Side-Scrolling: Games and the Written Word
Much like the written word, gaming often employs dialectics of black vs. white, left vs. right, to help viewers explore shades of gray. (Photo: Playdead Studios)
So, I’m a gamer nerd. It’s okay, I own it — “ain’t no shame in my,” as the adage holds. Understand this though: when I say I grew up representing “the block,” I meant Mario. When they told me in school to reach for the brass ring, I thought they meant Sonic. I’ve been gaming since childhood, and as I’ve grown up the medium has grown up with me.
Allow me a confession: if I had to do something in the world besides teaching, publishing, or writing incredibly awesome short fiction, I would want to write smart, character-driven content for a major game developer. Don’t laugh — studios like Valve, BioWare, and Bethesda have been churning out top-notch writing for years. Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of humorist Terry Pratchett) wrote the script behind the groundbreaking Mirror’s Edge, and Valve’s Erik Wolpaw has received accolades for his work on such award-winning titles as Portal. In a way, I learned more about the practical application of iceberg theory from Half-Life 2, with its stark but largely-implied dystopian visuals, than from Hemingway who actually pioneered the doctrine.
So imagine my surprise coming across this article from Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, in which Crecente details the efforts of Simon Meek and Scottish firm TernTV to create “digital adaptations” of classic novels such as Crime and Punishment or Wuthering Heights in the world of gaming. Now admittedly, with the atrocity that was Dante’s Inferno still very much fresh in most gamers’ minds, I’ll acknowledge I was a bit skeptical at first. But Dante also was an attempt to make an action game out of a 14th-century theopolitical treatise; rather than trying to “sex up” traditional works to meet with mass-market appeal, Meek aims to combine the emotional impact of classical literature with the raw immersion of the interactive experience. And I have to say, it’s an intriguing idea. I find the notion of getting players to properly live out the experiences of characters like Raskolnikov or Hamlet compelling, and though it carries certain risks (witness the obvious quality-gaps between film adaptations and the works of literature they repackage), I still think the idea has merit. I suspect the challenge will be understanding the strengths and limitations of each medium, and finding new ways to merge these modes of storytelling.
There are certainly some purists who will lambaste me for my interest in these developments; they will assert, as Roger Ebert did, that games can never be art and that any attempt to conflate the two is a debasement of literature. To which I say: get over yourselves. I support Meek’s initiative because it proposes to do that which art does by definition — that is to say, pushes boundaries, arouses feeling, and challenges conventions to move forward and truly innovate. This is no different from any other idea put forward by independent developers in the last decade: anyone who’s confronted the sense of loss and regret laid out by Braid , the evolutionary beauty expressed within flOw, or the Bergmanesque nightmare landscapes of LIMBO knows that games elicit emotional response, inspire debate, and explore how human beings relate to the aesthetic. Same as any other art form, including literature.
Oh and Roger, old boy? The National Endowment for the Arts disagrees.
Fact is, games and writing have coexisted for years. Early examples include the incredible Myst series, which dealt with writing as a central theme and was developed right here in Spokane. The series was a groundbreaker, haunting and thought-provoking, and the connection it forged between gaming and writing persists even today. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed was directly influenced by Vladimir Bartol’s 1938 novel Alamut; Ninja Theory’s 2010 Enslaved is based on the Chinese epic Journey to the West. The idea that independent developers might work to bring classic literature to a new generation of gamers is brilliant in my opinion, and in an era where interactive media is dominated by war-porn shooters like Call of Duty, I think more exposure in games to the higher achievements of human expression might be welcomed. And to those who say the two forms can never meet I ask: What is a story? What is a game?
Literary writing in the modern age isn’t dead, any more than gaming for the post-16-bit era isn’t art. But I do think that contemporary literature has a relevance problem, in the same way that gaming as a form of expression has a respect problem. So how do we deal with that? How do we get millenials re-immersed in the world of words without pictures? Well, for one, I think we can start by learning to tell stories that resonate with a wider group than self-indulgent New York divorcees. While we’re at it, we could also use interactive media to introduce a new generation to the stories that have shaped our culture. Imagine the digital experience that could guide players through the angst and struggle of Hemingway’s Old Man at sea? Imagine the empowerment in witnessing Portia defend Antonio; the pathos of seeing the plight of wrathful, wronged Shylock firsthand! Truth is, I think there’s an entire generation waiting for these stories to be delivered into their hands, and they don’t even know it yet. Who knows? In finding ways to merge these media, we might challenge some young person to find comfort in books that hadn’t considered it before, or even perhaps inspire her to nurture her own creative impulses.
Who knows? We might even give rise to the next generation of writing MFAs.
Awesome post, dude. I’m so over the negative stigma attached to gaming/gamers. I don’t even game that much anymore, which places me in that ugly purgatory one sits in where one admits to be a gamer, yet rarely games, making one a dweeb and a poseur, respectively, but the videogame industry sure as shit isn’t going away anytime soon, and there’s no reason why developers shouldn’t incorporate art and literature into the medium. I wouldn’t be a writer, living happily in the Northwest, had it not been for Final Fantasy II (well, IV), slipshod as the story/translation may be. It’s sad that I can’t tell a cute girl that I’m a gamer, as she will likely see me as a carbuncular wretch who eats boogers in his mom’s basement, but I do think the stigma is eroding. And Braid is a perfect start for those who sneer at gamers and gaming.
Unless that cute girl is a gamer herself.
Of course. Alas, I have yet to meet many (unless they’re keeping it a secret, too).
[...] you should read Seth Marlin’s post on gaming and literature. It’s quite good, and we need to stop stigmatizing gamers. That is [...]