To: Heather Chaplin, From: Game Devs, Re: Please Return Our Testes
Friday’s schedule at the GDC constituted a definite winddown. I’ve never seen anyone look as sleepy in front of hundreds of his fans as Sir Peter Molyneux in his mid-afternoon Lionhead talk. But I had high-hopes for the morning’s rant panel, which featured our leading lights in games journalism. Would truth be spoken to power? Would the journalists who are (slightly) outside the industry tear into it, and use their hour to detail exactly where it fell short of what the culture, the economy and the world demand of it?
Only two talks took that route. Jamin Brophy-Warren addressed race, calling out the paucity of non-white dudes in games; at best minorities only make it to the support cast, and rarely to the front of the box. But I was even more engaged by journo Heather Chaplin’s talk, which cut even deeper. She’s covered the games biz for eight years. And to listen to her talk about it, I’m guessing she’s ready to quit.
Chaplin used her slot to tell the industry, as reasonably as she could, to grow up. See, she covers the business for the mainstream outlets - she co-write Smartbomb, the single best book to buy anyone who doesn’t understand your “hobby,” and she reports at NPR among other venues. She says this puts her in the role of a “translator,” trying to tell the mainstream why gaming even matters. This also means explaining a lot of big-name games that feature zombies, and aliens, and girls in metal bikinis wielding axes. And while she’s heard the excuses - it’s “a very new medium” - she’s way past accepting them.
Like Wendy slapping around the lost boys, Chaplin patiently but firmly laid down the line. “It is you guys as game designers who are mired deeply in ‘guy culture,’” Chaplin said. The problem isn’t the medium: “You are a bunch of stunted adolescents.” Games avoid any of the things that separate men from boys: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. And “when you’re talking about culture-makers, this is a problem.”
I ate it up. For sure, I don’t agree with her whole rant. I won’t scrutinize her comparisons to rock and roll or film, or wave around any of the games that try to meet the standards she set. And I won’t point out that her frustration probably comes from eight years of telling her dinner party buddies why she’s wasting her time on something that “literate” people still call a toy. I will point out that, as a woman, I may be drowning in toys for boys, but I wouldn’t necessarily blame it on the zombies and the aliens. Games are by and large a power fantasy, and we only cast them with monsters because our co-workers and family members are too hard to model.
But games should also be more than a power fantasy. It’s eerie how rarely the qualities she ticked off find a place in games. This is important not just to the girls, but to the boys who don’t dream of being a marine or a quarterback. In music, boys can listen to boys who aren’t macho. If balls-out, cock-out rock ain’t your thing, you can listen to Belle & Sebastian. There’s a spectrum of masculinity and femininity, and endless ways for both boys and girls to respond to it. But in games, aggression is the default, and relationships are usually as clumsy as a third-grade dance.
And let’s set aside gender and talk about whether the business is “emotionally stunted.” That’s strong, but how can we deny the field is childish? The experimental gameplay session was full of projects that paid homage to Mario - implying our most outro designers are still reliving the day they discovered SNES. Tim Schafer has moved from a game that riffs on Casablanca, to a platformer about summer camp and now a game about his high school metal fantasies. And ugh, the fanboy line outside the Iwata keynote - it was like everyone was going to see their favorite rich uncle who always gives them candy. People will go any distance for a taste of those childhood Christmas mornings. Who’s making games about their wedding days?
At the start of her talk, Chaplin called herself a “translator” to the mainstream. Friday morning, she came to translate from the mainstream right back to the gamemakers. She told the business what the rest of the world still thinks of it. She pointed out that a medium that’s 35 years old is too long in the tooth to be “adolescent.” And she came to serve notice: the world expects more.
(And update: For a nice piece on game nostalgia, see Magical Wasteland’s The Madeleine in Eight Bits.)
29/03/2009 at 5:43 pm Permalink
Effin’ oath!
29/03/2009 at 7:09 pm Permalink
Man…at least it confirms what I’ve been seeing on my own.
This is, depressingly, the cliff I have run into with the Jungian Game Analysis. I watch the click count soar, I watch people have this immense interest in this connection, and yet none of them seem to realize where it’s going. They are engaging and creating, again and again, neutered manhood rituals and pseudo death simulations to induce a psychological state of adulthood without the actual destruction that makes way for the new adult personality to form.
And it exists on every damn level. Archetypal order systems that induce domination behavior, feedback loops that feed on the desire to undermine instincts. I’m just…she’s right. I’m going to finish the damn series and I”m not going to lie about what it all means, but sometimes I think part of the reason games are staying at this level is because no one wants to actually think about what games really amount to. What it says about you when you spend 10, 20, 30 hours doing the same virtual act over and over that your conscious mind is still merrily refusing to acknowledge.
