The "Why" of Video Games

[Martin]

I am a gamer. I've hit level 90 in Diablo 2 ladder countless times. I've played through every Final Fantasy game, even the crappy ones on the Gameboy. I've beaten Gears of War on Insane (err...well, almost. I couldn't kill the last boss. The bastard cheats, I swear)

Lately though, I've been wondering what the point of it is. I mean, no matter how you think about it, Diablo 2 is a stupid game. It's fun as all hell and addictive, but it's incredibly shallow, and I can't help but think in retrospect that those hours could have been spent better elsewhere. (This of course won't stop me from pre-ordering Diablo 3). Diablo 2 is an extreme example, sure, but I don't think that most games really contribute anything to human existence.

I think that they feed to our desire for immediate satisfaction - the payback has to be now, the goals have to be simple and clear, etc. I doubt that games with the intricacies of chess or go would be popular in video game form. MMORPGs like World of Warcraft bring this to a science, with people. I don't think that they qualify as art either. Certain games like fl0w come close, but they are usually more explorations of visual art than of video gaming. I think that if anything, video games are becoming the new sports. Rather than cheering for some arbitrarily chosen team in some arbitrarily chosen sport, people can get together and play against or with each other.

So the question that I have is, what is the point of video games? What is their place in society now and in the future? Are they just distractions for bored minds, or do they have the potential to be something great? Or am I wrong - are some games already there, and I'm just too cynical to see it?

[wtd]

If nothing else the consumption and creation of videogames can lead to technological advances in other areas.

On a single player basis they offer some ability to develop pattern-recognition skills.

Multiplayer games may not exactly help one develop social skills, but they are an interesting social experiment as a reflection on what would happen in a world (largely) without consequences. I'm picturing the Family Guy episode where Death is incapacitated.

[Dan]

Video games have the same point as movies, t.v. entertaminent, watching sports, reading novels, listing to music and looking at pictures.

They are all a fourm of entertaiment, art and story telling. They also are all industrys that empolye poeleop and make money.

I think it would be hard to aruge that they are not a part of the arts witch the masive creative effort that goeses in to the world desings, sotry, charatiers and game play. Obvesly there are bad games just like there are bad paintings or bad novels but this does not mean that all paintings or all noveals are bad and not a fourm of art just like there being alot of bad video games does not mean they are not art.

Art is not simple just prity pictures and video games are showing yet a new way to tell a sotry and combined the arts in one, but they also are enteraiment like a sport as you describle. Affter all you are a player and it is a game. There are plentay of games that choses not to go the sotry line or art way and just consraint on game play (witch could arugely be an art fourm in it's own right) and are deftaly more like sports, esptaly when other humman players are involed.

They might not have a masive contrubition to the human existence but would existence with out any kind of art, creative sotrys or entertaimnt be worth living?

Of courses there is allways to much of a good thing such as the case of peoelop geting accidted to MMORPGs. In this case i blive they are taking the game as more then art, entermatiment and a sotry and trying to use it to fullfill other needs in there life or totaly replace there real life. This would be the bigest negtive effect of video games i have seen, however i blive if we recongize video game adaction as a reality we could work to set up programs and faculitys to help peoleop stuck in such a postion.

Overal i think the futtuer of video games in our socity is up to the game devlopers. It can go the way of art and sotry telling and devlope new worlds witch players interact with to progress the sotry but there is also place for the simpler sport like enetermatine that video games can provied.

I don't think video games any better or worse then other fourms of enteraminet we have today and in the end they are just that entertament becues life sucks and is boring and with out point.

[Martin]

When I say that I don't think that video games are art, I mean the creation as a whole. Musicians and character modelers create wonderful works, but the sum of the parts is still small.

When I think art, I think literature and music. I associate these books that I've read with change in my own understanding and view of the world, and music with a deeper understanding of emotion. The same goes for other art.

So I suppose that my question would be better phrased as: is it possible to have a meaningful emotional or philosophical experience with a (single-player) video game?

[DemonWasp]

Yes, it is. I can't speak for others, but I have become emotionally attached to the characters in my favourite RPG of all time (Baldur's Gate 2). They had entertaining, unique characters who were actually fun to play with.

Playing through the game, they grew not just in physical and magical abilities, but also in maturity and emotionally (these are non-player characters we speak of here). I was so attached that I felt sad when characters died - even though I could resurrect them in seconds; I felt angry when the NPCs were angry. And eventually, I fought the same guy 50 times in a row before giving up on him as imposslble. So either it's possible to have a meaningful emotional experience, or I was an impressionable 14-year-old.

More recently, the realism and atmosphere of Call of Duty 4 made its characters so genuinely believable (I mean honestly...only in the real world would you find someone with a 'stache so ludicrous as Captain Price's) that at some level I treated them as people. This is part of what made the ending of the game such a swift kick to the soft bits (and yet so good at the same time).

I see no reason to place videogame writing as inherently of an inferior class to movie writing or book writing. I'll acknowledge that there are a great many games with terrible writing, but there are also many books with awful writing, and movies are often abysmal too; movies and games tend to rely on graphical effects or new game features (look you can fly) to override terrible writing. I look at games like BG2 and CoD4, and in them I see a story as powerful as The Lord of the Rings or 1984.

