebook games are shallow!

That wasn’t exactly my argument against Facebook games, but since it’s the one offered I’ll run with it. First, Pong is not shallow. If you get another player it can be as deep and as challenging as tennis. (Slight hyperbole, but my point stands.) Secondly, I do not think that Facebook games will ever have the budget of AAA single player games or even AAA multiplayer endeavors, because those games are free and their economic model is not tuned to returning such a large investment as those on level of single player experiences. And all of that still doesn’t circumvent what these games do within the sphere of social networking sites, by subverting their initial purpose and use for the game’s own endeavors. They also lack a win state or at least a goal state besides being self-perpetual.

Conclusion.

I think of multiplayer or social based gaming not as a replacement or the inevitable point of no return. I do not think they are pointless of lesser like Danc seems to feel about single player games. I see them as Bardbarienne in the comments noted quite brilliantly that we are entering a new period in the art form. I broke this down to the largest measures in a previous post where I said, while gaming generations are easily identifiable as they correlate to the console generations and we’ll probably never get past the 2nd age of gaming, I was unsure when the 5th era of gaming would come or what it would look like, or at least not at the time. With current trends I believe multiplayer and social gaming is the next step, but not to the exclusion of others. Just because it’s the age of hip-hop doesn’t mean rock, jazz or even classical music have gone away. It’s just the evolution of the art form.

As a final note, I agree with Mark Ivey also from the comments.

“The first observation: It is interesting that “people in a room talking” is a mainstay of both movies and books, and yet the actual act of enjoying a movie or book is primarily a private one. Sure, we go to the movies with our friends, but while the actors spend most of the movie talking the audience is expected to be quiet. (Though, as with games, we love to talk with our friends about the experience afterwords).”

Sometimes the social aspect of a game is not from the game itself, but having a shared experience with other people. Not playing with each other or against each other, but playing something individually and then talking about it afterwords. Like going to the movie with friends or being a part of a book club. There are already examples on the Internet and within games. So while social gaming may be the next step, I don’t think anyone including Danc will know or can even guess what form it will take.

The debate has been around for quite a while. The necessity of making this point came about thanks to the recent ABC webcast about the very subject. That’s right, ABC. It’s a short segment that can be seen here. Destructoid’s response here mirrored my own immediate reaction.

Out of every game that could have been chosen and explained…Metroid Prime, doesn’t even make my top 20, but regardless of that even the explanation for why it is the “Citizen Kane of video games” is completely absurd as is the whole idea of a “Citizen Kane of video games.” But first…

For those who do not know, the idea of the “Citizen Kane of video game” is the concept that there will be a game that when it comes it will mark the point when games will have reached maturity and legitimacy on the level of cinema. This mythical game is also supposed to be the culmination of all that gaming has been up to this point and bring about a revolution and be haled almost universally 40 years from now as the best game to date.

Having to write that out makes me realize really how utterly stupid the concept is. Sufficed to say Metroid Prime doesn’t meet those standards.

Also the argument that something has to prove itself as artistic is a very American idea. Film was always thought important, but nothing more than a curiosity at first. The Russians, French, German, Italians and others all thought movies were artistic. The Japanese presently think of video games as artistic. To them there is no debate.

Next, to paraphrase DemonicMurry from his twitter feed: Citizen Kane is a good movie, but highly overrated. I agree, it is a good movie, but not the greatest (Casablanca IMO). To quote him from elsewhere “Even Citizen Kane doesn’t exists as Citizen Kane.” The movie has been over hyped through out the years. Yes it is a tremendously great film and phenomenally important, but the repetition of those phrases a couple of dozen, hundred times and suddenly you aren’t looking at a film anymore, but the inflated vision of a film. I reckon few people clamoring for a Citizen Kane have ever watched the movie. After all the hype it does not live up to the leviathan of expectations. The mythos and aura that surrounds Citizen Kane has long since exceeded the actual movie and it has become this unattainable ideal. If you’ve ever heard someone that has watched recently for the first time ask ‘what is the big deal?’ That’s because it has morphed into far too big a deal. The idea that a video game can live up to that ideal is laughable, especially when Citizen Kane can’t live up it.

