Friday Pragmatism | The true art in gaming

I’ll be quick as I’m at my sister’s and also I’ve not had much in the way of pragmatism to discuss this week.

I have naturally been thinking about Borderlands though as we’ve been playing it like mad over the last month. While I will always favour things like Flower, Silent Hill 2, ICO and Prince of Persia ’08 to give a few examples, they’re clearly more about what most people traditionally consider as art. However, as much as I love those games, the true art in gaming comes from the interaction.

None of this will be terribly new to anyone, I’d just like to take note of it for myself.
Borderlands is perhaps one of the best examples of the difference interaction makes in the medium. You enter into combat from a first-person perspective, but the range of options you have available for your approach to combat is quite wide. Where the art is revealed is when combat situations change and how the player adapts on the fly.

You begin with the two basic mechanics of moving and shooting. Shooting can be done in the traditional ways with all of their advantages and drawbacks; sniping from afar is relatively safe but you must make each shot count with the lowest firing rate of all weapons bar some rocket-launchers and slower shot-guns. It also requires steadiness and sometimes tracking which can be tough. Each option has these such advantages; close-range shotgunning, lower single-bullet damage count for high rate of fire with automatics, self-harming splash-damage from rockets fired too close to home etc. As a player you constantly re-evaluate which of these options is the most appropriate given the situation at hand.
Borderlands adds more depth to the variation with many other attributes to consider; reload rate, recoil, clip size, additional damage (elemental) and of-course if you’re playing with buddies, whether you’ll be sharing ammo-drops.
Then we add the RPG elements with class-skills and the singular special ability and we now have a very complicated matrix of variables that all have a dramatic effect on gameplay.
On top of these elements ultimately comes team-play and having other classes and their unique abilities complimenting your play-style.

Shooters are one great example of how quickly a situation can change, and how the many varying gameplay mechanics can come together to give the player options in how to deal with them. It’s an amazing thing to witness, in particular with Borderlands. What’s also amazing is that gamers tend to develop and hone theses skills without much actual analysis of their actions; some games are so streamlined and well integrated that learning and honing skills is extremely natural.

This is where the true art of games is; it provides gamers with surprising moments. Our team can have certain expectations for our abilities and combat situations, yet we can be caught off-guard, make critical errors like not taking out a single key enemy before trying to revive someone – it’s always a gamble trying to get a kill in before their health meter ultimately gives out, and exceed our expectations and do better than we thought we would because of how well we play together.

To different degrees, almost all games leverage this kind of thing which is natural after-all; interaction is what separates our medium from other forms. Right now many developers and commentators are trying to argue that our medium needs a ‘Gone with the Wind’, a game of such powerful influence as to be hailed as a classic, but the quality and impact of our games don’t come from their themes, they come from how well the interaction is executed. Gamers reflect on age-old games with fondness; various iterations of Mario, Sonic, Doom and Quake, Baldur’s/Neverwinter etc., then the many modern games that have also had exceptional quality of interaction. These games are remembered as great because we derived so much joy from actually playing them, not necessarily the stories they told. Our stories come from our actions, our sometimes comical failures and often epic successes, all of which we bring about by our own ability.

Even the simplest of games such as Flower, my current all-time favourite game which doesn’t actually present much of a challenge, still is rewarding ultimately through its interactive element, to which the minimalistic, surreal and beautiful art is crafted around.

I’ll close with my many fond memories of watching Rok play the various iterations of survival horrors, in particular Project Zero/Fatal Frame and Resident Evil. Resident Evil’s stories have always been intentionally absurd; they’re not here to win Pulitzer’s and they’re a celebration of bad action movies, but that’s not where the art comes from. The art comes from watching him constantly assessing the pressure the enemies are putting on him and someone still conserving ammo. Sure, his wicked-cool knifing skills have gotten him killed a few times, but it’s amazing to see that he knows exactly how many slashes he’ll get in before the mob closes on him.

I’m not entirely sure many people outside of the gaming community understand this sense of art in games, partially because we’re probably not terribly good at communicating and demonstrating it. Even with this entry there are so many details I want to discuss but I’m pressed for time. It’s the sort of thing that warrants a play-through with commentary to demonstrate the complexities and flexibility of gameplay, and also to demonstrate why doing something is often more impacting than merely observing it, or at least is impacting in a different way.

As I’m fond of saying about Prince of Persia ’08, you could have just watched two people with a shallow excuse for a story get to know one another, or you can bring that relationship about by your own actions. In this way, the characters come alive in ways that are impossible to through film, the same way that strict authorial control leverages other advantages when it comes to direct, passive film-watching.

Games are not films, and while good stories and characterisations are certainly welcome in games, the core art will always remain in the interaction. We’re getting good at it now, developers and players both, and contrary to the popular cool attitude of hating on every single game, I for one am enthusiastic about the future. Every one we make won’t be amazing in the respects I’ve discussed here, but we’re beginning to really understand the power of interaction and the art in allowing the player to truly play a game, or truly play a character be it user-defined (RPG-based) or narrative focussed (Prince of Persia ’08).