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21st Century Medium
From Ico to EyeToy: Emotion, Instinct and Performance in Computer Games
From their inception computer games have been given a very specific and ghettoised position in modern culture. As with the beginnings of cinema the idea of frivolity, entertainment and the inability to communicate complex ideas have dogged the new medium. This parallel between the early days of cinema is interesting, as both mediums have been brought about, and more importantly moved forward by technology. While looking at a zoetrope in the late nineteenth century it would be difficult to foresee that an evolution of this principal would lead to some of the profound insights about the world and human relations that cinema has created. The two most prevalent and populist cultural mediums of the 20th century have undoubtedly been film and television, and I want to put forward here the argument that the medium of the 21st century could (and should) be some incarnation of the computer game. Their importance has however been picked up by a small group of academics, notably Lev Manovich who states,
Looking at the first decade of new media — the 1990s — one can point at a number of objects which exemplify new media’s potential to give rise to genuinely original and historically unprecedented aesthetic forms. Among them, two stand out. Both are computer games. Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P244
He is taking about Myst (Cyan:1993) and Doom (id Software:1993), two games that pushed forward the infant medium at the time of their release. Ten years on I hope to show that games (a term I will use in this essay specifically meaning computer games) have matured to the point that, given the right environment to gestate in, they have the potential to become culturally and intellectually significant forms, to rival films, books and theatre.
Currently in the fledgling study of games, the debate between narratology and ludology rages, but regardless of this bitter academic disagreement the popular opinion has games firmly set as games, the idea that any higher intellectual concepts could be contained within the medium is, to most, an intellectual impossibility. The common sense view is that films (especially melodramas) generally exist to provide an emotional catharsis, a virtual space where society can live out fantasies and emotions not possible or desirable in modern life. Games on the other hand are an expression of instinct, repressed evolutionary junk behaviour that can be played out in the safety of a screen. There is much truth to this idea, the main demographic of games players for example have traditionally been teenage boys and the content of the ‘average’ game seems little more than a forum to express violent instincts and behaviour. But it is not possible to define the argument solely on those terms, because as technology has developed the audience has broadened and so has the content. With the Playstation, Sony changed its marketing strategy from that of its predecessors, Sega and Nintendo, by aiming their product at a slightly older age bracket and attempting to achieve a wider cultural credibility. The reason they could attempt this was because of the technology, the move into three dimensions and everything that came with that paradigm shift - creating something that could be experienced on its own terms. Highlighting just how much progression there has been in twenty years below is an extract from an advert on a mock 80’s radio station heard while driving around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,
Male: The Degenatron, you can play video games just like you are in the arcade!
Kids: Excellent!(Degenatron)
Male: The degenatron gaming system plays three exciting games including Defender of the Faith where you save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square.
Boys: Cool
Male: Monkey's Paradise where you swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey.
Boys: That's rad!
Speaker: And Penatrator where you smash the green dots deep inside the mysterious red square.
Boys: WOW!
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games: 2002)
In the early days of games, as satirised here, the limited parameters and extremely crude graphics meant a massive leap of imagination was needed to contextualise what was going on, and without some extremely optimistic interpretation the games were simply games - albeit with the possibility to fuse traditional action and thinking games in the same space. As the language of gaming evolved, and developers began realising the potential of mise-en-scene in games such as Myst (Cyan:1993) and later Resident Evil (Capcom:1998) things began to change. Disregarding the thorny issue of narrative which I will look at later, games had now begun to encroach into the realms of the emotions, and as with film the ability to manipulate the viewer/players emotions is key in being able to make a wide cultural impact, and the first step towards an intellectual embracing of the medium.
It is in this context that I wish to take a closer look at two recent games, Ico (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2001) and EyeToy (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2003) , that are particularly revolutionary in their area of the medium. By close analysis of the methods they use and questions they raise I want to present them as examples of the way forward, the first signs that the medium is approaching maturity.
Ico is a game, that is to say underneath its surface it follows some fundamental rules of gaming semiotics, levers, boxes, ropes and bombs, all used to reach inaccessible areas and move forward. There is an engagement and enjoyment on this level, completing logic puzzles and progressing in the traditional completest style of games. Because it places itself in the adventure/puzzle genre though, it is played at a much slower pace, it is not about testing reactions - ‘action’ is almost non-existent yet it manages to capture and draw the player in. What makes the game unusual and interesting is its use of graphics, and sophisticated understanding of mise-en-scene to create, at times, a deeply emotional response to the world the player explores. The emotion is not fear, which is perhaps easier to achieve in games in the form of instinctive panic (being chased etc.), but awe and later in the game, sadness. The game is embroiled in a strange stylistic mix of gothic architecture, mysterious giant industrial objects and a dark Japanese children's fantasy reminiscent of the films of Hayao Miyazaki. The slightly confused, but subconsciously coherent mix of styles works to jar and confuse the player from the start. Playing a small abandoned boy with no special power other than the ability to explore, and then introducing Yorda, an ethereal companion who you lead around by holding hands gives the surrounding environment a particular importance. You cannot purge and conquer this world, but must explore it on its own terms. Manovich describes a core similarity in games as ‘spatial journeys’ going on to say,
‘Before reaching the end of the game narrative, the player must visit most of it, uncovering its geometry and topology, learning it logic and its secrets...narrative and time itself are equated with the movement through 3-D space’ Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P245
And here the 3D space goes further and provokes a psychological response from the player with its mise-en-scene. The scale of the scenery makes you vulnerable, high ledges and gusting epic windy soundscapes reinforce this feeling of scale. While solving puzzles and moving closer to finding your way out of the castle there are moments of beauty, as light spills into an overgrown and long forgotten courtyards filled with tress and birds.
The use of visual stimulus to evoke mood and emotion in Ico is the first sign of the developers realising the emotional potential of the medium. The language of games has evolved far enough for them to be able to explore ideas, to go beyond a mere test of skill. Ico shows us that games are capable of evoking significant emotion and this opens up a whole world of possibilities for the medium both in terms of general popularity and intellectual potential. Ico is perhaps the first tentative step towards something that we might call an ‘art house’ game, a game that attempts to explore (if not explicitly) the properties, parameters and possibilities of the medium.
