Simon T. Kaye

On a slight tangent from the last piece:

A friend of mine on Facebook reminded me about Berkeley’s course on Starcraft and Game Theory. I tracked down this video of their first lecture. They all seem to be having a lot of fun.

This is probably of most interest to nerds who enjoy Game Theory experiments (like me!). But it’s an interesting interpretation of a strategy game, and the information they are deriving or modelling with it seems to have very little to do with narrative or story. Compare and contrast with MIT’s approach.

On a completely different topic –  doesn’t that guy look too young to be a teacher? Must be a PhD student.

The Massachusetts  Institute of Technology, as part of its very friendly ‘let’s share the knowledge’ Open Course commitments, has been publishing the course design and full reading-list and materials for its Video Game Theory and Analysis class online. It’s just a little bit out of date, but intriguing nonetheless. 

Here it is!

They have listed the course as it appeared in Autumn 2006 and 2007, but the difference is really negligable (they had a few guest speakers in 2007).

Apart from making me want to enrol at MIT (ha!), a bit of scrutiny of the outline and reading-list is quite revealing. 

Perhaps they're learning about games RIGHT NOW?!

First of all, I’d like to point out that any course whose requirements include “complete (or play, at minimum, 70 hours of) a single contemporary videogame or a grouping of games in a particular series or genre (example: Civilization III and IV, plus expansions or online play; the Zelda series, etc.)” can only be a source of massive nerd-joy.

I’ve written a tiny bit on why I think we ought to take ‘gaming’ seriously – in fact, it was more of a declaration of why the broader media and public can’t take the hobby seriously as it stands, based on a criticism of the terminology which we seem to have reversed blindly  into over the years. 

MIT’s course – which is by far the most serious and impressive engagement I’ve ever seen with gaming by a big-time university – lessens the kind of outrage I was throwing about in that other article.

Each student on the course seems to be required to complete a project, based, in the main, on their engagement with a particular videogame and their understanding of it. It’s all listed here – so let’s see what the class of 2007 regarded as the most ‘important’ games of our era.

Knights of the Old Republic. Bioshock. F.E.A.R. Half Life. These are just the PC games. 

Okay, so far, so peachy.

But look a little bit further, and it soon becomes clear that the majority of engagement with these titles – with all of the titles they list, and the works they cite – is intrinsically founded in a narrative understanding of art. Games are viewed as “semiotic domains” for the development of stories. 

There does remain an understanding of the origins of videogames lying somewhere beyond narrative, in an Atari-flicker of puzzles, reflexes and technological joy. But most of this  material seems to place the modern, story-driven game (the game as vehicle for story) atop a pedestal, as if everything else has been evolving toward it.

Agency, and the impact of player participation, is an underlying theme of the course. But it’s treated as a kind of enveloping trick, a facade: the tale is as it is, and the importance of your activities is a clever way of immersing you. Even World of Warcraft is seen in these terms. 

This raises a few questions – first of all, are the folks at MIT right about our hobby? Are games simply the latest presentational package for old-fashioned narrative arcs? (Certainly, in the vast majority of cases, this is true?) 

But do we believe that our hobby is capable of more – that there’s more to the collective media and art generation that is modern games development than creating a plausible (or at least cohesive) space within which to tell stories? 

With these questions in mind (and I’m genuinely puzzled by them) I fully intend to read every book on that list. Do you think they’ll give me a certificate afterwards?

Okay, I know I’m a little behind the curve here. Everyone and their uncle have already completed Bioshock three times, one for each different ending (well… two-and-a-half endings, I suppose), and once on Hard so that they can get their final, shiny XBox 360 ‘achievement’. And a great deal of these people have taken the time to write about it.

It’s one of those games, where the disparate, hazy community of hobbyists seems to surge into debate as one. Where you don’t feel like you’re done with it until you’ve talked about it. Head over to RockPaperShotgun for a collection of excellent critiques and links to reviews, interviews etc.- including an encounter with Bioshock‘s creator, Ken Levine, that’s really a must-read.

All of this- and much of what shall follow here, to be sure- is riddled with spoilers. If you live on the moon or have no real interest in the medium, then you might be unaware of the fact that Bioshock includes one of the all-time-greatest-ever twists of anything ever, somewhere just after the middle of the game. If there’s ever any chance that you’ll pick it up to play for more than a few hours together, you DO NOT WANT TO HAVE THIS TWIST SPOILED FOR YOU. So stop reading, please. And stop reading comment threads, articles, reviews, walkthroughs or editorials from the gaming community until you’re done with Bioshock. Look, just play it, alright?

It’s unlikely that I’m going to have anything to say here that hasn’t already been mentioned by others already. All the same, and perhaps with an eye to my rant of a few weeks ago, here are some thoughts.

