Legitimacy?
There’s a part of me that feels like this is very important.
I’m a long time reader of the New York Times, and I’ve watched them coming around on video games for the past couple of years. When they published Clive Thompson’s article on Peacemaker on the front page of the Arts section (not the Technology section), I felt like it was a turning point. I know I shouldn’t care about legitimacy so much, but part of me thinks that it isn’t just about pride. Legitimacy also brings opportunity; the more people who at least give gaming a second glance, the more interesting projects might get off the ground. The more people who are interested in the possibilities of games, the more variety of perspectives, the stronger the community becomes.
I’m not a big fan of Ian Bogost’s games or his theory, but I do think that on the whole the work he is doing is good for everyone. Hopefully he will continue to use his growing influence to open doors, to push the art form itself forward, along with his own games.
sorry for the long absence (i have been scanning most posts, but bob’s epics always scare me), but i thought I would comment on this.
This is a huge step for games, and specifically serious games. the new york times, even with all their recent troubles, still remains the american standard for integrity and excellence in reporting (what else comes close, the washington post? us news? fox news?!?!) the fact that they cover games usually once a week, sometimes more when there is something big going on, shows the entrance of games into mainstream culture. (including with people even older than frank!) but a bigger deal is them carrying a section specifically for serious games, something that is still a niche market even in the gaming community. i think this gives more legitimacy to serious games than the more mainstream games, and i think thats the bigger deal. and i must say, the game industry needs someone like ian bogost, even if you dont agree with him or like his games (i find most of them boring), just because he is willing to do it and start the discussion. lets hope ian makes a fun game soon, so serious games wont remain this ugly step-child.
This is interesting, but it’s still only one part of the puzzle. I certainly believe that games have a lot of instructional potential, in ways that other mediums don’t, and while it’s not quite perfect they still get a lot of milleage strictly from being action based. Playing a fishing game isn’t the same thing as going out and actually fishing, but at least it can count as teaching you to fish while watching a movie, reading a book, seeing a play only amounts to being given a fish. Games can feed you for a lifetime, but everything else only for a day, at least according to this argument.
Still, let’s face it– the instructional content of games is hampered somewhat by its subjective context. This is nothing new, of course, as every medium faces the questions of either avoiding or embracing bias over objectivity. What I’d like to see, however, is more of an acceptance of gaming in terms of its narrative and dramatic potential, and not merely its instructional and editorial ones. When people talk about the art of games, they’re sadly only really thinking about the art in games– there’s way too many people who love the work of Kojima, for example, for all the wrong reasons and wind up encouraging his worst behavior as a designer. Aesthetics aside, games have a lot to offer creatively from the perspective of interactivity, and I just hope that isn’t ignored in all areas except for “serious” titles. Games can be used in a serious way to tell stories, not just tell us about what’s on the front page.
Anyway, this is certainly a good first step, and I’ll try and follow it, as soon as I get membership on their website. Still, let’s acknowledge that this represents the editorial cartoon side– from this, we’ll see the Thomas Nast of gaming. Sure, we might have a Stan Lee or two now, but we still have to wait for a while before our Kirbies and Ditkoes all get the recognition they deserve before we can see the development of Spiegelmen or Sims.
And by the way, Oren:
Boo!
Oren, it’s great to have you back. In fact, as our resident ‘Defender of Fun’, I’m wondering when we’re going to get you to write something for this fine website. I agree whole-heartedly with that the New York Times coverage of games is pretty exceptional. Does it signal a new kind of legitimacy, at least for video games? I hope so. My feeling is that in itself it doesn’t prove that much, but if we’re lucky, it’s a harbinger of things to come. I won’t consider gaming to have truly broken into the mainstream until USA Today has a review column dedicated to it, and that’s probably a ways off.
Bob, I think that you’re confusing ‘editorial’ with ‘objective’. It’s true that the instructional side of Serious Games gets a lot of press, and I sometimes feel that Bogost uses it as something of an apology for the rest of his work, but he specifically says in his book, Unit Operations, that there is no such thing as an ‘objective simulation’. All simulations, whether they are games or physics models, have built-in biases and assumptions. Bogost is openly embracing this fact by making games that have an overt political message. I would also like to see the dramatic and narrative possibilities of games explored more often, but I’m not sure that that has any relevance to what Bogost is trying to do with Persuasive Games.