If Ico’s use of mise-en-scene is an artful manipulation of emotions then its central premise challenges one of gaming's fundamentals, the importance of the individual. Set against the cultural back drop of increasing relativism and the perceived crumbling of the grand narratives of modernism, computer games sit well in a post-modern reading of the world. Whatever else has been read into The Matrix at a very basic level it is popular because it fulfils the myth of the power of the individual. Neo, who’s generic look and white collar job make him the perfect everyman, is there so an audience can project themselves into him, to feel his pain and his power as he conquers his world. As our mainstream cinema takes us closer and closer to the individual, games have evolved to let us actually embody our fantasies. The Matrix computer game Enter the Matrix (Atari:2003) for example took peoples fantasy of inhabiting the superhuman characters in the film, and let them live it out, control it and perform it. The lucrative movie tie in games are now marketed as extensions to the films, offering both new narrative material and the logical progression of control over the lead character. Many games, especially first person shooters, are about the importance of the individual over everything else, a hyper relativism when literally tens of thousands of lives must be ended by one character with super human strength and endurance. In Ico, although you only control one character, you are dependant on another and must interact and use her to help you solve the puzzles of the castle. This dependence comes from the fact you are powerless in the game, you have no means of destroying the environment but must navigate it with logic and compassion. The fact you control a young boy is also of note, firstly it helps make the scale of the castle seem even more daunting, but more importantly he is a neutral character, someone who you can easily project yourself into. This idea that game central characters can act as a ‘vessel’ for performance is something that has not been fully explored but Ico points the way because it shuns the normal logic that players will feel frustrated if they are not powerful enough in the game.
If Ico represents the future possibilities of emotion in games then EyeToy has one foot firmly in the past and one in the future as it fuses high technology and simple game play mechanics. The game consists on a small USB camera that is put on top of the television set which then films the players live, and fuses the image with graphics that the player can interact with on the television using their body. It is firmly rooted in the early days of games, simple tests of skill and instinct packaged in a ‘fun’ way, but it adds a new dimension by placing a filmed image of the player in the game. This shift and everything that it could mean if the technology is developed and embraced by consumers is quite startling - would such violent and questionable games exist if it was us who inhabited them?
EyeToy’s main achievement is that it requires none of the specialist knowledge of the semiotics of games (the levers and boxes of Ico) and no ability to use a control pad. The fact that the body is the only controlling devise means there is no prerequisite to enjoying it, anyone can stand in front of the TV and take part. But with this the idea of performance in games is taken to a new level, when we star in a game there are all sorts of psychological and philosophical issues about performance that are raised. Seeing ones own image, forces us to instantly perform in some way, the computer switches from a system that requires the player to mentally project into the game to a game that reaches out and uses a photo realistic reality as its stimulus. We are of course used to this idea, cinema has been over run by ideas of composite, the mesh of actors and effects, for the last 10 years. In cinema it has happened because computer graphics have not progressed to the stage where they can create a ‘star’ but can handle epic environments, explosions and other scenes in a photo realistic way. In games (and films) truly realistic computer generated human faces has yet to be achieved, and although this is likely to be overcome it presents a stumbling block for the current generation of games. EyeToy has photo realism, and that is why its entertaining both to play and watch, because we enjoy seeing the nuanced emotions of embarrassment or performance.
There are many paths along which the emergent medium can develop, the possibilities as flagged up by Ico and EyeToy seem exciting, but both of these games are less that perfect. Unfortunately in the case of Ico, it was not a commercial success (even though Sony plan to make a sequel) and this brings us to the most troubling aspects of the future of the medium. Without a widespread intellectual embracing of the medium there can be no government funding or institutional support for unusual or intelligent games. This means the medium is defined almost entirely by market forces. In this environment the true ‘art house’ game is an almost impossibility, and without this different interpretation of the power of the medium people will keep dismissing games as ‘violent trash’. Systems and technology are constantly being developed by governments, predominately for military purposes, and that expertise trickles down eventually to the consumer market. But it causes distortion, as physics models and 3D worlds are developed from military perspectives. For the medium to reach maturity there needs to be, as in cinema, a supported forum for experimentation and innovation that doesn’t base its goals on commercial success, but the furtherment of the medium.
What I hope I have shown here is that games currently exist that can provoke a complex response and an emotional engagement, and this is the first sign that the medium is capable of being more than just ‘entertainment’. If it is possible to make the player experience emotions, instinctual reactions, and performance then it is also possible to link them to larger themes and concepts and comment on society, nature and the world we live in - a feat achieved by the canonical works of human art. But games as art would go beyond what we have known previously because they would dispel notions of the ‘viewer’ or ‘spectator’ and engage people as ‘players’ a less passive and more creative way of consuming and understanding art. Arguing against games as narrative Juul states,
The relations between reader/story and player/game are completely different - the player inhabits a twilight zone where he/she is both an empirical subject outside the game and undertakes a role inside the game. Juul, Jesper Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
Although I think he is wrong to then take from this that games are not narratives the statement does highlight the potential of the medium as a deeper art form, a narrative evolution, v2.0 if you will. We must not forget that computer games were born into a culture already fluent in the language of images and icons, and the backbone of understanding had already been established by cinema, meaning games could build on existing semiotic language and in many ways go further - as representations of representations. In terms of time and intellectual commitment, the scope of the game is similar to the book, it can take many days or weeks to complete and can be interspersed with other activities. This consumption of a sustained cultural artefact over a long period of time gives the power to go much deeper in the issues it explores. For all film has achieved it is innately a short medium, and with this will always have a certain place in the cultural economy. With the engagement of a traditional game, the length of a book, and the possibilities for stories, mise-en-scene and graphical worlds the computer game could become the highest form of art, where notions of the ‘viewer’ coexist with ideas of participation, understanding and interaction.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arroyo, Jose, ed. (2000) Action/Spectacle cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader, BFI Publishing, London
Danto, Arthur C. (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace - A Philosophy of Art’ Harvard University Press
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Pantheon Books, New York
Goffman, Erving (1971) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin
Heim, Michael (1993) The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Oxford University Press, New York
Herman, Edward S. and McChesney, Robert W. (1997) The Global Media: New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Continuum
Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London
McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding media: The Extensions of Man, Routledge, London
Soja, Edward (1989) Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,Verso, London
Websites/Online Essays
Jenkins, Henry: Game Design as Narrative Architecture web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.html
Juul, Jesper: A clash between game and narrative, M.A. Thesis. 1999.
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/thesis
Juul, Jesper: Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
http://agoraxchange.net/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.gamestudies.org/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.imdb.com (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ (accessed 8/12/03)
http://klastrup.dk/ (accessed 8/12/03)
http://www.riven.com/home.html (accessed 8/12/03)
http://www.manovich.net/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki (accessed 7/12/03)
Films
Miyazaki, Hayao (1989) Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Miyazaki, Hayao (1993) Spirited Away
Wachowski Larry; Wachowski Andy (1999) The Matrix
Games
Doom (id Software: 1993)
Enter The Matrix (Atari: 2003)
Eye Toy (Sony Computer Entertinment: 2003)
Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar: 2001)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar: 2002)
Ico (Sony Computer Entertinment:2001)
Resident Evil (Capcom: 1997)
Myst (Cyan: 1993)
From Ico to EyeToy: Emotion, Instinct and Performance in Computer Games
From their inception computer games have been given a very specific and ghettoised position in modern culture. As with the beginnings of cinema the idea of frivolity, entertainment and the inability to communicate complex ideas have dogged the new medium. This parallel between the early days of cinema is interesting, as both mediums have been brought about, and more importantly moved forward by technology. While looking at a zoetrope in the late nineteenth century it would be difficult to foresee that an evolution of this principal would lead to some of the profound insights about the world and human relations that cinema has created. The two most prevalent and populist cultural mediums of the 20th century have undoubtedly been film and television, and I want to put forward here the argument that the medium of the 21st century could (and should) be some incarnation of the computer game. Their importance has however been picked up by a small group of academics, notably Lev Manovich who states,
Looking at the first decade of new media — the 1990s — one can point at a number of objects which exemplify new media’s potential to give rise to genuinely original and historically unprecedented aesthetic forms. Among them, two stand out. Both are computer games. Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P244
He is taking about Myst (Cyan:1993) and Doom (id Software:1993), two games that pushed forward the infant medium at the time of their release. Ten years on I hope to show that games (a term I will use in this essay specifically meaning computer games) have matured to the point that, given the right environment to gestate in, they have the potential to become culturally and intellectually significant forms, to rival films, books and theatre.
