The Meaningful Game 2


Introduction

That video games can be art is a truth I firm­ly believe, and I spend a great deal of my men­tal ener­gy think­ing about all the cool things they have done and can do in the future.  But this empha­sis on games’ bet­ter parts and amaz­ing poten­tial occa­sion­al­ly caus­es me to be com­plete­ly blind­sided by the fact that the medi­um is still very much in its artis­tic ado­les­cence.  Much like a cute puppy that will one day be a true and trust­ed com­pan­ion, games now still have the ten­den­cy to pee on your floor, chew through your shoes and knock peo­ple over despite your best efforts to train them.  Even the very best con­tem­po­rary games are still plagued by strange quirks and seri­ous flaws, and Roger Ebert is prob­a­bly right to say that games have yet to pro­duce a work that can stand in the same cat­e­go­ry of artis­tic bril­liance as the great works of most other media.

So, when these two facts (video games’ abil­i­ty to be great art and their con­tin­u­ing refusal to act on that abil­i­ty) run into each other, I often find myself get­ting dis­cour­aged or frus­trat­ed.  I played Red Dead Redemption and mar­veled at the gor­geous envi­ron­ments, the incred­i­ble level of detail in the mechan­ics, the mature themes and ideas raised by the game, but then was sound­ly dis­ap­point­ed by the mediocre dia­logue, repet­i­tive and unin­ter­est­ing mis­sions, and char­ac­ters that behave con­trary to all laws of rea­son.  I played BioShock and found myself try­ing to ignore the fact that the game’s bal­ance is all wrong and its last few hours are real­ly just not very good.  The list goes on and on and on.

So, what I thought I would do today is out­line what I think it would take for a video game to be truly great, to truly shat­ter the remain­ing bar­ri­ers between video games and real artis­tic achieve­ment.  In so doing, I found myself cre­at­ing a series of char­ac­ter­is­tics that I believe would be found in any Great Work of gam­ing.  In short, I found myself iden­ti­fy­ing some­thing like a Platonic Form for gam­ing’s great works, a Form I will call “The Meaningful Game.”

Everything I am about to say can more or less be summed up by the fol­low­ing two char­ac­ter­is­tics:

The Meaningful Game is mature.

This does not mean that it can never laugh at itself or make jokes, or that the Meaningful Game is never a com­e­dy.  It does mean that the Meaningful Game is grown up, “adult,” in the non-pornographic sense.  It treats its char­ac­ters, themes and mechan­ics as impor­tant, and makes them believ­able.  It engages with its audi­ence, but does not pan­der to it, and speaks to the artists’ thoughts and emo­tions with­out becom­ing rant­i­ng or solip­sis­tic.

The Meaningful Game is coher­ent.

By coher­ent, I do not just mean com­pre­hen­si­ble, though it is also that.  I mean instead that each of its pieces coheres togeth­er to form a rea­son­able, well-structured whole.  It con­tains no ran­dom jut­ting edges or mis­cel­la­neous sub­plots or func­tion­al­i­ties thrown in just for kicks.  Each encounter, each char­ac­ter, each enemy, each plot point, each mechan­ic and each envi­ron­ment con­tributes some­thing to the game as a whole.  The Meaningful Game never pads itself for length, because it does­n’t need to.  It is exact­ly as long as it needs to be, with no extra­ne­ous ele­ments or under­de­vel­oped ideas.  No ele­ment in the game dis­tracts from the game as a whole, and every ele­ment adds to it.

Everything else falls under one or both of these umbrel­las, and so long as an artist keeps these thoughts in mind, he or she will prob­a­bly be well on his or her way to cre­at­ing good art.

Explication

For each of these, I shall cite the rule, explain it as effi­cient­ly as I can, and list (with some expla­na­tion) exam­ples of games which suc­ceed or fail in light of these rules.

The Meaningful Game does not delight in cheap sex or gore.