Firstly, I’m glad I took my time over the game. I got it the day after it was released, and have played it slowly ever since. This morning I finished, which is perfect because as of next week I’ll actually be a busy human being again. Now, the forums are stuffed with people bragging about how they completed the game in one or two sittings, with only ten or less hours of play. And there’s some strength to the argument that games, in general, are far shorter than they used to be, and whether or not this is a Good Thing. But I am very thankful that I had stuff to do, and so couldn’t follow my impulse to storm through the game in a couple of all-nighters. The richness of the environment, of the atmosphere- decaying, retrograde 1950s art-deco opulance- absolutely demands reflection.

And it’s this that leads to my first real criticism of the game. It’s too busy. I recognize that the tight, enclosed space of the game helps lend it much of its horror, and makes possible the kind of closed-circuit mechanic (gatherer/hunter/guardian) that makes the whole thing special. But it’s stuffed with action, and noise, and light, and movement (voluntary or otherwise). Momentum is one thing, yes- but there isn’t a spot in the game where you can simply observe your world without the loud buzz of a nearby camera, the maniacal shrieks of some splicer in the distance (boy do voices carry underwater), the thump, groan and miniature earthquakes of a Big Daddy that you haven’t got around to dealing with yet. There isn’t enough space to make the whole thing feel like a city, which is what it’s supposed to feel like. Horror and action work best where the breaks feel like breaks, where you can contrast the action and the fear with, erm, absence of action and fear. The game, on occasion, was simply too loud. The Thief series arguably does it far better-and freedom, too. But more of that later.

If I had created a soundtrack and effects as sumptuous as these, I’d probably play them loud as well. The voice-acting is simply the best I have ever encountered in a video game, as is the script. The game’s plot and twists are very script- and delivery- dependent, and a lesser game might have let you down on this.

It’s also these twists that make Bioshock, I suspect, the first game to contain a truly effective critique of the medium. After having my own poodleish antics thrown in my face as they were here, it’s actually going to be hard picking up another shooter anytime soon without seeing the lines, the joins, the places where all the bloody orders just stop making sense. In this sense, Bioshock is not just a great story- it’s a story that could only have been told as a computer game. This alone sets it on a plinth, in the company of very few others. That it also takes the time to say something we didn’t know we were all already thinking, to be truly reflexive, almost Brechtian in tearing down the third wall, showing us a mechanic for what it is… that’s just phenomenal.

Part of the strength here is in subverting a fundamental weakness. Compared to Deus Ex, Bioshock is practically a half-life-esque linear shooter. Slightly disappointingly, this doesn’t really alter after we have the essential nature of our hobby used as a major plot point. My initial excitement at realising I had to collect some elixir but that there were two batches of it in different parts of the game world was quickly quashed. I needed both, of course. What looked like a big decision turned into a minor one- not ‘what would you like to do?’ but ‘what order would you like to do it in?’.

This holds true throughout. Real divergences and areas not required by the main plot are few and far between. This is a retrospective qualm, however, as I felt constantly driven by the game’s plot- even in the final third. There was enough emotional investment to make me seriously want to push through to the end. Most games don’t offer you such a compulsive experience. If they do, you can be damn sure they won’t give you much of an option to ignore it. Bioshock does, in places, and that’s nearly a miracle.

And the key mechanic for the game’s compulsion is where Bioshock‘s ‘spiritual successor’ status comes in. Both of your key enemies in the game are essentially godlike, and this is a direct echo of System Shocks 1 and 2. Atlas/Fontaine (note the references to Rand’s books here in the monikers of our key nemesis) and Andrew Ryan all, inevitably, remind us of Shodan. And the best thing I can advise you to do here is read and enjoy Kieron Gillen’s essay on the queen of all game villains, here. Come back when you’re done.

Shodan, of course, was the real Deus Ex Machina – or Deus Est Machina. As a gameplay mechanic, she was a stroke of genius. We fear specific things- death, the unknown. More than these we fear a malevolent god. And Ryan, in the first part of the game, fulfils these same roles. As you progress, he mocks you, taunts you. He sets traps for you, punishes you for resisting him. When one god is felled- not because you defeated him but because the bastard ordered you to, to prove a point- our new, worse deity takes over. This one really is the devil, because he’s a trickster. Like any trickster, he gave you all the clues you needed- visual suggestions- the tattoos on your arms, the momentary flashbacks, the repetitions of that phrase.