Currently in the fledgling study of games, the debate between narratology and ludology rages, but regardless of this bitter academic disagreement the popular opinion has games firmly set as games, the idea that any higher intellectual concepts could be contained within the medium is, to most, an intellectual impossibility. The common sense view is that films (especially melodramas) generally exist to provide an emotional catharsis, a virtual space where society can live out fantasies and emotions not possible or desirable in modern life. Games on the other hand are an expression of instinct, repressed evolutionary junk behaviour that can be played out in the safety of a screen. There is much truth to this idea, the main demographic of games players for example have traditionally been teenage boys and the content of the ‘average’ game seems little more than a forum to express violent instincts and behaviour. But it is not possible to define the argument solely on those terms, because as technology has developed the audience has broadened and so has the content. With the Playstation, Sony changed its marketing strategy from that of its predecessors, Sega and Nintendo, by aiming their product at a slightly older age bracket and attempting to achieve a wider cultural credibility. The reason they could attempt this was because of the technology, the move into three dimensions and everything that came with that paradigm shift - creating something that could be experienced on its own terms. Highlighting just how much progression there has been in twenty years below is an extract from an advert on a mock 80’s radio station heard while driving around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,
Male: The Degenatron, you can play video games just like you are in the arcade!
Kids: Excellent!(Degenatron)
Male: The degenatron gaming system plays three exciting games including Defender of the Faith where you save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square.
Boys: Cool
Male: Monkey's Paradise where you swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey.
Boys: That's rad!
Speaker: And Penatrator where you smash the green dots deep inside the mysterious red square.
Boys: WOW!
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games: 2002)
In the early days of games, as satirised here, the limited parameters and extremely crude graphics meant a massive leap of imagination was needed to contextualise what was going on, and without some extremely optimistic interpretation the games were simply games - albeit with the possibility to fuse traditional action and thinking games in the same space. As the language of gaming evolved, and developers began realising the potential of mise-en-scene in games such as Myst (Cyan:1993) and later Resident Evil (Capcom:1998) things began to change. Disregarding the thorny issue of narrative which I will look at later, games had now begun to encroach into the realms of the emotions, and as with film the ability to manipulate the viewer/players emotions is key in being able to make a wide cultural impact, and the first step towards an intellectual embracing of the medium.
It is in this context that I wish to take a closer look at two recent games, Ico (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2001) and EyeToy (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2003) , that are particularly revolutionary in their area of the medium. By close analysis of the methods they use and questions they raise I want to present them as examples of the way forward, the first signs that the medium is approaching maturity.
Ico is a game, that is to say underneath its surface it follows some fundamental rules of gaming semiotics, levers, boxes, ropes and bombs, all used to reach inaccessible areas and move forward. There is an engagement and enjoyment on this level, completing logic puzzles and progressing in the traditional completest style of games. Because it places itself in the adventure/puzzle genre though, it is played at a much slower pace, it is not about testing reactions - ‘action’ is almost non-existent yet it manages to capture and draw the player in. What makes the game unusual and interesting is its use of graphics, and sophisticated understanding of mise-en-scene to create, at times, a deeply emotional response to the world the player explores. The emotion is not fear, which is perhaps easier to achieve in games in the form of instinctive panic (being chased etc.), but awe and later in the game, sadness. The game is embroiled in a strange stylistic mix of gothic architecture, mysterious giant industrial objects and a dark Japanese children's fantasy reminiscent of the films of Hayao Miyazaki. The slightly confused, but subconsciously coherent mix of styles works to jar and confuse the player from the start. Playing a small abandoned boy with no special power other than the ability to explore, and then introducing Yorda, an ethereal companion who you lead around by holding hands gives the surrounding environment a particular importance. You cannot purge and conquer this world, but must explore it on its own terms. Manovich describes a core similarity in games as ‘spatial journeys’ going on to say,
‘Before reaching the end of the game narrative, the player must visit most of it, uncovering its geometry and topology, learning it logic and its secrets...narrative and time itself are equated with the movement through 3-D space’ Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P245
And here the 3D space goes further and provokes a psychological response from the player with its mise-en-scene. The scale of the scenery makes you vulnerable, high ledges and gusting epic windy soundscapes reinforce this feeling of scale. While solving puzzles and moving closer to finding your way out of the castle there are moments of beauty, as light spills into an overgrown and long forgotten courtyards filled with tress and birds.
The use of visual stimulus to evoke mood and emotion in Ico is the first sign of the developers realising the emotional potential of the medium. The language of games has evolved far enough for them to be able to explore ideas, to go beyond a mere test of skill. Ico shows us that games are capable of evoking significant emotion and this opens up a whole world of possibilities for the medium both in terms of general popularity and intellectual potential. Ico is perhaps the first tentative step towards something that we might call an ‘art house’ game, a game that attempts to explore (if not explicitly) the properties, parameters and possibilities of the medium.
If Ico’s use of mise-en-scene is an artful manipulation of emotions then its central premise challenges one of gaming's fundamentals, the importance of the individual. Set against the cultural back drop of increasing relativism and the perceived crumbling of the grand narratives of modernism, computer games sit well in a post-modern reading of the world. Whatever else has been read into The Matrix at a very basic level it is popular because it fulfils the myth of the power of the individual. Neo, who’s generic look and white collar job make him the perfect everyman, is there so an audience can project themselves into him, to feel his pain and his power as he conquers his world. As our mainstream cinema takes us closer and closer to the individual, games have evolved to let us actually embody our fantasies. The Matrix computer game Enter the Matrix (Atari:2003) for example took peoples fantasy of inhabiting the superhuman characters in the film, and let them live it out, control it and perform it. The lucrative movie tie in games are now marketed as extensions to the films, offering both new narrative material and the logical progression of control over the lead character. Many games, especially first person shooters, are about the importance of the individual over everything else, a hyper relativism when literally tens of thousands of lives must be ended by one character with super human strength and endurance. In Ico, although you only control one character, you are dependant on another and must interact and use her to help you solve the puzzles of the castle. This dependence comes from the fact you are powerless in the game, you have no means of destroying the environment but must navigate it with logic and compassion. The fact you control a young boy is also of note, firstly it helps make the scale of the castle seem even more daunting, but more importantly he is a neutral character, someone who you can easily project yourself into. This idea that game central characters can act as a ‘vessel’ for performance is something that has not been fully explored but Ico points the way because it shuns the normal logic that players will feel frustrated if they are not powerful enough in the game.