Where there is graph­ic vio­lence, it exists for a rea­son, and while it may trig­ger some vis­cer­al thrills, it also clear­ly oppos­es the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of vio­lence.  It may con­tain sex scenes or sexy char­ac­ters, but never drops to the level of pornog­ra­phy or exploita­tion.  Every sex scene adds to the plot, the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, or the atmos­phere, and every low-cut top serves to tell us some­thing about its wear­er.

Bad: God of War 3, which rou­tine­ly objec­ti­fies its women and pos­i­tive­ly glo­ries in unnec­es­sar­i­ly graph­ic vio­lence, all to no point or pur­pose.  God of War 3 is a game for 15-year-old boys, not adults.

Good:  Mass Effect han­dles sex pret­ty mature­ly– it does­n’t shy away from sex scenes or pre­tend that sex isn’t a part of human (or asari) rela­tion­ships, but it does not revel in point­less nudi­ty or soft­core porn.  Left 4 Dead 2 is a very gory and vio­lent game, but the gore serves to rein­force the hor­ror of the sit­u­a­tion, and is never an end-in-itself.

The Meaningful Game has real, fleshed-out char­ac­ters.

It does not just epit­o­mize char­ac­ters, and never focus­es on escapism or fantasy-fulfillment.  Even when the char­ac­ters are capa­ble of super­nat­ur­al feats or are very phys­i­cal­ly attrac­tive, even when they are writ­ten to be pas­tich­es or send-ups of tropes, they are writ­ten to be real peo­ple, with real per­son­al­i­ties, vices, virtues, hopes and fears.  These char­ac­ters may occa­sion­al­ly be exag­ger­at­ed, and each char­ac­ter may not receive his or her own mas­sive story arc, but every char­ac­ter is also an end-in-him-or-herself.

Bad: Halo: Reach, which insists the play­er should sym­pa­thize with Noble Team, yet never both­ers to paint them in any­thing but the broad­est strokes.  Each char­ac­ter is mere­ly a card­board col­lec­tion of tropes, noth­ing more.

Good: Planescape: Torment con­tains no card­board– even char­ac­ters that seem like incar­na­tions of tropes are com­pli­cat­ed, real peo­ple, whether they are major com­pan­ions or minor NPCs.  Flying skulls, suc­cu­bi and per­ma­nent­ly burn­ing wiz­ards alike, Torment con­tains only real peo­ple.

The Meaningful Game does not neglect any of its ele­ments.

The Meaningful Game does not always have a plot, but when it does, it is a good plot, well thought-out and well-executed.  The Meaningful Game does not always have char­ac­ters, but when it does, they are good char­ac­ters, as men­tioned above.  The Meaningful Game does not always con­tain any spe­cif­ic mechan­ic, but when it does, that mechan­ic is well-implemented and serves the game as a whole.

Bad: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood con­tains beau­ti­ful envi­ron­ments, gor­geous ani­ma­tions, excel­lent mechan­ics, and a point­less and pre­pos­ter­ous plot filled with shal­low and unde­vel­oped char­ac­ters.  Character devel­op­ment is only hint­ed at, and the plot flits jar­ring­ly from world­wide con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry to sci­ence fic­tion to his­tor­i­cal fic­tion with no links or the­mat­ic con­ti­nu­ity.  Had the nar­ra­tive aspects of the game received half of the atten­tion of the rest, it would be an amaz­ing video game.

Good: Portal spends as much time as it needs on every given part of itself.  It forces the play­er to stop and lis­ten to GLaDOS for major moments of plot motion or char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and con­tains appro­pri­ate music, beau­ti­ful mechan­ics, appro­pri­ate graph­ics, etc.  It con­tains min­i­mal plot, but what plot there is is well and effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

It is also worth men­tion­ing Civilization IV, a game which com­plete­ly dis­re­gards plot and char­ac­ters and is still some­what clos­er to being a Meaningful Game than most.

The Meaningful Game does not allow the play­er’s choic­es or pos­si­ble actions to derail the game or con­tra­dict its char­ac­ters.