This is why I don’t think the game’s finale- the much admonished Boss Fight- was a bad idea. In fact, I enjoyed it. I’m not a truly skilful gamer, and so found that the difficulty was pitched just right- frustration vs. excitement. The plasmid/tonic technologies even give a decent in-game excuse for such a titanic figure to struggle against, which is more than I can say for most games. Like every other part of Bioshock, this last section was self-aware. It was The Way Games End. It was a Boss. The removal of your regeneration system was important here. too. You fought, you died, you fought harder. Eventually you won, and you felt that familiar flush of victory- and then you hated yourself for it, because the game’s just told you that you’re playing a game. But critically, in an experience where you can’t die, not ever, where all your fear and anger stems from a sequence of gods- you are given the power and the opportunity to destroy one. Not because you were told to- but because you wanted to. That’s satisfaction.

Andrew Ryan’s ‘utopia’ of Rapture is an explicit and repeated homage to the works and philosophies of Ayn Rand. To what extent is it a critique of them? As the man himself intones: “It wasn’t impossible to build a Rapture at the bottom of the ocean. It was impossible to build it anywhere else.”

Levine has said that he is attacking absolutism- in that any absolute ideology is dangerous. But I believe that Ryan represents the impossible predicament of a totally anarchistic society. He betrays his own ideals in order to attempt to do away with Fontaine, nationalising assets, forming armies, even introducing state-led capital punishment. Bit of a departure for the ultimate libertarian. The destabilising element is, of course, a twisted side of human nature. Fontaine is a crook with ambitions. Within a super-capitalist society such as Rapture, he is free to become the biggest fish in the pond. The ultimate flaw with Objectivist ideology, as with any, is that there will always be someone willing to subvert it to their own ends (in this case, a nihilistic con-man).

There’s so much to be said about this great work. It neatly summarises everything a piece of interactive art should be. Embrace it, love it like a brother. Lose yourself to Rapture. I really feel that there’s no coming back. The only first-person games that appear remotely palatable after this are Half Life, Thief, the first Deus Ex and maybe sandbox games like Oblivion or GTA.

Rapture really has changed the world.

First let it be established that I am by no means an expert on comic books. I read few of the super hero serials as I grew up (it’s an aspect of childhood far less common than in the states). I did read a few of Spiderman, quite a lot of Hulk, the occasional X-Men, and a few ‘themed’ graphic novels or one-offs that could be found in my local library. I was initially fond of Peter David, whom I stumbled into from his Star Trek novels, a childhood fascination of mine. Even then, David’s were just a little bit less rubbish to my developing snobrain (new word!)

More recently, I’ve made a point to catch up where it counts- Warren Ellis (in particular Transmetropolitan), as well as classics like Watchmen and some of the more celebrated Batman books (Dark Knight Returns and so on). I’m currently working my way through Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. If only my dissertation wouldn’t keep interrupting me. Oh, and Next Wave rocks. COME TO PAIN MOTHER.

So, as any decent comics fan will tell you, I am very much a newbie. Interestingly, I’m also probably exactly the sort of casual reader that comic books could really do with attracting. I may be a symptom of broadening appeal and pigeonhole disintegration. Which is new for me, I think.

Anyway, Phonogram. I read it yesterday, and it didn’t come out very long ago. It’s essentially a protracted essay on the way that music constructs us, the Britpop movement taken as a particular example. In the vivid, wonderfully pretentious world evoked by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie, music is the same thing as magic, manipulated by two groups- phonomancers, like our protagonist, and retromancers, who are to all intents and purposes the baddies. When the semi-deity patron-queen of Britpop, Britannia, disappears, David Kohl is ‘recruited’ to find out what’s going on. But his own intense personal connection with the Britpop era is involved as well, especially when Kohl realises that his own past is at stake…

It’s a quick and very easy read. Gillen subjects us to a niche culture without ever descending into the worst of geekiness, and the book is never less than accessible. The art is very clean and crisp, with a sort of graphic-design sensibility running throughout. The combination is very effective, and will surely sweeten the pill of all the philosophy which the tale carries along with it, as we deal with the nature of personal construction and, implicitly, art itself.

Happily, it all coalesces to a bit of a classic comic-book ending (insane cultists must be STOPPED!). And Kohl himself is pleasingly arrogant, the supporting cast witty enough to keep the whole thing bubbling along nicely. Laugh-out-loud moments are few, I suppose, though I’ve been spoiled by Next Wave lately.

Perhaps the greatest impact Phonogram had for me was strictly personal. I grew up during the height and tale-end of the Britpop phenomenon (I remember Common People being the first time I enjoyed watching Top of the Pops). I was only old enough to start appreciating the whole thing by the very end. I was actually rather fond of Kula Shaker, a band I stole from my older sister and which (amusingly) comes in for a pretty rough ride in Phonogram. But I also remember owning an Echobelly cassette, and my love affair with Blur kicked off pretty early. And, of course, Britpop has informed much of the music I listen to today, and my retrospective approach to many of the classics of that age is more important to me musically than any delving with truly contemporary bands. In short, Britpop was the first cultural phenomenon that I was actually aware of; the first tiny way in which I understood that there was a zeitgeist to be tapped into.