If Ico represents the future possibilities of emotion in games then EyeToy has one foot firmly in the past and one in the future as it fuses high technology and simple game play mechanics. The game consists on a small USB camera that is put on top of the television set which then films the players live, and fuses the image with graphics that the player can interact with on the television using their body. It is firmly rooted in the early days of games, simple tests of skill and instinct packaged in a ‘fun’ way, but it adds a new dimension by placing a filmed image of the player in the game. This shift and everything that it could mean if the technology is developed and embraced by consumers is quite startling - would such violent and questionable games exist if it was us who inhabited them?
EyeToy’s main achievement is that it requires none of the specialist knowledge of the semiotics of games (the levers and boxes of Ico) and no ability to use a control pad. The fact that the body is the only controlling devise means there is no prerequisite to enjoying it, anyone can stand in front of the TV and take part. But with this the idea of performance in games is taken to a new level, when we star in a game there are all sorts of psychological and philosophical issues about performance that are raised. Seeing ones own image, forces us to instantly perform in some way, the computer switches from a system that requires the player to mentally project into the game to a game that reaches out and uses a photo realistic reality as its stimulus. We are of course used to this idea, cinema has been over run by ideas of composite, the mesh of actors and effects, for the last 10 years. In cinema it has happened because computer graphics have not progressed to the stage where they can create a ‘star’ but can handle epic environments, explosions and other scenes in a photo realistic way. In games (and films) truly realistic computer generated human faces has yet to be achieved, and although this is likely to be overcome it presents a stumbling block for the current generation of games. EyeToy has photo realism, and that is why its entertaining both to play and watch, because we enjoy seeing the nuanced emotions of embarrassment or performance.
There are many paths along which the emergent medium can develop, the possibilities as flagged up by Ico and EyeToy seem exciting, but both of these games are less that perfect. Unfortunately in the case of Ico, it was not a commercial success (even though Sony plan to make a sequel) and this brings us to the most troubling aspects of the future of the medium. Without a widespread intellectual embracing of the medium there can be no government funding or institutional support for unusual or intelligent games. This means the medium is defined almost entirely by market forces. In this environment the true ‘art house’ game is an almost impossibility, and without this different interpretation of the power of the medium people will keep dismissing games as ‘violent trash’. Systems and technology are constantly being developed by governments, predominately for military purposes, and that expertise trickles down eventually to the consumer market. But it causes distortion, as physics models and 3D worlds are developed from military perspectives. For the medium to reach maturity there needs to be, as in cinema, a supported forum for experimentation and innovation that doesn’t base its goals on commercial success, but the furtherment of the medium.
What I hope I have shown here is that games currently exist that can provoke a complex response and an emotional engagement, and this is the first sign that the medium is capable of being more than just ‘entertainment’. If it is possible to make the player experience emotions, instinctual reactions, and performance then it is also possible to link them to larger themes and concepts and comment on society, nature and the world we live in - a feat achieved by the canonical works of human art. But games as art would go beyond what we have known previously because they would dispel notions of the ‘viewer’ or ‘spectator’ and engage people as ‘players’ a less passive and more creative way of consuming and understanding art. Arguing against games as narrative Juul states,
The relations between reader/story and player/game are completely different - the player inhabits a twilight zone where he/she is both an empirical subject outside the game and undertakes a role inside the game. Juul, Jesper Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
Although I think he is wrong to then take from this that games are not narratives the statement does highlight the potential of the medium as a deeper art form, a narrative evolution, v2.0 if you will. We must not forget that computer games were born into a culture already fluent in the language of images and icons, and the backbone of understanding had already been established by cinema, meaning games could build on existing semiotic language and in many ways go further - as representations of representations. In terms of time and intellectual commitment, the scope of the game is similar to the book, it can take many days or weeks to complete and can be interspersed with other activities. This consumption of a sustained cultural artefact over a long period of time gives the power to go much deeper in the issues it explores. For all film has achieved it is innately a short medium, and with this will always have a certain place in the cultural economy. With the engagement of a traditional game, the length of a book, and the possibilities for stories, mise-en-scene and graphical worlds the computer game could become the highest form of art, where notions of the ‘viewer’ coexist with ideas of participation, understanding and interaction.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arroyo, Jose, ed. (2000) Action/Spectacle cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader, BFI Publishing, London
Danto, Arthur C. (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace - A Philosophy of Art’ Harvard University Press
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Pantheon Books, New York
Goffman, Erving (1971) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin
Heim, Michael (1993) The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Oxford University Press, New York
Herman, Edward S. and McChesney, Robert W. (1997) The Global Media: New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Continuum
Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London
McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding media: The Extensions of Man, Routledge, London
Soja, Edward (1989) Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,Verso, London
Websites/Online Essays
Jenkins, Henry: Game Design as Narrative Architecture web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.html
Juul, Jesper: A clash between game and narrative, M.A. Thesis. 1999.
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/thesis
Juul, Jesper: Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
http://agoraxchange.net/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.gamestudies.org/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.imdb.com (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ (accessed 8/12/03)
http://klastrup.dk/ (accessed 8/12/03)
http://www.riven.com/home.html (accessed 8/12/03)
http://www.manovich.net/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki (accessed 7/12/03)
Films
Miyazaki, Hayao (1989) Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Miyazaki, Hayao (1993) Spirited Away
Wachowski Larry; Wachowski Andy (1999) The Matrix
Games
Doom (id Software: 1993)
Enter The Matrix (Atari: 2003)
Eye Toy (Sony Computer Entertinment: 2003)
Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar: 2001)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar: 2002)
Ico (Sony Computer Entertinment:2001)
Resident Evil (Capcom: 1997)
Myst (Cyan: 1993)
And BMX XXX was a big step forward.
When I saw who wrote this I genuinly thought "Hold on a tinkle, I don't remember writing that...or changing my name!"
I so need my head checking.
I so need my head checking.
Hi. I'm going to use this for my presentation, OK?
*To any tutors or moderators - I'm kidding. Don't use your plaigarism software on me, my work is different.
*To any tutors or moderators - I'm kidding. Don't use your plaigarism software on me, my work is different.
I wrote a topic about this a while back. A long while back.
Games aren't accepted as a valid media form and here's why:
The people who 'matter' - that is, those with the power over people, still view games as pong or pac-man. Just a bit of fun, a pointless hobby, a time-waster.
