I Don't Know What Video Games Are

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the most common media to compare video games to was  film. At the time it seemed a bit strange to me that the easiest comparison was films and not other types of games, as one might expect given the title "video games." That games don't readily come to mind when talking about video games, to me refects a confusion about what the medium actually is. personally, architecture always seemed a fitting comparison. I can imagine looking with awe at a work of beautiful architecture from a distance. I can also image exploring it, walking through it, interacting with it, as I would with something like Mario 64. And as I think more and more about the question of what games are, I’m inclined to the position that most video games are not in fact games, but a new type of media entirely that contains aspects of games within it.


What do we know about video games though? We know what they are not. We know video games are not films...or books or plays for that matter. And for a moment, I’d like to assume they aren’t games either. So what are they? In the article linked above, Most computer games aren't games at all... Mike Jones examines the nature of games, comparing various definitions of "game" to four popular video games (Tetris, Bioshock, WoW and The Sims), ultimately concluding that, of the four, only Tetris truly constitutes a game. In looking for the proper term, Jones suggests a fragmenting of our concept of video games, implying that there is no one category for all of them to fit under. In doing so, he suggests the terms puzzle, simulation, interactive story and virtual world, before eventually using the term “screen-based media entertainment and art,” a few times to refer to our broader cultural category for video games. This term seems overly broad though, applying to television shows, films, the Wii news feed, and any number of the diverse forms of entertainment that now inhabit our screens. It also applies to many games in the strict sense of the word like Solitaire or Snake. But I don’t think Jones sees it as a true definition either.  


Like Jones, I don’t endeavor to provide a successful definition of video games in this post. As Rick Altman writes in Silent Film Sound, "New technologies are always born nameless. Assimilated to multiple possible models, new technologies always begin life with multiple monikers rather than a single stable name." Maybe, as video games become widely accepted enough to demand more attention and increased variety, we will get to the point where multiple names become more appropriate than a singular name. And so I’m not going to try to re-name “video games,” but only to add some thoughts to help better understand what they are. I believe the concept of “crisis historiography” will be helpful here. First developed by Altman in a work that focuses mainly on the development of the cinema in relation to a host of other mediums- radio, vaudeville, photography, theater and others, crisis historiography provides a helpful twentieth century paralell to our twenty-first century dilemma. 


Altman uses cinema as his main example, but broadens his scope to highlight the ways that we conceptualize and define all new technologies and the resultant art that comes out of them. He argues that all representational technologies are socially and historically contingent. Moreover, they are defined specifically in relation to previously dominant modes of representation. For our purposes in looking at video games, literature, film, theatre and painting are the culprits. He writes,

Successful representation has always depended on the ability of new media to disguise themselves as old media, to meet the requirements established in existing media. Because new representational modes are perceived and appraised according to in-depth training received in the school of previous modes, proper understanding of representational technologies must always start with analysis of one medium’s attempt to do the job of another. (17)

In highlighting the ways in which we, perhaps by necessity, use standards established by previous media to explore the newer mediums, Altman defines nearly to a tee our current discussions about games. Consider the following quotes from Roger Ebert, G. Christopher Williams and myself:

– Ebert, “Video Games Can Never Be Art”

No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets. 

We appreciate the design of the narrative circumstances in Hamlet because we are not involved in any way in the action…It’s a bit more difficult to make such an argument about the player’s experience in Catherine…
– G. Christopher Williams, "Why Video Games Might Never Be Art" 

When my game experience felt so much like my literary one, and not at all like my experience with the film, it brought to mind the overlaps between games, films and movies. 
–Myself, "Final Fantasty VI For the First Time: Why (Some) Video Games Might Be More Like Novels Than Films"

In each quote, we see the inability to escape from notions about how art and artistic mediums do and should function...notions that are based on our experience with previous forms. There are established standards that develop in large part from the previous media available to us and from the previous thinking about art through these media. And by assimilating our new experiences with newer media to our old standards from old media, we are able to make sense of what is undefined and novel. But are we accurate? And if we are not accurate, what elements of meaning, representation, truth, exploration and understanding do we miss out on by applying standards for what constitutes good theater or literature to a video game or internet video?

Given the blossoming nature of the medium in discussion, it seems like a safe bet to say that we don’t totally understand video games. Bur do we even understand the old standards and values that we use to evaluate art? If, like Altman argues, our understanding of media and art is socially constructed, then how can the theories and artistic standards that surround these artistic texts not be socially and historically contingent as well? Writing about the changing attitudes towards Shakespeare in America over several centuries, Scott Juster touches on this issue in an eloquent peice arguing that definitions of art are inherently mutable:

Herein lies the most insidious aspect of our historically-relative cultural hierarchy: we are compelled to position specific games and the entire medium along some theoretical, fallacious grand chain of artistic merit.  The chain is powerful and restrictive.  It brings order to a chaotic world by telling us what pieces of art are higher than others.  The chain feels like it has existed forever and is immutable, but we know that this is not true.  As is demonstrated by Shakespeare’s history in America, the boundary between mass entertainment and high art is composed of little more than social beliefs.