Hell, now I’m ranting in the comments section. Sorry, your essay just sparked something in me that’s been brewing.
30/03/2009 at 10:20 am Permalink
Frankly, I think she’s full of crap just like the rest of the media. Okay, so she hung out with Cliffy B. I guess she can base her opinions on the entire gaming industry with that experience. It’s not like journalists have to be responsible anymore.
I just want to know, where the hell are the metal bra’d bimbos in Professor Layten? Where’s the juvenile storyline in Mass Effect? For every Fritz Lang in Hollywood, there are a thousand Roger Cormans and Ed Woods. How can she hold up Hollywood as an example when there’s movies like “Gator Bait” and “Glen or Glenda”. She’s cherry-picking Hollywood’s best and the videogame industry’s worst.
Journalists telling the videogame industry to shape up is hypocritical at best.
30/03/2009 at 12:46 pm Permalink
@Vinzent: Don’t be so aggressively obtuse.
Whether or not you agree with her emotional or gender-based review of the industry, she’s speaking to games having a cultural and artistic impact.
How innovative is another Mario game? Another WWII shooter?
I think her point is that beyond almost every protagonist in every game either having gigantic gravity-defying boobs or being a muscle-bound anti-hero, many games are sequels or entrants into franchises. You yourself are pointing to the “not best” of Hollywood. Step back and look at games. The Wii is a platform for the family, but that means kids’ games and casual drivel. It’s fun, but it’s not art. On the PS3 and 360, you get more but how many games are just continuations of Things That Have Already Been Done But Could Get Another Sixty Dollars Out Of You?
For every Okami or Resistance, you get another Mario or Call of Duty (or two). For every Fallout or Dead Rising you get a Gears of War or a Splinter Cell. God of War? Cooking Mama. Don’t act as though there isn’t a stagnation in creativity. Half the games I own are sequels. Does that make them less fun? Certainly not. Does it make them art? I’d venture a no.
Game developers want to be considered artists and contributors to culture, and that’s fine. But if their “innovation” is essentially taking something that’s already been done and making it prettier, they’re falling very short.
30/03/2009 at 1:16 pm Permalink
Mmm, I don’t know. From looking at the mainstream, and the types of games Chaplin is describing, I have to very reluctantly agree that, most of what’s available comes of as being quite childish. However, remembering Sturgeon’s Law, this is only to be expected. But what’s more of a shame, is that those games that are that bit deeper get uniformly ignored by the general gaming public. Planescape: Torment, Grim Fandango, Fallout, Fahrenheit, the myriad of old Luca’s Art point and clickers. And it seems to have gotten to the point, whereby developers don’t want a ‘cult classic’, but rather something that sells, and I don’t blame them for that, they are after all running a business, but at the same time it’s a shame to have to go that way just to appeal to as many people as possible.
On the other hand…what’s wrong with just having fun? I mean…in the article you mention ‘who’s making games about their wedding days?’ I have to wonder…how can you reasonably make a game like that? I mean, if you’re going to create a narrative based entirely on a specific event, would that not better be served by writing a book or making a movie? Not that I think such things are impossible, I mean, I can imagine maybe a GTA style sandbox game where you play a spouse to be rushing around a city trying to set up your special day. But, seeing similar products, I shudder to think the end result for that would just be another lightweight Sims style game with little depth. And being such a cynic, I -know- who it’s going to be marketed at. And in pink, oh yes *shudders*.
30/03/2009 at 8:18 pm Permalink
Ben - Right on.
L.B. - Ah, I see where you’re building with the Video Game Dreams Series (Part I and II). Will the crisis of faith emerge as part of the series?
Vinzent - Heather Chaplin’s hung out with more gamemakers than just CliffyB. And while the forum haters are complaining that she doesn’t recognize how many mature games have been made, it’s worth remembering that she profiled Braid, Flower, and many other games for NPR. She’s seen some of the best the industry has offered - but she wasn’t impressed by the average.
Brixtonville - Nothing to add. Thanks for coming!
GothmogII - I didn’t literally mean you’d make a game about a wedding day. (But it has been done.) I just figured, if games are going to play to our nostalgia, it would be nice if they tapped things that happen after puberty.
30/03/2009 at 9:44 pm Permalink
I agree with her core point - that games have not been innovative, that most are purposely immature, and that very few dare to try put any emotion into their games. There is a reason why one of the first things you see in Half-Life 2 is Alex’s incredibly well detailed face taking up your entire screen, and there is a reason why so many other games keep characters far away and detached from the player.
However, I don’t know that is proper to completely blame the developers. Sure, they often make boyish games that lack any shred of emotion. However, one also needs to point a finger at the businesses running these projects. Companies like EA have been solidly convinced for years that only boyish young men are interested in video games, and so have had a hand in creating a self-fufilling prophecy. They make games only for boyish young men - so only boyish young men, or just boys, buy them. This also means that they’re only hiring developers who are interesting in making these sorts of game.
