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Have been waiting for the @PaulSkallas video game essay, and now it’s out on the substack. A few thoughts... https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/what-happened-to-video-games?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter
First, obviously, he’s completely right. It’s a devastating take on something that’s right in front of your eyes. I stopped playing games at 13 (except for a bleak time in grad school) so it doesn’t hit me in the gut, but perhaps it does for slightly younger people.
He’s right, unfortunately, about “indie” games. I’ve played a few out of curiosity, and there’s not much there. Occasionally something high concept, but nothing that grabs you.
A few years ago I visited the Y Combinator research gang (thanks @michael_nielsen!) There was a talk by a guy there who had been developing a game that took place in four (spatial) dimensions. He’d been working on it for years.
It was beautiful pixels, had a kind of young-guy friendly plot (you’re a knight-ninja, leaping through dimensions to impress a geisha?), and you could see how that would combine with the mental difficulty (an extra dimension! Rotate around the w axis!) to appeal.
Total respect to that guy. It’s ingenious and charming, and worth the effort. But it goes to prove Paul’s point: this is something for young adults. There’s no way out of the medium.
I will provide one addendum. It may just prove Paul’s point. There is one game genre that is for adults: interactive fiction (aka, text adventure). EXAMINE POT sort of thing, except now (1) the parsers are really good and (2) they’re written for a different audience.
One of the best writers is @emshort; her early IF is wonderful—I particularly remember Metamorphoses and Floating Point. Another amazing modern piece in the genre is Christminster, by Gareth Rees (though that’s from 1995!) https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fq26p07f48ckfror
In any case, the yearly open competition—IFCOMP—has a demanding set of judges, and the top rated from any year is very worth your while. The genre ended up being a sort of niche form of quasi-literature.
I thought about trying these. But are they really going to be that much better than Myst? Like... *twenty years* better than Myst? Or are these simply variants on a, in the end, fundamentally limited theme? https://twitter.com/disconcision/status/1328190932349571074?s=20
I will leave these for Paul to judge, if he likes. One thing I will say: games might not have gone anywhere, but game journalism absolutely has. https://twitter.com/ampanmdagaba/status/1328191616885153793?s=20
One last thought on interactive fiction: I will admit to a certain level of nostalgia in their appeal. I remember playing INFOCOM’s Lurking Horror as a kid which made me want to go to MIT and battle demons. But I do think there’s real adult things there...
Perhaps in part because all you need to write interactive fiction is patience and inspiration—not an entire graphics design team.
The fact that culture is stuck is news to a lot of people. Lots of explanations, none that get it right, IMO. It’s just weird. What happened? https://twitter.com/disconcision/status/1328193815577042945?s=20
Same here. I was getting ready to say what about indie games—but when you come right down to it, four-dimensional ninja-knight-errant is probably the upper bound on what video (emphasis on the “video”) can do, the edge of the medium. https://twitter.com/JPKscience/status/1328200317125730305?s=20
Counterpoint: there is no greater onboarding than the original Super Mario. Which taught the world the side-scroller. Everything else is rather filling in the gaps around Mario, Myst, Doom and Tetris (maybe add Civ, Escape Velocity, and Ultima?) https://twitter.com/ngutten/status/1328201539048017922?s=20
I guess it just feels like there’s a boundary that turned out to be closer than we expected. Graphic novels hit a similar barrier—fundamentally, they’re comic books. The one exception that really hits me there is Maus.
Let me see if I can find the paen to Level 1-1... https://twitter.com/ngutten/status/1328203083176841217?s=20
I think this is the one I remember. https://medium.com/swlh/the-perfect-game-tutorial-analyzing-super-marios-level-design-92f08c28bdf7
Paul’s got two points. First is that the culture is stuck—I’d say you argue his point: who wants a sonata written after 1930 (basically), except a few edgelords listening to Xenakis, or Philip Glass’ latest iteration of the soundtrack to The Hours? https://twitter.com/noahlt/status/1328205613336199175?s=20
The other point is his explanation for why it’s stuck: because a video game is, in the final analysis, essentially juvenile, like the comic book, or clowns. You can get to Blue Man Group, but not much further.
Yes. The quest for greater “realism” is a sign of immaturity—a failure to make the leap to the adult world of symbols and the complexity of their relation to the real. https://twitter.com/kdzeja/status/1328207498046791680?s=20
Could be. Is the problem the form, or the culture that demands the content? https://twitter.com/khiazmos/status/1328208455736430594?s=20
Yes! A video game can’t really escape the constraints of needing to provide a win condition. (You can get arty about it—not all wins have to be “happy”—but there are limits.) Partly it’s just the exponential increase in thoughtful outcomes. https://twitter.com/anarchivette/status/1328210322453377024?s=20
I think this rather argues Paul’s point. The improvement paths are either marginal, or absurd/juvenile. You could make a Quiddich sim. But the medium feels ungenerative. https://twitter.com/drewbeck/status/1328214340286214146?s=20
Rock and Roll (and its derivatives) has mostly stalled. A few new sounds around the edges. https://twitter.com/drewbeck/status/1328378974981021698?s=20
Car design has stalled. The SUV was the most recent shift for the mass market in silhouette, and that was 1990s. The Tesla Roadster perhaps, but that’s high end; the HumVee died. We have a few basic shapes, each optimized for aerodynamics. https://twitter.com/TriassicVisitor/status/1328402297647411200?s=20
Very interesting thread from a (former) game designer, on loop mechanics. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1047843113337741313?s=20