In our discussions of the validity of video games, we use definitions and terms as if they are settled and absolute, occasionally paying lip service to their ultimate subjectivity without really believing those disclaimers. However, the limitations of our own experience prevent us from knowing either the nature of art or of video games themselves. From Plato to Nietzsche to Barthes, there are innumerable theorists to back up whatever position we want to take about art as we attempt to define constructed and abstract concepts in ways that suit us. But the question is never settled. Both the mediums and the standards are in constant flux. And it seems at this point, we don't even have settled terms to discuss either.

Image via Girl Gamer UK

The iPhone 5 is the Message

The announcement of the iPhone 5, or 4s or 4G, or whatever it's called, will occur in about 3 hours. With the pending revelation of the object that has inspired such hysteria and obsession from around the blogosphere and popular news media, I thought it apropos to reflect on how much the medium has truly become the message today. While I don't expect anything grand from this latest iteration- a better camera, quicker loading times, maybe some voice integration- I, along with a shitload of other people, have been thinking about how the iPhone has ushered in a new era of wiring our brains to communication technologies. I had an IPhone for about two years, but even without one, I've retained the habit of constantly looking down to my phone, checking my email ten times a day instead of one or two, of expecting to know the name of any catchy song I hear in an instant. When it is constantly accessible, information takes on the quality of a drug, altering the way we interact with the world around us. I don't believe this is limited to phones either. Steven Totilo, writing on Kotaku about the Wii U, reflects not only on the influence of technology on our lives, but how our lives and relations have changed to such a degree as to demand adaptations from future technoligies that wish to appeal to our new techno-social structure:

For all its faults, Nintendo is probably making the right gaming console for our times. Who sits on a couch with other people in order to all focus on the same thing anymore? Do people really gather to watch a TV show together or have dinner? Think about it. Is their attention undivided and on the same thing? Of course not. At least one person is checking their iPhone, logging onto Facebook, reading a text or sending an e-mail. The globally rich society that plays video games is the same globally rich society that in the year 2011 always already has a private screen in the palm of their hands. (emphasis mine)

Subtly drawing on Louis Althusser's "always already" concept, the gist of which is that all of us are subjects of our society's ideologies before we can really consciously think about whether we are or not, Totilo adds a new technological demention to Althusser, updating subjecthood for the twenty-first century. In the case of the do-everything-for you iPhone and its second-class bretheren, the Android phones, we are already in the grip of the machine, and it in ours, before the first questioning editorial about what might have been lost is even published.
And so, with today's announcement, it seems that quite literally, "medium is the message," or, more elaborately, "the 'message' of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs" (McLuhan 8). We are not excited for the announcement of the phone for what its call-making potential, but for the imagined totality of increased access to communicative habits and the imagined, potentially impossible expectations of something that will revolutionize our lives and the way that we interact with our environment, something that will "shape and control the scale and form of human association and action" (9). Beyond my theoretical speculation, neuro-psychologists are starting to study these effects. The New York Times recently described a study that showed immense influence on emotions and reactions that we generally tend to think of as immensely personal, even spiritual:

Earlier this year, I carried out an fMRI experiment to find out whether iPhones were really, truly addictive, no less so than alcohol, cocaine, shopping or video games. In conjunction with the San Diego-based firm MindSign Neuromarketing, I enlisted eight men and eight women between the ages of 18 and 25. Our 16 subjects were exposed separately to audio and to video of a ringing and vibrating iPhone. 

In each instance, the results showed activation in both the audio and visual cortices of the subjects’ brains. In other words, when they were exposed to the video, our subjects’ brains didn’t just see the vibrating iPhone, they “heard” it, too; and when they were exposed to the audio, they also “saw” it. This powerful cross-sensory phenomenon is known as synesthesia. 

But most striking of all was the flurry of activation in the insular cortex of the brain, which is associated with feelings of love and compassion. The subjects’ brains responded to the sound of their phones as they would respond to the presence or proximity of a girlfriend, boyfriend or family member.

If even a part of this is the case, no content or function of the phone has a chance of valuation at the level of the phone itself. Today, the phone is the message. From our vantage point in 2011, the reconfiguration of our minds and social relations hasn't yet begun. We are still living in a world shaped largely before the internet, before personal computers and before smart phones. Any one born in the last ten years will live in a world where these are ubiquitous and unquestioned, much as I can hardly imagine life without electricity. It's kind of exciting and maybe a little sad. I miss looking at the same screen as everyone else I know.

See also:
Feed by M.T. Anderson
Singularity
Image via iHackBlog