It is overrated in the effect it had towards the cinematic medium for another reason. Time for a little history lesson. When it came out it was refused advertising by William Randolph Hurst, who owned most of the newspapers in America at the time. Other papers followed suit. He was powerful enough that what he said went. The man launched a campaign to kill the movie; he practically held a vendetta against it, before it had even finished filming. It was refused showings from movie theaters around the country and no one could publicly support the movie for fear of suffering the same fate. Orson Wells was blackballed for directing because of it. Hurst even tried to force RKO pictures (never heard of them, now you know why) to destroy all celluloid copies and was thought to have succeeded. It was only found in a forgotten canister a decade later. Some filmmakers and critics at the time saw it, but the majority of the public didn’t. See Citizen Kane couldn’t change public perception of film because NO ONE SAW THE FUCKING THING. It wasn’t haled as a masterpiece until the French rediscovered it almost 10 years later. It certainly did not revolutionize the industry overnight like so many people seem to think.

Finally, using the argument that Metroid Prime resembles the thematic elements of Citizen Kane, while interesting and definitely an arguable point I wouldn’t mind reading an essay on, is like saying that one is culturally equal to the other which is absolutely stupid. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein has the same general thematic message as Plan 9 from Outer Space, but I would hardly call the latter equal to the former. Don’t believe me, look it up. Plus, Citizen Kane is important and celebrated for its formal contributions to the medium, not for its conceptual ones, no matter how deep and profound they may be. The argument is about what a single video game can show us about the medium not a theme.

There are other things that point against the whole debate of the “Citizen Kane of video games.” Like the debate being completely pointless and unhelpful. The arguments produce only hot air and no actual theoretical or practical foundations. That one game can’t provide cultural legitimacy; it takes movements to change perception. That there are more important things to fix in our insular culture than finding a nicknamed video game, like the piss poor journalism, sequelitis, weak mainstream coverage (that this video happens to be apart of), horrendous portrayals of women and minorities, juvenile and rather insulting marketing ploys, etc. etc.

Critically it is important to look to those works that our medium is founded upon. It is important to look at those works that did blaze the trail and try new things with the elements that make video games a unique medium. I find that to be a much more valid discussion, because it actually creates discussion instead of a flame war. Instead of Citizen Kane we should be asking what were our Lumieres brothers, A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery, Battleship Potempkin, The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and so on.

Of course, everyone first has to realize this is only a metaphor, which is the main problem with the original idea behind “Citizen Kane of video games.” That too was only a metaphor, but most people discussing it didn’t realize that and the mythos of Citizen Kane moved in and derailed the whole discussion. If we change the title without that understanding we’ll end up producing the same drivel. The ‘Citizen Kane of video games’ is a metaphor for the concept I detailed above, a rather pointless one that I just reasoned why.

I gave a lot of reasons why the “Citizen Kane of video games” is a fundamentally flawed idea, but here’s the most important one of all: One medium should not have to draw comparisons to others for any reason, because no two mediums are alike. Each has its own unique materials and formalistic basis that require the work based in that medium to fit those foundations and standards. It means one medium is not better or worse than another and certainly not equal, just different. In other words, books are not plays, are not movies, are not video games.

I listed a bunch of movies that each contributed something to the formal development of film as a medium. If you need to use a metaphor of film to video games for a comparison, use those I listed, because then there will be some thought put into it. When you think of what those movies did fundamentally to their medium, comparing them to a video game will force you to think of what it actually contributed to the formal aspects of the video game medium, rather than a best game ever debate. Honestly, when anyone tries to engage me in the Citizen Kane debate I counter with the Birth of a Nation question. They look at me quizzically, which forces me to explain what I mean and I actually end up in a fascinating discussion. One I’d like to have more often.

For anyone to really understand the evolving state of an art form or medium must understand where it came from. Though video games have only been around for around 30 years it has a very long and detailed history, mostly thanks to the nature of technology. Of course the differences are more than just technological. There is a mentality change in the designers and the audience. We are presently in the 7th generation of consoles. Simultaneously we are in the Second Age of gaming and the 4th Era. Some may not know the details of the first, fewer of the second and I can almost guarantee no one had a clue about the third.

Something worth mentioning: this is the cliff notes version of video game history. My intention is to give a quick breakdown and explain the concepts. If I don’t mention your favorite obscure console, I don’t care. Some of the generations have upwards of 30 consoles I’ve never heard of and that never captured a market share.