The Meaningful Game gives the play­er as much free­dom as it is will­ing to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for.  It never gives the play­er the option to kill ran­dom civil­ians unless it is will­ing to make the play­er face the con­se­quences of his or her own actions.  Furthermore, it never gives the play­er choic­es which are com­plete­ly con­trary to the nature of the play­er char­ac­ter.  If the play­er is to be play­ing a char­ac­ter, and not mere­ly a Myst-style avatar, then the only choic­es the play­er is allowed are those which could be rea­son­ably attrib­uted to the char­ac­ter.

Bad: Red Dead Redemption paints a clear and coher­ent pic­ture of John Marston as a man who desires to leave his out­law past behind and set­tle down, a man who cares noth­ing for the law in itself, but large­ly desires to stay out of trou­ble.  Yet the play­er can mur­der ran­dom civil­ians, burn down their hous­es and steal their things.  Further, the con­se­quences for these actions are whol­ly triv­ial and unre­al­is­tic: a few days in jail or a few dol­lars to pay off the right peo­ple in the gov­ern­ment.

Good: Assassin’s Creed (the first one) reminds you, upon try­ing to com­mit ran­dom vio­lence, that Altair did not kill civil­ians by desyn­chro­niz­ing the play­er for every act of ran­dom mur­der he or she com­mits.  Further, every quest obvi­ous­ly per­tains to Altair’s goals, and the game’s choic­es con­sist of deter­min­ing the best way to achieve those goals.

The Meaningful Game does not con­tain sid­e­quests.

It may, how­ev­er, con­tain con­tent which is not required in order to reach the cred­its screen– it may con­tain sub­plots which can be avoid­ed, option­al con­tent which can be missed, and which exists to rein­force the set­ting or encour­age explo­ration or bet­ter play.  This option­al con­tent may be struc­tured like a tra­di­tion­al sid­e­quest, and may even have noth­ing to do with the “main” plot, but the Meaningful Game never con­tains unpol­ished or irrel­e­vant ele­ments.  This option­al con­tent always adds to the over­all expe­ri­ence, reveal­ing infor­ma­tion or expe­ri­ences not found any­where else in the game, and which is gen­er­al­ly equal in qual­i­ty to the game’s “main” con­tent.  The word “sid­e­quest,” how­ev­er, is too thor­ough­ly asso­ci­at­ed with mean­ing­less faffing about in spite of the game’s main plot, and thus the Meaningful Game never con­tains sid­e­quests.  Furthermore, there is always a rea­son for the char­ac­ter, and not just the play­er, to engage with this option­al con­tent.

Bad: Nearly any mod­ern RPG or sand­box game, but a par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious offend­er is Mass Effect, where­in almost every sid­e­quest occurs in one of three copy-and-pasted build­ings, con­tains very lit­tle in-depth dia­logue, and pro­vides no rea­sons for Shepard to engage with it.  Shepard will take time off from sav­ing the galaxy from immi­nent destruc­tion to medi­ate ran­dom par­ent­ing dis­putes, hunt total­ly irrel­e­vant crime lords and resolve hostage sit­u­a­tions, and the con­tent all feels tacked on and total­ly irrel­e­vant.

Good: Baldur’s Gate is 90% option­al con­tent, but rarely if ever repeats a room, even for the small­est of option­al quests, and pro­vides unique and inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tions and char­ac­ters in all of its option­al con­tent.  Furthermore, it makes sense for the play­er char­ac­ter to be engag­ing in these option­al quests, as things are not gen­er­al­ly very urgent or time-sensitive until the very end of the game, at which point the game tries to dis­cour­age mean­ing­less faffing about by turn­ing the local police on the play­er, mak­ing non-essential quests much hard­er to com­plete.

As a note, the idea of “option­al con­tent” is more or less unique to video games.  Novels do not con­tain chap­ters which are only found on cer­tain readthroughs or based on cer­tain choic­es the char­ac­ters make.  Some plays involve audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, and a few films have mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent end­ings, shown on dif­fer­ent nights, but that is not exact­ly the same as option­al con­tent.  Yet the idea of the “sid­e­quest” has not, so far as I know, real­ly been explored in any great detail.  If any­one has read any­thing seri­ous­ly dis­cussing the con­cept, please send me a link to it.