But games have evolved far beyond that. Now emtion is carried as well as fantasic, enthralling stories which you're in control of - mush better than any film or book.
Ico is a very good example.
As the that 'whistling' scene in FFX outside Luca. It hit a spot for me, something special.
Games aren't accepted as a valid media form and here's why:
The people who 'matter' - that is, those with the power over people, still view games as pong or pac-man. Just a bit of fun, a pointless hobby, a time-waster.
But games have evolved far beyond that. Now emtion is carried as well as fantasic, enthralling stories which you're in control of - mush better than any film or book.
Ico is a very good example.
As the that 'whistling' scene in FFX outside Luca. It hit a spot for me, something special.
What do you want from me?
21st Century Medium
From Ico to EyeToy: Emotion, Instinct and Performance in Computer Games
From their inception computer games have been given a very specific and ghettoised position in modern culture. As with the beginnings of cinema the idea of frivolity, entertainment and the inability to communicate complex ideas have dogged the new medium. This parallel between the early days of cinema is interesting, as both mediums have been brought about, and more importantly moved forward by technology. While looking at a zoetrope in the late nineteenth century it would be difficult to foresee that an evolution of this principal would lead to some of the profound insights about the world and human relations that cinema has created. The two most prevalent and populist cultural mediums of the 20th century have undoubtedly been film and television, and I want to put forward here the argument that the medium of the 21st century could (and should) be some incarnation of the computer game. Their importance has however been picked up by a small group of academics, notably Lev Manovich who states,
Looking at the first decade of new media — the 1990s — one can point at a number of objects which exemplify new media’s potential to give rise to genuinely original and historically unprecedented aesthetic forms. Among them, two stand out. Both are computer games. Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P244
He is taking about Myst (Cyan:1993) and Doom (id Software:1993), two games that pushed forward the infant medium at the time of their release. Ten years on I hope to show that games (a term I will use in this essay specifically meaning computer games) have matured to the point that, given the right environment to gestate in, they have the potential to become culturally and intellectually significant forms, to rival films, books and theatre.
Currently in the fledgling study of games, the debate between narratology and ludology rages, but regardless of this bitter academic disagreement the popular opinion has games firmly set as games, the idea that any higher intellectual concepts could be contained within the medium is, to most, an intellectual impossibility. The common sense view is that films (especially melodramas) generally exist to provide an emotional catharsis, a virtual space where society can live out fantasies and emotions not possible or desirable in modern life. Games on the other hand are an expression of instinct, repressed evolutionary junk behaviour that can be played out in the safety of a screen. There is much truth to this idea, the main demographic of games players for example have traditionally been teenage boys and the content of the ‘average’ game seems little more than a forum to express violent instincts and behaviour. But it is not possible to define the argument solely on those terms, because as technology has developed the audience has broadened and so has the content. With the Playstation, Sony changed its marketing strategy from that of its predecessors, Sega and Nintendo, by aiming their product at a slightly older age bracket and attempting to achieve a wider cultural credibility. The reason they could attempt this was because of the technology, the move into three dimensions and everything that came with that paradigm shift - creating something that could be experienced on its own terms. Highlighting just how much progression there has been in twenty years below is an extract from an advert on a mock 80’s radio station heard while driving around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,
Male: The Degenatron, you can play video games just like you are in the arcade!
Kids: Excellent!(Degenatron)
Male: The degenatron gaming system plays three exciting games including Defender of the Faith where you save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square.
Boys: Cool
Male: Monkey's Paradise where you swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey.
Boys: That's rad!
Speaker: And Penatrator where you smash the green dots deep inside the mysterious red square.
Boys: WOW!
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games: 2002)
In the early days of games, as satirised here, the limited parameters and extremely crude graphics meant a massive leap of imagination was needed to contextualise what was going on, and without some extremely optimistic interpretation the games were simply games - albeit with the possibility to fuse traditional action and thinking games in the same space. As the language of gaming evolved, and developers began realising the potential of mise-en-scene in games such as Myst (Cyan:1993) and later Resident Evil (Capcom:1998) things began to change. Disregarding the thorny issue of narrative which I will look at later, games had now begun to encroach into the realms of the emotions, and as with film the ability to manipulate the viewer/players emotions is key in being able to make a wide cultural impact, and the first step towards an intellectual embracing of the medium.
It is in this context that I wish to take a closer look at two recent games, Ico (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2001) and EyeToy (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2003) , that are particularly revolutionary in their area of the medium. By close analysis of the methods they use and questions they raise I want to present them as examples of the way forward, the first signs that the medium is approaching maturity.
Ico is a game, that is to say underneath its surface it follows some fundamental rules of gaming semiotics, levers, boxes, ropes and bombs, all used to reach inaccessible areas and move forward. There is an engagement and enjoyment on this level, completing logic puzzles and progressing in the traditional completest style of games. Because it places itself in the adventure/puzzle genre though, it is played at a much slower pace, it is not about testing reactions - ‘action’ is almost non-existent yet it manages to capture and draw the player in. What makes the game unusual and interesting is its use of graphics, and sophisticated understanding of mise-en-scene to create, at times, a deeply emotional response to the world the player explores. The emotion is not fear, which is perhaps easier to achieve in games in the form of instinctive panic (being chased etc.), but awe and later in the game, sadness. The game is embroiled in a strange stylistic mix of gothic architecture, mysterious giant industrial objects and a dark Japanese children's fantasy reminiscent of the films of Hayao Miyazaki. The slightly confused, but subconsciously coherent mix of styles works to jar and confuse the player from the start. Playing a small abandoned boy with no special power other than the ability to explore, and then introducing Yorda, an ethereal companion who you lead around by holding hands gives the surrounding environment a particular importance. You cannot purge and conquer this world, but must explore it on its own terms. Manovich describes a core similarity in games as ‘spatial journeys’ going on to say,
‘Before reaching the end of the game narrative, the player must visit most of it, uncovering its geometry and topology, learning it logic and its secrets...narrative and time itself are equated with the movement through 3-D space’ Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P245
And here the 3D space goes further and provokes a psychological response from the player with its mise-en-scene. The scale of the scenery makes you vulnerable, high ledges and gusting epic windy soundscapes reinforce this feeling of scale. While solving puzzles and moving closer to finding your way out of the castle there are moments of beauty, as light spills into an overgrown and long forgotten courtyards filled with tress and birds.
The use of visual stimulus to evoke mood and emotion in Ico is the first sign of the developers realising the emotional potential of the medium. The language of games has evolved far enough for them to be able to explore ideas, to go beyond a mere test of skill. Ico shows us that games are capable of evoking significant emotion and this opens up a whole world of possibilities for the medium both in terms of general popularity and intellectual potential. Ico is perhaps the first tentative step towards something that we might call an ‘art house’ game, a game that attempts to explore (if not explicitly) the properties, parameters and possibilities of the medium.
