Dead Pixels has 41 chronicles

1. In Defense of Unrealism
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Feb 17 2009

   Dead Pixels
   By Ryan M. Eft
   2/16/09
   
   In Defense of Unrealism
   
   For about the past ten years or so, it seems like the thing on everyone’s lips as pertains games is how realistic they’re getting. Among other things, it’s a shorthand way for the media to excuse themselves for covering a game. Air or print time that could be better used on Madonna’s latest controversy is A-Ok to use on games as long as at least some of the piece talks about how realistic games are (or are getting). That, coupled with sometimes-vast sums of money, is getting games the mainstream recognition we’ve all known they deserve for as long as they’ve been around.
   
   But the problem with trying to infiltrate the establishment is that in so doing, you so often become the establishment.
   
   First: raise your hands if you remember the eighties and early nineties. Okay. Now everyone born after ’85 put your hands back down. Good. Those of you with your hands still up, please join me on stage. We’re going to do a little role playing.
   
   OK, you on the left. You’re a hedgehog. You’re blue, because why the hell not, and you run really really fast. Also you collect rings and fight robots with animals inside them.
   
   You, there, right next to me. You’re an overweight Italian plumber. You fight walking mushrooms and travel using sewer pipes.
   
   All right. Now, through my powers over space-time, I’m making it so that no games fitting these descriptions ever existed. Give me a second.
   
   OK, done. Now, I want you to take these concepts to a major game developer of your choice, and pitch the hell out of them. Don’t come back till they’re sold.
   
   I’ll see you around doomsday.
   
   See, I remember the earlier days of gaming as this wild, imaginative era, full of ideas that had actual life coursing through them. Yes, the developers of these ideas probably had other things coursing through them. But the point is, inventiveness was still the driving factor behind a game.
   
   I’d estimate that spirit hung on in “mainstream” gaming until about 1997. Maybe ’98. I could argue about what killed it, but it wasn’t any one thing. Part of it was those of us who played games all our lives were growing up. Part of it was an increase in available technology. And despite the tone of this column, I’m supportive of this. Grand Theft Auto, the standard-bearer for realistic games, is probably one of the best things to ever come out of gaming. And I don’t know how I coped with the virtual world before the advent of physics engines like Havok. Despite my admittance to cur mudgeoness, I am not saying games shouldn’t be realistic. I’m wondering why mainstream games are no longer allowed to not be realistic.
   
   Now, right at this point someone is saying “But there’s Final Fantasy and Mario and Zelda and and and…” If you’re that person, let me clarify. Those games carry a torch from that more ridiculous age of gaming. They sell because we know them and therefore they have the cash infusion to maintain a consistently high level of quality. What I’m lamenting the lack of is new IP, capable of selling to large audiences of teen-to-adult gamers, that places imagination above how well a body can react to being shot. Or how perfect the environmental destruction is. If, as per my example, you walked into a major development house today, and pitched for the first time a game in which you travel a fairy land looking for a Princess, saving the world with a magic sword, one of a couple things would happen.
   
   A. It wouldn’t get made.
   B. It would get made, but it would get marketed to the under-12 group, and the most you could hope for quality-wise would be reviews that refrain “Well, kids should like it”.
   
   What I’m getting at is, it certainly would not become a multi-million dollar franchise of consistently high quality games that remain fresh in the minds of even the most jaded gamer types. It might not even sit at retail all that long.
   I guess it just bothers me that we, as gamers, have unwittingly helped to create a market culture divided squarely into “adult games” and “kid’s games”, and that the split is so markedly along the line of “imagination” and “realism”. The recent highly colorful and inventive Prince of Persia relaunch was a gorgeous game that, because it had colors other than gray and red, met with more than one exclamation of “What the *censored* is this?”. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Little Big Planet both had more depth and creativity than any random handful of M-raters you could pull out. The first was relegated to the kid’s shelves, the second sat on shelves far longer than it deserved.
   
   I know I’m shouting in the wilderness here. I know people these days want guns and blood and physics, and hey, so do I. Just not all the time. There’s room for all kinds in libraries of all ages, but we seem to have gradually forgotten this, and it leaves this life-long gamer more than a little saddened.

   
   

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Dead Pixels has 4 comment s on this chronicle.

1. MrBigJeezy
   Posted On Feb 24 2009

   I think Dynafire makes a good point. If the technology we have now were available 15 years ago, would those games have ever been created? Or, would we be waiting for the release of CoD13 insert futuristic war term)?
   
   From a different perspective:
   
   Let's assume for a second that the tech was in fact available then, and realistic games were made. You think the tech would have come from nowhere? No, it would have evolved from nothing just like we've seen. And so Super Mario would have just been made a decade earlier instead. With that in mind, the only aspect to rightfully blame is the natural evolution of technology and the evolution of a gamer's interests. Gamers today have seen the old stuff, and while they love it, it's simply not as fun as it used to be. Our imaginations are tired and we'd rather a more realistic depiction instead.

2. Dynafire
   Posted On Feb 18 2009

   I think you're missing one important aspect of why games such as Mario and Sonic came out in the first place. They didn't have access to the kind of technology that we have today. They were severely limited in what they could accomplish back then, and I guarantee you that if today's technology had been available before the Atari/NES/Genesis/etc days (which is basically impossible, but this is rhetorical)they would be doing the same thing they are doing now.
   
   As an example of what I'm talking about, take a look at what happened once CDs became available as a storage medium. Trillions of FMV games. Once the technology was available, the first thing they attempted was to emulate reality (though it usually failed miserably). Would Sonic and Mario have emerged from such a technology-rich environment? Doubtful. It is natural for developers to want to take advantage of technology to the best of their abilities, which means that ideas tend to be more complex than just "run to the right, jump over obstacles, and reach the objective". This isn't to say that the ideas of a super-fast blue hedgehog, fireball throwing plumber, or all-consuming pink marshmallow wouldn't have come out of the mix.
   
   Regarding the lack of new IP: try to come up with a game that doesn't use some feature from another game. It is impossible. While you can't say with 100% certainty, "It's all been done", a lot of it has been done. There are a few games that have come out recently (Braid and Portal stand out to me) that do introduce new mechanics and concepts, yet are not entirely original. Braid is a platformer, a la Mario. Portal is a "quasi" FPS a la Half Life, Halo, Call of Duty, and the list goes on. With each "new" idea, there are less new ideas to go around. The only thing that you can really change with games anymore are characters and environments. It just so happens that most of the time, they tend to be rooted in reality so we can somehow relate to them. After all, reality is what we know best. We can read about science and astrology and all that jazz, but the one thing that we know best is how things work in daily life, which in turn makes it easier to design games around.

3. JackDaniels624
   Posted On Feb 18 2009

   Very interesting! I agree for the most part, but I was born in '88 and totally remember all that stuff . You actually made me realize that I actually only play more realistic games...I dunno I just seemed to grown...No wait, I just don't care for the newer Zelda games but I do still enjoy the classic ones. Same thing with Mario.
   
   I don't know if more people are like me, but it seems like the better technology gets, people feel the more realistic it should be. Which is wierd since no game I've ever played I would truly deem as "realistic". On the other hand I've noticed I also like games that mix realism and imagination so I really don't know what I think. I need to learn to think before I type I guess

4. Dead Pixels
   Posted On Feb 16 2009

   Attention boys and girls. I intend to start a discussion parallel to this column in the forums, but if anyone wants to get that ball rolling by themselves, feel free.
   
   Also, I don't seem to be able to choose "none" on this rating. Giving myself a ten is therefore tacky, but hey...