The Meaningful Game does not apol­o­gize.

If the Meaningful Game invites con­tro­ver­sy, either through a major change in design phi­los­o­phy from sim­i­lar games or through sub­ject man­ner which is like­ly to offend some­one, it does so with an appro­pri­ate amount of class and pol­ish, but it also does so with­out apolo­gies.  It does not seek to appease naysay­ers by only mak­ing half of a change, and it does not skirt around its dif­fi­cult socio-political issues.  It either engages with an issue or does­n’t; makes a change or does­n’t.

Bad: Dragon Age 2 dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed the inven­to­ry sys­tem from its pre­de­ces­sor and sim­i­lar games, but did so only halfway as if to save some face with the tac­ti­cal RPG crowd.  In so doing, it comes off as weak and half-hearted, angers the hard­core crowd and con­tin­ues to alien­ate those who don’t wish to muck about with inven­to­ry sys­tems.

Good: Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, went all the way with its mechan­i­cal changes, there­by pro­vid­ing the smooth, more shooter-like expe­ri­ence it aimed for.  It still irri­tat­ed the hard­core tac­ti­cal RPG crowd, but actu­al­ly achieved its goal, and did­n’t apol­o­gize for it– whether or not you like the new sys­tem is irrel­e­vant, as it is a coher­ent, com­plete sys­tem.

The Meaningful Game inno­vates with pur­pose.

The artists behind the Meaningful Game under­stand that nov­el­ty is not an end-in-itself, and that an inno­va­tion in game design is only real­ly good if it works.  Thus, the artists behind the Meaningful Game will not seek to break tra­di­tion or dis­re­gard exist­ing norms sim­ply for the sake of being dif­fer­ent.  Many of the cur­rent rules of video game design can be bro­ken (and in some cases need to be), but some exist for very good rea­sons.  This does not mean that artists should only break rules when they know exact­ly how it will turn out– exper­i­ments need to be per­formed, and some­times even the noblest exper­i­ments fail.  Thus, the Meaningful Game breaks rules and push­es for­ward with­out fear (see above re: not apol­o­giz­ing) but only when it has a clear pic­ture of why.

Bad: Final Fantasy X attempt­ed to dis­tin­guish itself from other con­tem­po­rary JRPGs by remov­ing the “expe­ri­ence points” model of char­ac­ter advance­ment and replac­ing it with what was sup­posed to be an inter­ac­tive, detailed expe­ri­ence called the Sphere Grid.  But because it did­n’t seem to have a real clear pic­ture of why it want­ed to get rid of the expe­ri­ence point sys­tem (a tried and true sys­tem), it con­struct­ed a strange and con­fus­ing grid, which, until the char­ac­ters were very far along indeed, most­ly still func­tioned as a class-based expe­ri­ence sys­tem.

Good: Mirror’s Edge, on the other hand, attempt­ed to inno­vate by cre­at­ing a freerun­ning game played from the first per­son.  It did­n’t quite work, mind, but there were good rea­sons for the change: actu­al peo­ple seem to freerun from a first-person per­spec­tive all the time.  It could allow for a more intu­itive, flow­ing kind of motion than is usu­al­ly found in a third per­son game.  Thus, even though it did­n’t quite work, the inno­va­tion was inter­est­ing and worth explor­ing.

Finally, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly,

The Meaningful Game is made with artis­tic integri­ty.

There is noth­ing wrong with mak­ing money from art.  There is even noth­ing wrong with pro­duc­ing art pri­mar­i­ly for the pur­pose of mak­ing money.  Further, there is noth­ing wrong with try­ing to cre­ate said art in an effi­cient, cost-effective and orga­nized man­ner.  What is wrong is skimp­ing on a work of art, or rush­ing out a work of art before it is ready to be shown to the pub­lic.  The Meaningful Game is not released until it is fin­ished and pol­ished.  It may not be per­fect, and there may be things that the artists involved wish they could have done dif­fer­ent­ly, but at no point will the Meaningful Game feel as though it was rushed or phoned in.  Every artist involved in the pro­duc­tion of the Meaningful Game will ded­i­cate a great deal of effort and time to it.