If Ico’s use of mise-en-scene is an artful manipulation of emotions then its central premise challenges one of gaming's fundamentals, the importance of the individual. Set against the cultural back drop of increasing relativism and the perceived crumbling of the grand narratives of modernism, computer games sit well in a post-modern reading of the world. Whatever else has been read into The Matrix at a very basic level it is popular because it fulfils the myth of the power of the individual. Neo, who’s generic look and white collar job make him the perfect everyman, is there so an audience can project themselves into him, to feel his pain and his power as he conquers his world. As our mainstream cinema takes us closer and closer to the individual, games have evolved to let us actually embody our fantasies. The Matrix computer game Enter the Matrix (Atari:2003) for example took peoples fantasy of inhabiting the superhuman characters in the film, and let them live it out, control it and perform it. The lucrative movie tie in games are now marketed as extensions to the films, offering both new narrative material and the logical progression of control over the lead character. Many games, especially first person shooters, are about the importance of the individual over everything else, a hyper relativism when literally tens of thousands of lives must be ended by one character with super human strength and endurance. In Ico, although you only control one character, you are dependant on another and must interact and use her to help you solve the puzzles of the castle. This dependence comes from the fact you are powerless in the game, you have no means of destroying the environment but must navigate it with logic and compassion. The fact you control a young boy is also of note, firstly it helps make the scale of the castle seem even more daunting, but more importantly he is a neutral character, someone who you can easily project yourself into. This idea that game central characters can act as a ‘vessel’ for performance is something that has not been fully explored but Ico points the way because it shuns the normal logic that players will feel frustrated if they are not powerful enough in the game.
If Ico represents the future possibilities of emotion in games then EyeToy has one foot firmly in the past and one in the future as it fuses high technology and simple game play mechanics. The game consists on a small USB camera that is put on top of the television set which then films the players live, and fuses the image with graphics that the player can interact with on the television using their body. It is firmly rooted in the early days of games, simple tests of skill and instinct packaged in a ‘fun’ way, but it adds a new dimension by placing a filmed image of the player in the game. This shift and everything that it could mean if the technology is developed and embraced by consumers is quite startling - would such violent and questionable games exist if it was us who inhabited them?
EyeToy’s main achievement is that it requires none of the specialist knowledge of the semiotics of games (the levers and boxes of Ico) and no ability to use a control pad. The fact that the body is the only controlling devise means there is no prerequisite to enjoying it, anyone can stand in front of the TV and take part. But with this the idea of performance in games is taken to a new level, when we star in a game there are all sorts of psychological and philosophical issues about performance that are raised. Seeing ones own image, forces us to instantly perform in some way, the computer switches from a system that requires the player to mentally project into the game to a game that reaches out and uses a photo realistic reality as its stimulus. We are of course used to this idea, cinema has been over run by ideas of composite, the mesh of actors and effects, for the last 10 years. In cinema it has happened because computer graphics have not progressed to the stage where they can create a ‘star’ but can handle epic environments, explosions and other scenes in a photo realistic way. In games (and films) truly realistic computer generated human faces has yet to be achieved, and although this is likely to be overcome it presents a stumbling block for the current generation of games. EyeToy has photo realism, and that is why its entertaining both to play and watch, because we enjoy seeing the nuanced emotions of embarrassment or performance.
There are many paths along which the emergent medium can develop, the possibilities as flagged up by Ico and EyeToy seem exciting, but both of these games are less that perfect. Unfortunately in the case of Ico, it was not a commercial success (even though Sony plan to make a sequel) and this brings us to the most troubling aspects of the future of the medium. Without a widespread intellectual embracing of the medium there can be no government funding or institutional support for unusual or intelligent games. This means the medium is defined almost entirely by market forces. In this environment the true ‘art house’ game is an almost impossibility, and without this different interpretation of the power of the medium people will keep dismissing games as ‘violent trash’. Systems and technology are constantly being developed by governments, predominately for military purposes, and that expertise trickles down eventually to the consumer market. But it causes distortion, as physics models and 3D worlds are developed from military perspectives. For the medium to reach maturity there needs to be, as in cinema, a supported forum for experimentation and innovation that doesn’t base its goals on commercial success, but the furtherment of the medium.
What I hope I have shown here is that games currently exist that can provoke a complex response and an emotional engagement, and this is the first sign that the medium is capable of being more than just ‘entertainment’. If it is possible to make the player experience emotions, instinctual reactions, and performance then it is also possible to link them to larger themes and concepts and comment on society, nature and the world we live in - a feat achieved by the canonical works of human art. But games as art would go beyond what we have known previously because they would dispel notions of the ‘viewer’ or ‘spectator’ and engage people as ‘players’ a less passive and more creative way of consuming and understanding art. Arguing against games as narrative Juul states,
The relations between reader/story and player/game are completely different - the player inhabits a twilight zone where he/she is both an empirical subject outside the game and undertakes a role inside the game. Juul, Jesper Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
Although I think he is wrong to then take from this that games are not narratives the statement does highlight the potential of the medium as a deeper art form, a narrative evolution, v2.0 if you will. We must not forget that computer games were born into a culture already fluent in the language of images and icons, and the backbone of understanding had already been established by cinema, meaning games could build on existing semiotic language and in many ways go further - as representations of representations. In terms of time and intellectual commitment, the scope of the game is similar to the book, it can take many days or weeks to complete and can be interspersed with other activities. This consumption of a sustained cultural artefact over a long period of time gives the power to go much deeper in the issues it explores. For all film has achieved it is innately a short medium, and with this will always have a certain place in the cultural economy. With the engagement of a traditional game, the length of a book, and the possibilities for stories, mise-en-scene and graphical worlds the computer game could become the highest form of art, where notions of the ‘viewer’ coexist with ideas of participation, understanding and interaction.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arroyo, Jose, ed. (2000) Action/Spectacle cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader, BFI Publishing, London
Danto, Arthur C. (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace - A Philosophy of Art’ Harvard University Press
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Pantheon Books, New York
Goffman, Erving (1971) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin
Heim, Michael (1993) The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Oxford University Press, New York
Herman, Edward S. and McChesney, Robert W. (1997) The Global Media: New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Continuum
Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London
McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding media: The Extensions of Man, Routledge, London
Soja, Edward (1989) Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,Verso, London
Websites/Online Essays
Jenkins, Henry: Game Design as Narrative Architecture web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.html
Juul, Jesper: A clash between game and narrative, M.A. Thesis. 1999.