Games are just one media, despite being a media notably different from the standard fare of print, pictures and motion-pictures. They involve the audience more, often as if you were standing in the shoes of one of the characters rather than merely observing: this can make games a much more powerful medium to communicate opinions.

The art, notably, is not simply in making everything high-definition, high-polygon, high-textured, and HDR'd, it's in developing atmosphere and pathos for the game-world: I see games like Alpha Centauri and BG2 as being beautiful works of art not because they look good (in comparison to modern games they look like trash), but because they developed such a colourful world that they encouraged you to embrace this alternate reality. Really good games can make you question your own perceptions and preconceived notions.

Of course, they're also just fun to play.

[Insectoid]

My reason for loving video games is that I can do in virtual reality what I cannot do in physical reality. I couldn't join the army and die without consequence in real life, but in video games, you just respawn in a few seconds. I can't visit Dagobah in real life, but Battlefront II lets me go there and die without consequence whenever I feel like it! That's just an example, I don't want to go to Dagobah (even if it existed...).

Where else do you get to command an army and take over the world (Evil geniuses excepted) but in front of the TV/monitor?

Also, Because we can.

[CodeMonkey2000]

A game can have wonderful art, excellent story, and really good graphics. But what it comes down to is the game play. The game play makes or breaks the game, despite being excellent in all other fields (*cough* lair, hour of victory *cough*). The game play is the most important part of a game, all other things, such as graphics and story, just enhance the experience, and give meaning to what you are ding, and why you are playing. When games were very new, things like a story, and graphics wasn't that important, as long as the game itself was fun. But as time wore on, game play wasn't enough. Around the time of the nes, graphics and music started gaining importance, but they never became the point of playing a game. So game play is still the biggest factor in determining whether or not a game is good, not graphics or music, that hasn't changed at all. So the question really is does gameplay count as a form of art? There is a lot of room for creativity and innovation in this department, but is game play itself a form of art?

[PaulButler]

The only games I've really ever gotten into were adventure games, from the mid-90's. I think the exploration aspect is what drew me in.

Two of my favorites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Express
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Time_(video_game)

Both of those adventure games still have a certain quality that modern games don't. I can't nail exactly what it is. Attention to detail might have something to do with it.

[Zeroth]

This is interesting stuff that I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

First, consider that the games industry has grown explosively fast, and it has barely toddled out of its infancy, in comparison with other medium. It took almost 75 years for movies to reach the point games are at. There are the occassional jewels, but movies made a lot of mistakes while they grew up. They've grown to a point where it is accepted and possible to have a world-changing movie. Or at least a perspective changing movie. And how its done is well-known, and well-explored.

Not so in games. We can point to elements that work, say, "That there contributes to the game." But you can't reproduce that specific element, and expect the game to be great. Gaming is still just barely out of its infancy, learning how to talk with bigger words, more complex sentences. We are learning how to tell stories interactively.

There of course, is a problem. There is not yet a strong audience that demands games as art. A vanishingly small percentage is all that exists. In contrast, when you make a deep movie, you can have an idea that it will move quite well in theatres. Take for example, House of Sand and Fog. Extremely deep movie, and it did quite well in theaters and reviews. There is no such major audience that will make it worthwhile to make intellectually stimulating games. At least not yet.

However, there have been games published that are considered art, in their attempt to provoke. Super Columbine Massacre! for one, Braid for another, and September 12th for a third. Check out one or all three of these games... they all explore a different possibility of art and meaning. Take a look at Sept. 12th as the best example of the games as art movement.

What is needed for the games as art movement are several things: a company willing to target people that would play these games, a way to make it easier for artists to make good games(kind of like an artists and programmers exchange...), and an audience. It is my belief the audience exists, they are not willing to play games yet, because games are still believed to be for kids. If a company began marketing its games for adults, and providing sophisticated, short, yet deep games, it would help build the needed audience.

Thats a small compilation of my thoughts on the matter. And I didn't even get into the meaning or importance of play.

[btiffin]

I reluctantly gave my DS to the four (now five) year old and bought her (and her mom) Animal Crossing. Her desire to learn to read has increased 10 fold. She could already count past a thousand; print her name etc, but now she wants the "words". What are all these words?

Not that she wouldn't learn to read, but the desire has increased noticeably.

And at 8, she'll be a couch potato video game junky, and I'll pay for it all later - but for now, it's a good thing imho.

Cheers

[jbking]

Video games are fun. They can provide an outlet for those that like to vent by pounding away on some virtual monsters. Similarly, some games can have games within a game, like mastering crafting in Diablo II or getting some ultra rare items in similar games.

Have you tried "Titan Quest"? I find it very similar to Diablo II in a lot of ways.

JB

[Reality Check]

Play Shadow of the Colossus and the"Why" shall be answered.

[Mobius]

Video games are suppose to entertain you, not necessary educate you or let you make money (unless your a pro gamer, then you are getting paid for hours of hours of game play therefore not a waste). I don't think you should call it a waste or should be spent better elsewhere because in the end, you enjoyed it! Yea you could have spent elsewhere but would it be as entertaining?

If you are a complete addict who plays 24/7 then yea you got a problem

my 2 bits