Bad: Dragon Age 2 could well have been the great­est role­play­ing game ever made, but was, for what­ev­er rea­son, rushed out the door only three-quarters fin­ished, lack­ing the depth of expe­ri­ence and detail that would have trans­formed it into a beau­ti­ful artis­tic expe­ri­ence.

Good: Really any­thing by Valve, a com­pa­ny which can per­haps be fault­ed for being too per­fec­tion­ist in their games.  I do not agree with every design deci­sion or artis­tic choice behind Half-Life 2, but it is never rushed or incom­plete, and the level of detail and pol­ish on the game is absolute­ly amaz­ing.

In Conclusion

The Meaningful Game is that game which stands a chance of co-existing with other impor­tant works of art, a game which is cre­at­ed, first and fore­most, to be good art.  It can be of any genre, can be single- or multi-player, can be for any con­sole or device.  The Meaningful Game is the game which shat­ters any seri­ous argu­ment about whether or not games can be art, the game which can be shown to the world and rec­om­mend­ed with­out reser­va­tion or dis­claimer, no “it’s great, but,” no “pret­ty good for a video game.”  The Meaningful Game is a mas­ter­piece, on par with Beethoven’s Fifth and To Kill a Mockingbird; its appear­ance will con­clu­sive­ly prove that videogames can not only be art, but great art.


Bill Coberly

About Bill Coberly

Bill Coberly is the founder and groundskeeper of The Ontological Geek, now that it has shifted over to archive mode. If something on the site isn't working, please shoot a DM to @ontologicalgeek on Twitter!


2 thoughts on “The Meaningful Game

  • JwK

    Excellent analy­sis. I can’t help but agree with most of what you’ve said here. The only pooint I might ques­tion is Axiom III. I agree with it in prin­ci­ple, but I know how imprac­ti­cal it is to fol­low in prac­tice.

    Would any­one real­ly want to play an open-world Western game where you can’t kill any­one? Or have real­is­tic con­se­quences, such that your char­ac­ter is hanged or held in jail for years? Ergonomics is a key part of Game Design, mak­ing the game more acces­si­ble does not nec­es­sar­i­ly detract from its artis­tic integri­ty.

  • Wombat of Doom

    JwK,

    Thanks for com­ment­ing! I def­i­nite­ly agree that main­tain­ing a bal­ance between the prin­ci­ples laid out in Axiom III and playa­bil­i­ty is mind-bogglingly dif­fi­cult, and don’t mean to sug­gest oth­er­wise. Further, though I used Red Dead Redemption as an exam­ple of a game which did not suc­ceed in that regard, I hard­ly mean to sug­gest that RDR is a ter­ri­ble game!

    The prob­lem with RDR’s imple­men­ta­tion is not so much that you can kill ran­dom civil­ians, but that there is real­ly no rea­son why John Marston would kill ran­dom civil­ians. Violent, GTA-style mur­der­ous ram­pages in RDR can be enter­tain­ing (and cathar­tic) but ulti­mate­ly divorce the play­er from the char­ac­ter the play­er is sup­pos­ed­ly inhab­it­ing.

    This can be solved either by remov­ing the abil­i­ty to go on vio­lent ram­pages, or chang­ing the char­ac­ter. I’m not con­vinced that pure sand­box games are real­ly very good at deliv­er­ing story, and I’ve men­tioned before that games do not nec­es­sar­i­ly need to have much in the way of story in order to be effec­tive and equal­ly artis­ti­cal­ly valid. It might be pos­si­ble to con­struct an open-world Western which feels more like the early days of GTA, with only a loose sketch of a plot, some inter­est­ing NPCs, and a blank slate for a main char­ac­ter– an avatar, rather than a char­ac­ter.

    Nevertheless, you’re absolute­ly right that sac­ri­fic­ing the ergonom­ics of a game to increase its “artis­tic integri­ty,” is not only unhelp­ful, it’s active­ly self-defeating– if the game is unplayable, its artis­tic value is impos­si­ble to find, if it even exists at all.

    WJC

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