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/thesis
Juul, Jesper: Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
http://agoraxchange.net/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.gamestudies.org/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.imdb.com (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/ (accessed 8/12/03)
http://klastrup.dk/ (accessed 8/12/03)
http://www.riven.com/home.html (accessed 8/12/03)
http://www.manovich.net/ (accessed 10/12/03)
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki (accessed 7/12/03)
Films
Miyazaki, Hayao (1989) Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Miyazaki, Hayao (1993) Spirited Away
Wachowski Larry; Wachowski Andy (1999) The Matrix
Games
Doom (id Software: 1993)
Enter The Matrix (Atari: 2003)
Eye Toy (Sony Computer Entertinment: 2003)
Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar: 2001)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar: 2002)
Ico (Sony Computer Entertinment:2001)
Resident Evil (Capcom: 1997)
Myst (Cyan: 1993)
From Ico to EyeToy: Emotion, Instinct and Performance in Computer Games
From their inception computer games have been given a very specific and ghettoised position in modern culture. As with the beginnings of cinema the idea of frivolity, entertainment and the inability to communicate complex ideas have dogged the new medium. This parallel between the early days of cinema is interesting, as both mediums have been brought about, and more importantly moved forward by technology. While looking at a zoetrope in the late nineteenth century it would be difficult to foresee that an evolution of this principal would lead to some of the profound insights about the world and human relations that cinema has created. The two most prevalent and populist cultural mediums of the 20th century have undoubtedly been film and television, and I want to put forward here the argument that the medium of the 21st century could (and should) be some incarnation of the computer game. Their importance has however been picked up by a small group of academics, notably Lev Manovich who states,
Looking at the first decade of new media — the 1990s — one can point at a number of objects which exemplify new media’s potential to give rise to genuinely original and historically unprecedented aesthetic forms. Among them, two stand out. Both are computer games. Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P244
He is taking about Myst (Cyan:1993) and Doom (id Software:1993), two games that pushed forward the infant medium at the time of their release. Ten years on I hope to show that games (a term I will use in this essay specifically meaning computer games) have matured to the point that, given the right environment to gestate in, they have the potential to become culturally and intellectually significant forms, to rival films, books and theatre.
Currently in the fledgling study of games, the debate between narratology and ludology rages, but regardless of this bitter academic disagreement the popular opinion has games firmly set as games, the idea that any higher intellectual concepts could be contained within the medium is, to most, an intellectual impossibility. The common sense view is that films (especially melodramas) generally exist to provide an emotional catharsis, a virtual space where society can live out fantasies and emotions not possible or desirable in modern life. Games on the other hand are an expression of instinct, repressed evolutionary junk behaviour that can be played out in the safety of a screen. There is much truth to this idea, the main demographic of games players for example have traditionally been teenage boys and the content of the ‘average’ game seems little more than a forum to express violent instincts and behaviour. But it is not possible to define the argument solely on those terms, because as technology has developed the audience has broadened and so has the content. With the Playstation, Sony changed its marketing strategy from that of its predecessors, Sega and Nintendo, by aiming their product at a slightly older age bracket and attempting to achieve a wider cultural credibility. The reason they could attempt this was because of the technology, the move into three dimensions and everything that came with that paradigm shift - creating something that could be experienced on its own terms. Highlighting just how much progression there has been in twenty years below is an extract from an advert on a mock 80’s radio station heard while driving around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,
Male: The Degenatron, you can play video games just like you are in the arcade!
Kids: Excellent!(Degenatron)
Male: The degenatron gaming system plays three exciting games including Defender of the Faith where you save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square.
Boys: Cool
Male: Monkey's Paradise where you swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey.
Boys: That's rad!
Speaker: And Penatrator where you smash the green dots deep inside the mysterious red square.
Boys: WOW!
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games: 2002)
In the early days of games, as satirised here, the limited parameters and extremely crude graphics meant a massive leap of imagination was needed to contextualise what was going on, and without some extremely optimistic interpretation the games were simply games - albeit with the possibility to fuse traditional action and thinking games in the same space. As the language of gaming evolved, and developers began realising the potential of mise-en-scene in games such as Myst (Cyan:1993) and later Resident Evil (Capcom:1998) things began to change. Disregarding the thorny issue of narrative which I will look at later, games had now begun to encroach into the realms of the emotions, and as with film the ability to manipulate the viewer/players emotions is key in being able to make a wide cultural impact, and the first step towards an intellectual embracing of the medium.
It is in this context that I wish to take a closer look at two recent games, Ico (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2001) and EyeToy (Sony Computer Entertainment: 2003) , that are particularly revolutionary in their area of the medium. By close analysis of the methods they use and questions they raise I want to present them as examples of the way forward, the first signs that the medium is approaching maturity.
Ico is a game, that is to say underneath its surface it follows some fundamental rules of gaming semiotics, levers, boxes, ropes and bombs, all used to reach inaccessible areas and move forward. There is an engagement and enjoyment on this level, completing logic puzzles and progressing in the traditional completest style of games. Because it places itself in the adventure/puzzle genre though, it is played at a much slower pace, it is not about testing reactions - ‘action’ is almost non-existent yet it manages to capture and draw the player in. What makes the game unusual and interesting is its use of graphics, and sophisticated understanding of mise-en-scene to create, at times, a deeply emotional response to the world the player explores. The emotion is not fear, which is perhaps easier to achieve in games in the form of instinctive panic (being chased etc.), but awe and later in the game, sadness. The game is embroiled in a strange stylistic mix of gothic architecture, mysterious giant industrial objects and a dark Japanese children's fantasy reminiscent of the films of Hayao Miyazaki. The slightly confused, but subconsciously coherent mix of styles works to jar and confuse the player from the start. Playing a small abandoned boy with no special power other than the ability to explore, and then introducing Yorda, an ethereal companion who you lead around by holding hands gives the surrounding environment a particular importance. You cannot purge and conquer this world, but must explore it on its own terms. Manovich describes a core similarity in games as ‘spatial journeys’ going on to say,
‘Before reaching the end of the game narrative, the player must visit most of it, uncovering its geometry and topology, learning it logic and its secrets...narrative and time itself are equated with the movement through 3-D space’ Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London, P245
And here the 3D space goes further and provokes a psychological response from the player with its mise-en-scene. The scale of the scenery makes you vulnerable, high ledges and gusting epic windy soundscapes reinforce this feeling of scale. While solving puzzles and moving closer to finding your way out of the castle there are moments of beauty, as light spills into an overgrown and long forgotten courtyards filled with tress and birds.
The use of visual stimulus to evoke mood and emotion in Ico is the first sign of the developers realising the emotional potential of the medium. The language of games has evolved far enough for them to be able to explore ideas, to go beyond a mere test of skill. Ico shows us that games are capable of evoking significant emotion and this opens up a whole world of possibilities for the medium both in terms of general popularity and intellectual potential. Ico is perhaps the first tentative step towards something that we might call an ‘art house’ game, a game that attempts to explore (if not explicitly) the properties, parameters and possibilities of the medium.