Can you imagine if some developer said to EA “Hey, I want to make an emotional game about a couple in a time of crises who are separated and must overcome many obstacles to remain together”? The Response from EA would be “So by obstacles, you mean zombies, right?”
31/03/2009 at 4:19 pm Permalink
Well I agree with much of what Heather said. I wish that things worked towards the being inventive and being worth while. Any game that tries to be innovated usually comes off as well like by the critics but no one else. The common problem of working in a business of art is that you have to worry about it selling. I think this is the main reason both movies in general and video games are in this stunted area. The Max Payne series is one that tries to go the Film Noir route which gives everyone what is wanted though it hasn’t ever sold like Halo or Gears. Any game that tries to push it’s self to be more in any way, Grim Fandago for example, to push people to think in any way gets forgotten for the most part. Most people have no clue what it is.
So how does one sell something, to be an art, and be fun at the same time? The only way it seems possible is stick to one area, the stump it is in, while only add one or two things at a time.
So in the end there is a blob like substance that just happens to be a different color. How architecture seems to be these days seems to be how video games can sell it seems. The Madden series being an example of that, just change one thing and people think it is revolutionary because one thing is different.
So they lack the emotion or anything worth while for the most part simply because in the end the dollar determines what happens in the end. Really sucks overall, though when developers make something for themselves is there a glimmer of something more. The product starts to shine maybe for a second. Kind of why the indy games in general have a bit more of wonder more often then games that are big name don’t have. The craft is the goal not the selling.
So to have the craft to be the goal, one tries to go with what knows the best. Nostalgia is often known the best because of that. The industry as a whole can’t get out of problem of being the prettiest(where having the best graphics and not the best game matters) is the most important right now which sounds rather juvenile. Now maybe the reason why the industry hasn’t gotten past nostalgia before puberty is that the industry hasn’t gotten there.
It use to be that games were made for children, that to be a T game was insane. That a Mario game was what a game should be. Now the games that seem to be dominating the market seem to be these M rated games that center around blood, gore, and boobs since it is still new. Now parts of the industry may be getting past that point, but the whole hasn’t gotten there yet. The grandiose of being something more like a rock star, a solider, footballstar, ect, fallow along the idea of childhood dreams which the highest grossing games are. The example of Max Payne for an attempt of being all sounds like a childhood dream coming true in the same path of wanting to be Dick Tracy.
I have no idea if this is right or just the ramblings of an idiot but it is just my 2 cents on this. Faceless Clock for the most part beat me at what I had to say with better words.
01/04/2009 at 12:54 pm Permalink
First off, I love Heather Chaplin, though it’s not going to sound like it in a few seconds. Smartbomb was a great book. That said, I’m not going to defend that there is a certain, large segment of developers that create “power fantasies”. My point is, who cares? First off, the whole idea is a gross over-generalization.
Chaplin’s idea that guys respond to rugged, muscular anti-hero space marines killing aliens and saving busty women is as much a caricature as the idea of a bunch of girls who watch Sex and the City because they want to be wealthy, popular, and date lots of studly dudes in NYC. Both are, I think we can agree, not always true.
Personally, I think Chaplin’s picking on this element because it’s easy. It’s what her demographic, to wit, NPR listeners, want to hear. It’s very easy to make this reductionist argument that core gamers are a bunch of whiney, impotent white males trapped in permanent adolesence. Never mind it might not be true. It makes good copy. Vinzent already made the point pretty well, there are plenty of innovative, non-”power fantasy” games on the market.
Games being such a large industry, it’s inevitable that, like any other major media, you’re going to see titles that cater to every taste and every niche. But just as these games are fine, if you want to make a game that appeals to certain younger (and young at heart) men, there is nothing wrong with that. Far from being disappointed with Tim Schaefer’s latest title, I can’t wait. Demons. A guitar as a weapon. Jack Black. I’m searching to see the downside. That might not appeal to you, and that’s fine. But I’m not going to condescend down towards the games you want to play, I don’t think it’s too much to ask to leave me to my excessive gore and sophomoric humor in peace.
At the end of the day, games should be about one fundamental point: Is it fun? Braid’s an innovative, unique game. But at the end of the day, I’d rather be playing Castle Crashers, riding on a crap-propelled dear with three of my best friends in my living room, smiting evil. I submit that doesn’t make me any less a gamer or individual, and certainly not “stunted” or a victim of netony. I just enjoy fun under a slightly different brand. We play games to have fun, can’t we at least agree on that?
