Opinion

The Paradox of a Single Player Game

I come from a background almost exlusively made up of single player games. All of my preffered titles– Zelda, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Prince of Persia, Out of this World/Another World or whatever you’re supposed to call it, etc.– are single player games exclusively. My favorite series–(hint: it ain’t GTA)– might’ve just recently added a multi-player mode to its last two installments, and while I’m always on the move looking for hotspots to access it through my PSP, I still remain slavishly devoted to it for each game’s singular single player experience. A few games I’m fond of, like Katamari and a handful of classic N64 titles might have very impressive death-match modes, but mostly games like GoldenEye, StarFox and even Mario Kart held my attention mostly as solitary affairs. Heck, I’ve barely ever even played the Super Mario Bros. games with two players– I wouldn’t want to risk having to play as Luigi. Basically, in all my life I’ve been perfectly happy to play, critique, understand and hopefully someday design one type of game and one type only– single player games.

The problem? I’m not entirely sure that single player games technically exist.

Throughout this class, one of the mantras I’ve been battling in my head is that at their heart, games are about competition. I’m not certain I agree with that notion, but let’s allow it, for the moment. Before, I’ve said that single player games are still inherently games, because even without another human player to compete with, the player is still competing against the computer player, and therefore engaged in the same kind of activity. Looking back, still very sure that assessment works in most of the situations you’d need to think about in, I’m curious as to whether I still believe in it, completely.

After all, if one buys into the fiction of a game totally, on whatever level, then the conflict that exists between the player and the computer isn’t necessarily a mere competition. True– games that deposit their action within the confines of a fictional contest of some sort certainly do boil down to that sort of feeling, but the rest of those games don’t. If you’re really immersed in playing games like Metal Gear or Ico, you’re not inhabiting the experience of trying to win– you’re inhabiting the experience of striving to survive, and save lives. If you’re immersed in Shadow of the Colossus, you’re inhabiting the experience of hunt and ritual sacrifice.

Games like these aren’t about winning or losing games– they’re about winning or losing things much more important than that. It might be cliche to boil them down to struggles of good and evil, but those kind of epic clashes, when the player is successfully drawn into them, are about much more than mere competition. At that point, I’m not really sure they qualify as games, because at the end of a game we know that life goes on. Really well designed games can make us forget it to the point of experiencing genuine fear, pain and heartache in the face of loss, if only for the few moments we have left before our disbelief comes out of its suspended animation, and therefore might not actually be best served under the term games, to an extent.

Instead, they become tests.

I’m not just talking about school tests, but they work, as well– Modern day educational tests might be done in large groups, but it’s still all about one’s individual progress through the questions. Students might show off their high grades and scoff at those with lower ones, but the only level of competition that exists there is a metatextual one, similar to those who show off their high scores in single player games.

However, tests mean more than that. Tests are solitary affairs. Tests are less about competing with the outside world than they are about competing with one’s own inner forces. Tests of strength, intelligence, endurance and so forth, in all their forms, are all about one’s relationship to one’s self. At the end, tests are about driving us to want to do better the next time around, not just to prove it to the world, but to prove it to ourselves. Tests occur when we restrain ourselves from indulging in destructive behavior, such as addictions or vices in the face of temptation. Tests occur when we push ourselves to do something we wouldn’t ordinarily do, facing our fears with courage. Tests are private moments or heroism or cowardice, battles we fight within ourselves.

In that sense, a test is a game one plays with one’s self. We test ourselves in order to see how well we can play with others. Perhaps in that sense, all single player games are preludes to multi-player ones, not merely literally but also in spirit. Life itself is multiplayer, and only in our dreams, whether driven by the daytime imagination or REM, can we allow ourselves to prepare for it.

…Okay, I’m sure absolutely none of that made sense, this time. Nothing but pretentious bullshit, and yet I’m posting it anyway. I wonder if that qualifies as testing myself or playing around with everybody else…