Now look what’s happened. Thanks to this comic, I’ve started digging it all out again. And it’s great.

Part of this is also because I associate Kieron Gillen quite strongly with my mid-teen interests. He’s cut his teeth as an excellent games reviewer. Specifically, he once wrote a Dear John letter to Descent 3. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.

Anyway, if you want to see the first proper step in imbuing 90s Britain with a character, look no further. A great graphic novel, and especially worth the attention of anyone who’s even vaguely interested in music.

Here’s a nice preview to get you started.

‘Game‘, noun.

1. An amusement or pastime, eg: children’s games, party games.
2. A scored, competitive activity or sport between two or more players, often played before spectators.
3. An activity which is played in strict accordance with a set of rules.

My name is Simon Kaye, and I am not a ‘gamer’.

I play many ‘computer games’, and ‘video games’; more often than not, on a PC with a microprocessing core. I have been playing these ‘games’ since I was twelve. Indeed, I often read a magazine entitled PC Gamer.

But I do not consider myself to be a ‘gamer’. Because the word ‘game’ in ‘video game’ or ‘computer game’ is desperately misapplied, inadequate in describing the sheer breadth of the industry.

Type ‘Game’ into an online thesaurus, and what do we get back? Amusement. Distraction. Diversion. Festivity. Frolic. Merriment. Piddly.

‘Game’ is a dismissive word, and it allows others to be dismissive and condescending of our hobby. Some might point to Deus Ex, others to System Shock, again others to the simple beauty in certain arcade classics. Ours is a truly interactive medium, a collaborative art that is the first to involve the direct collaboration of its audience. It deserves, in cases of excellence, to be taken very seriously indeed.

‘Game’ is an immature word, and it allows others to assume that our hobby is completely immature, or played by the immature. Which, admittedly, it often is. LOL n00b headshot haX WTF? etc. But this is an age of 18-rated releases. It is an innate feature of our hobby- our ‘gaming’- that allows the Daily Mail to claim that it is destroying the ethical framework of a generation, or Hilary Clinton to take cheap shots at it on the campaign trail. If our hobby’s noun did not directly imply a youth audience, how could such ill-conceived, nannyish positions remain viable?

‘Game’ is a word that brings with it connotations of childishness, of unreality, of cops-and-robbers. Worse, it linguistically implies competition and scores, rather than experience and spectacle. Who, precisely, am I competing against in Bioshock? The computer itself isn’t an adversary, it’s a platform. Too often do I hear talk of someone ‘beating’ a new ‘game’. Yes, there is a competitive element: online, or multi-player, we are often vying to display the greatest skill or attain some vaunted position or score, and against other human beings. Yes, even single-player ‘games’ usually involve an element of tactical or physical conquest over ‘enemies’ which are controlled by the software’s AI. But this by no means covers the whole gamut of modern video-’gaming’.

And yes, I’ll say again: there’s a whole load of crap titles out there. And after that, there’s a lot of titles that are good, or even brilliant, but are still essentially ‘games’. But every time the word ‘game’ fits a new release, it fails to apply in another case. What about super-realistic simulations? What about strategy titles with many, many times the complexities of chess or Risk? What about plot and dialogue-based titles like Planescape or Dreamfall? And what about the masterpieces of emergent interaction - modern or ageing - like Deus Ex or Bioshock? 

In these cases, the word ‘game’, as a label, is simply wrong. Describing Half Life 2 as a game is like using the word ‘cartoon’ to describe the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Except more people worked on HL2, and arguably for longer.

It’d be very easy at this point to simply accuse me of linguistic snobbery. What does it matter, after all, right? It’s just a fucking word. A game by any other name would play as sweet.

If only this were true.

Firstly, ours is a hobby under siege. In Britain in particular, as the press and the politicians begin their latest frenzy over youth violence and gun/gang-culture, out hobby is clearly in the firing-line. And, for a moment, let’s be fair: computer games have been full of violence from near the very beginning. They are stuffed with killing. The problem here isn’t with simulated violence, it’s with a public assumption that the violence is designed for the consumption of children. Children who buy and play games.

Secondly, and more essentially, our words make our reality. Our labels are half of our perceptions. For a growing but still minority medium, video ‘games’, thus labelled, are set up for a fall. People cannot help but approach with a preconception of silliness, of lightness. God help anyone who picks up Bioshock expecting a ‘game for Windows’ and is given an intensive, horror-driven, beauty-filled art-deco romp instead. Along with a strong critique of Ayn Rand and absolutism in ideology.

Of course, all this leaves me without a new term for one of my favourite pastimes. Suggestions welcome.

But whatever we opt for- isn’t it high time we re-branded?