A Lesson in History

The first generation could be explained as the cartridgeless generation. First the Odyssey, the home version of Pong, and others were machines with a single game programmed in and the later ones had two or three. The second generation saw the rise of Atari, and later ColecoVision. It was a great golden age of home console gaming that focused on bringing the arcade experience to the home TV. After the great video game crash of 1983, a new company came to American shores and brought the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES with them. Nintendo re-imagined the interest and became a powerhouse, meanwhile the last remnants of Atari, in the form of the Jaguar, died out as a hardware manufacturer. This is the 3rd generation, also known as the 8-bit era, named for the NES processing power. The 4th generation brought NES’ sequel, the Super NES and its competitor, the Sega Genesis. This is the 16-bit era. Lots of action between the companies as they battle for market dominance. Moving along to the 5th generation. Thanks to a betrayal and a few mistakes, Sony entered the fray with the original PlayStation. Nintendo stood fast with the N64 and Sega fumbled with the Sega Saturn. The 6th generation is where it gets a little complicated time wise. Sega made one last stand with the Dreamcast, giving it an early release, but was quickly overshadowed a year later by Sony and their PlayStation 2, which I believe is the most successful console of all time as I write this. Sega dropped out just in time for Nintendo to bring in the purple lunchbox, also known as the Gamecube. Finally, the first western competitor since Atari enters the fight, Microsoft and their Xbox. This generation is the first to see online capabilities to home consoles. Now we are in the 7th generation with two sequels, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and a reinvention, the Nintendo Wii. This way to view the timeline is defined by the technology of the console and companies upgrading their consoles.

I mentioned before that we are also in the Second Age of gaming. What do I mean by that? This refers to the industry behind the games or rather the infrastructure of the medium. This is a medium based on technology unlike any other before it. The First Age was one of American infrastructure. From the beginning all the way to the great crash is the first age. The Second Age is Japanese infrastructure; ignore Microsoft for a second, I’m generalizing here. It was Nintendo that pulled video games back from the dead and it has continued based on the groundwork they laid. Their business model was a reaction to what was generally considered the fall of the video game industry in 1983. They required 3rd parties to register with Nintendo, limited the amount of games and other draconian rules set down for their system so that the crash would not repeat itself. Now with more consumer awareness and the internet I doubt there will ever be another crash. Yes some companies are failing, but the entire industry wont have its existence in the balance like last time. Regardless, the Second Age structure is still in place.

Finally I labeled us in the 4th Era of gaming. I divide each era by a great change, advancement, or overhaul in the medium as an art form. Basically how the designers approach making games. The beginning, 1st generation, comprises the entirety of the 1st Era. Back then it was basic, rudimentary; each machine was a game unto itself. The 2nd Era of gaming began with the introduction of the exchangeable media and programmable architecture, namely cartridges. This Era was the entire 2nd generation of consoles. Back then only a single machine was needed and the games had to be purchases separately at a cheaper price. The 3rd Era of gaming began with the Second Age and 3rd generation. There was a huge leap in processing power, which would become the standard from generation to generation, but the jump here caused several unique changes. The first being recognizable, recurring characters. It also added rudimentary story telling in game, art style and color schemes. Finally we come to the 4th Era in gaming, which began in the 5th generation, the generation of the N64 and Playstation. The move from 2D to 3D was the greatest upgrade of the Era and is where designers have been working ever since.

The Future?

When I first conceived of this post several months ago I thought that we might have remained in the Second Age and 4th Era, but with the recent developments of the industry moving to digital distribution in DLC and services like Steam have me thinking that the infrastructure may change from the platform originally set up by Nintendo. And while we have been exploring the design space of 3D, I feel that we’ve reach a limit of technological innovation and now the focus will turn to more artistic innovation. Plus with the existence of the Wii there could be a permanent division between traditional controls and alternate controls. Either way we could be on the verge of the next Age and Era if we are not already there.

The Point

It’s the old saying that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. That is true on a small level, with game franchises like Tomb Raider never changing their formula or fixing what doesn’t work, but it also works on larger scale concepts like the design space and the industry. We are still feeling the effects of the video game crash of 1983. Previous to that game making was about what ever the designer could think of and thought would be good. After the crash, because of the hasty flop of E.T. and 3rd parties flooding the market with cheep shovelware, Nintendo reacted to prevent such a thing from happening again. Companies could only release a certain amount of titles every year to steam the flow of games to the market thereby confusing potential customers. They also created a system of quality control to make sure the customer never got too bad a game for their purchase, e.g. one that was free of game breaking bugs. This in combination with the qualities of the 3rd Era we have companies needing to make more money on fewer titles. They needed games that would sell and the fastest way to do this was with games that have already proven themselves to be successful. Thus the franchise was born. Even though some of the causes have faded, the mentality has led to the sequelitis of modern day gaming.