02/04/2009 at 8:26 am Permalink
Get off your high horses…. Why does the movie industry crank out movie after movie featuring massive amounts of explosions and over the top action and violence? The game industry is no different. You can wish for deep introspective meaningful and educational games all you want but in the end the desires of a handful of uptight intellectual snobs wouldn’t amount to squat since the people who actually buy games will still want all the things that appeal to their baser instincts - sex, violence, power, greed, etc.
When you make a product you make what sells. If you want your deep “grown up” games create awards like the movie industry. They give awards for all those little ‘deep’ ’socially relevant’ fillms so people will continue to believe they’re worth making even though they don’t turn much of a profit. You should do the same for game - give ‘grown up’ games an award so the devs at least have that to show when they don’t meet their ROI
02/04/2009 at 10:09 am Permalink
Sourtone, that’s not a bad idea. It would give the industry a chance to pretend it’s more mature than Gears 2. But for now, we make do with the Independent Games Festival.
04/04/2009 at 7:21 am Permalink
Only [b]pretend[/b] though? ^^’
I don’t know, there’s no reason why we can’t have both is there? (Although arguably as said, we’ve already [b]got[/b] mature games, but ignorance and disinterest etc.) But okay, maybe it’s not feasible to do so -and- make it a big seller.
Hmm, Gears of War seems to be coming up a lot, wondering though. Taking the basic premise and gameplay, what would make it a mature game? Does this necessitate a change to the plot? Or maybe even a greater focus on existing plot points, for as I understand, one of the soldiers is trying to rescue his wife. Are we to have the CoG’s while chainsawing some Locust grunts, spout pithy lines about the horrors of war?
(Though I’m giggling at the though let me tell you :3)
06/04/2009 at 3:09 pm Permalink
I’d like to just respond to something Lomar said about games and fun. I would like to posit the idea that fun isn’t a requirement for games. I’ve played a few games that have either made me uncomfortable, or otherwise weren’t fun, but still made me think. These types of games will probably never be very profitable or marketable - but there are movies that are also neither of those that are still made because the creators wanted to make them. I have a hope that many more games will follow along this path, especially with the rampant expansion of independent games over the past decade, and as for mainstream games, I have some hope there too. Right now we can agree that there is likely a higher ratio of games being released that focus on the power fantasies mentioned than in the movie industry. However, there are occasionally titles that deviate from the norm, and their prevalence seems to be increasing. There will always be these types of media, in games, movies, literature, and elsewhere, simply because they are profitable. But I do believe that the game industry is heading towards being more diverse and will eventually even out with time if things keep getting better as they have been. Who knows, if independent game developers continue to grow in numbers and get more press, and more focus is put on those mainstream titles that do attempt something beyond what we have seen, it could be sooner rather than later.
08/04/2009 at 12:49 pm Permalink
I know very little about Heather Chaplin’s work, but I find it unfortunate that she let gender politics polarize what would otherwise be a fascinating discussion.
I think that what is often overlooked is that at the most basic level a designer has to conceive of core activities to engage his or her potential player. In many games this manifests as combat, strategic planning, puzzle solving, reflex-based activities or resource management. This creates a framework that greatly constrains the kinds of ideas the designer can meaningfully communicate.
Even if a game’s story or subject matter is somehow considered lofty, what does it matter if that content is supported by activities that are not? If a player is shooting, looking for the red key card or trying to get some avatar to the right place at the right time doesn’t it cheapen the overall experience? Is Deus Ex: Invisible War, for instance, a lofty work because it oozes philosophy and asks you to resolve fundamental issues involving the individual versus the state? I think the sneaking, killing, talking and puzzling overrides any pretentions to relevance the game may have had.
I would love to be challenged in more games to solve problems more creatively. But that would take an elemental analysis of how games are built. And it’s never going to happen if the highest possible discussion we can have is about how bad “the other” is.
19/04/2009 at 12:52 pm Permalink
Scene from Field of Dreams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qXkcPQUfJM
I just found this totally relevant.
Whatever makes you happy. As long as it’s not at the expense of others. I think some people missed the memo.
19/04/2009 at 11:36 pm Permalink
Lamentable, but not surprising. I’ve worked with videogame testers, and I’ve seen interviews of game developers. These men are emotionally and socially stunted, maladroit losers. Their tastes run from the pre-adolescent to the infantile. Shouting at the game developers will do nothing, as the fault lies partly in the underdeveloped personalities involved. Most of the internet is equally immature, cf. all that jargon-laden, self-referential internet humor.dwb .
It will change when game development is greatly simplified, and creative types no longer need esoteric computational skills like programming to communicate their vision in game form. It would improve too if say, games with more intelligent plots and storylines would sell well, which is by no means a given. If the audience doesn’t care, it’s just a wasted effort; game developers don’t have pretentious artistic aspirations, unlike authors and auteurs.
And masculinity is misrepresented. Masculinity does not constitute mediocrity - Braveheart is one of the more manly movies around, and it won plenty of plaudits.