If Ico’s use of mise-en-scene is an artful manipulation of emotions then its central premise challenges one of gaming's fundamentals, the importance of the individual. Set against the cultural back drop of increasing relativism and the perceived crumbling of the grand narratives of modernism, computer games sit well in a post-modern reading of the world. Whatever else has been read into The Matrix at a very basic level it is popular because it fulfils the myth of the power of the individual. Neo, who’s generic look and white collar job make him the perfect everyman, is there so an audience can project themselves into him, to feel his pain and his power as he conquers his world. As our mainstream cinema takes us closer and closer to the individual, games have evolved to let us actually embody our fantasies. The Matrix computer game Enter the Matrix (Atari:2003) for example took peoples fantasy of inhabiting the superhuman characters in the film, and let them live it out, control it and perform it. The lucrative movie tie in games are now marketed as extensions to the films, offering both new narrative material and the logical progression of control over the lead character. Many games, especially first person shooters, are about the importance of the individual over everything else, a hyper relativism when literally tens of thousands of lives must be ended by one character with super human strength and endurance. In Ico, although you only control one character, you are dependant on another and must interact and use her to help you solve the puzzles of the castle. This dependence comes from the fact you are powerless in the game, you have no means of destroying the environment but must navigate it with logic and compassion. The fact you control a young boy is also of note, firstly it helps make the scale of the castle seem even more daunting, but more importantly he is a neutral character, someone who you can easily project yourself into. This idea that game central characters can act as a ‘vessel’ for performance is something that has not been fully explored but Ico points the way because it shuns the normal logic that players will feel frustrated if they are not powerful enough in the game.
If Ico represents the future possibilities of emotion in games then EyeToy has one foot firmly in the past and one in the future as it fuses high technology and simple game play mechanics. The game consists on a small USB camera that is put on top of the television set which then films the players live, and fuses the image with graphics that the player can interact with on the television using their body. It is firmly rooted in the early days of games, simple tests of skill and instinct packaged in a ‘fun’ way, but it adds a new dimension by placing a filmed image of the player in the game. This shift and everything that it could mean if the technology is developed and embraced by consumers is quite startling - would such violent and questionable games exist if it was us who inhabited them?
EyeToy’s main achievement is that it requires none of the specialist knowledge of the semiotics of games (the levers and boxes of Ico) and no ability to use a control pad. The fact that the body is the only controlling devise means there is no prerequisite to enjoying it, anyone can stand in front of the TV and take part. But with this the idea of performance in games is taken to a new level, when we star in a game there are all sorts of psychological and philosophical issues about performance that are raised. Seeing ones own image, forces us to instantly perform in some way, the computer switches from a system that requires the player to mentally project into the game to a game that reaches out and uses a photo realistic reality as its stimulus. We are of course used to this idea, cinema has been over run by ideas of composite, the mesh of actors and effects, for the last 10 years. In cinema it has happened because computer graphics have not progressed to the stage where they can create a ‘star’ but can handle epic environments, explosions and other scenes in a photo realistic way. In games (and films) truly realistic computer generated human faces has yet to be achieved, and although this is likely to be overcome it presents a stumbling block for the current generation of games. EyeToy has photo realism, and that is why its entertaining both to play and watch, because we enjoy seeing the nuanced emotions of embarrassment or performance.
There are many paths along which the emergent medium can develop, the possibilities as flagged up by Ico and EyeToy seem exciting, but both of these games are less that perfect. Unfortunately in the case of Ico, it was not a commercial success (even though Sony plan to make a sequel) and this brings us to the most troubling aspects of the future of the medium. Without a widespread intellectual embracing of the medium there can be no government funding or institutional support for unusual or intelligent games. This means the medium is defined almost entirely by market forces. In this environment the true ‘art house’ game is an almost impossibility, and without this different interpretation of the power of the medium people will keep dismissing games as ‘violent trash’. Systems and technology are constantly being developed by governments, predominately for military purposes, and that expertise trickles down eventually to the consumer market. But it causes distortion, as physics models and 3D worlds are developed from military perspectives. For the medium to reach maturity there needs to be, as in cinema, a supported forum for experimentation and innovation that doesn’t base its goals on commercial success, but the furtherment of the medium.
What I hope I have shown here is that games currently exist that can provoke a complex response and an emotional engagement, and this is the first sign that the medium is capable of being more than just ‘entertainment’. If it is possible to make the player experience emotions, instinctual reactions, and performance then it is also possible to link them to larger themes and concepts and comment on society, nature and the world we live in - a feat achieved by the canonical works of human art. But games as art would go beyond what we have known previously because they would dispel notions of the ‘viewer’ or ‘spectator’ and engage people as ‘players’ a less passive and more creative way of consuming and understanding art. Arguing against games as narrative Juul states,
The relations between reader/story and player/game are completely different - the player inhabits a twilight zone where he/she is both an empirical subject outside the game and undertakes a role inside the game. Juul, Jesper Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
Although I think he is wrong to then take from this that games are not narratives the statement does highlight the potential of the medium as a deeper art form, a narrative evolution, v2.0 if you will. We must not forget that computer games were born into a culture already fluent in the language of images and icons, and the backbone of understanding had already been established by cinema, meaning games could build on existing semiotic language and in many ways go further - as representations of representations. In terms of time and intellectual commitment, the scope of the game is similar to the book, it can take many days or weeks to complete and can be interspersed with other activities. This consumption of a sustained cultural artefact over a long period of time gives the power to go much deeper in the issues it explores. For all film has achieved it is innately a short medium, and with this will always have a certain place in the cultural economy. With the engagement of a traditional game, the length of a book, and the possibilities for stories, mise-en-scene and graphical worlds the computer game could become the highest form of art, where notions of the ‘viewer’ coexist with ideas of participation, understanding and interaction.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arroyo, Jose, ed. (2000) Action/Spectacle cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader, BFI Publishing, London
Danto, Arthur C. (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace - A Philosophy of Art’ Harvard University Press
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Pantheon Books, New York
Goffman, Erving (1971) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin
Heim, Michael (1993) The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Oxford University Press, New York
Herman, Edward S. and McChesney, Robert W. (1997) The Global Media: New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Continuum
Manovich, Lev (2001) The Language of New Media, MIT Press, London
McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding media: The Extensions of Man, Routledge, London
Soja, Edward (1989) Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory,Verso, London
Websites/Online Essays
Jenkins, Henry: Game Design as Narrative Architecture web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.html
Juul, Jesper: A clash between game and narrative, M.A. Thesis. 1999.
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/thesis
Juul, Jesper: Games Telling stories? -A brief note on games and narratives http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/
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http://www.imdb.com (accessed 10/12/03)
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http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki (accessed 7/12/03)
Films
Miyazaki, Hayao (1989) Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Miyazaki, Hayao (1993) Spirited Away
Wachowski Larry; Wachowski Andy (1999) The Matrix
Games
Doom (id Software: 1993)
Enter The Matrix (Atari: 2003)
Eye Toy (Sony Computer Entertinment: 2003)
Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar: 2001)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar: 2002)
Ico (Sony Computer Entertinment:2001)
Resident Evil (Capcom: 1997)
Myst (Cyan: 1993)