Games Aren't Numbers

Three Fridays ago I appeared on WUSC radio to talk about (can you guess?) videogames! One of the topics that came up was whether or not games will ever find themselves entering literature classes. This is a subject which has crossed my mind from time to time because one of my specialties, when I’m not blogging about games, is literature. Games have words and stories, so why don’t we take them seriously like we do Moby Dick? Some games are even advertised for their literary achievement. Why don’t we study their accomplishments as well?

Some developers have been reaching out to science educators, such as Zachtroincs Industries of SpaceChem fame and Valve, and I’ve even heard of some college history classes using Civ-like simulations with their students, but the stories and art of games remain a second or third class citizen. Why?

The common explanation, the observation that the writing in games is just plain bad, isn’t satisfactory to me. Although inarguable for the most part, the statement is vague. It doesn’t define what “good” writing is, or what exactly is “bad” about game writing.

I’m going to take a step back for a moment and look at where literature is today, and where videogames stand in relation to it.

What literature we value, and what in literature we value, is determined by what literary theory we subscribe to. The New Criticism, as it’s called, has been the dominant theory in the academic world for a while. It puts emphasis on qualities such as carefully crafted sentences and stories that are reflective of real life. This is why we read stories like The Lottery or Lord of the Flies. They’re commentary on real society, and bring subtle nuances down to the sentence level so we can do effective close readings.

The New Criticism is but one theory though and, as you can read on the previously linked article, not without shortcomings. And the dark side of every theory is that it excludes a lot of great works, no matter how valuable they are otherwise. We rarely see Uncle Tom’s Cabin read in schools because it’s didactic rather than reflective. Works by Theodore Dreiser, despite their incredible accomplishments, are often overlooked because their rough passages don’t lend themselves well to close readings.

The writing we see in videogames very rarely sit soundly with this “New Criticism.” This is why we see their writing as “bad.” Anyone who’s gone through the American educational system is going to have this particular theoretical bias. As much as we may like the story in Deus Ex, is it really a good reflection of the present world? Are its snippets of dialog rich enough with nuance to pick apart and examine? Compared to Literature-with-a-capital-L, absolutely not.

Granted, it should be obvious how problematic it is to judge videogame writing with a theory that existed before videogames themselves did. Taking a step back and removing that lens, what do we use to judge videogame aesthetics? Despite being a constant topic around the web and at events like GDC, there’s still no mainstream consensus. Professional reviews still mostly judge superficial elements. There is a general sense of what is “good” and “bad” in games, although this idea has hardly been formalized. This isn’t the reviewers’ faults, they can’t help it if no one has created a theoretical framework.

Which brings me to what I see as the first reason why videogames, even the most artfully crafted snippets of videogames, aren’t discussed as art: they rarely fit well into dominant theories of art, and haven’t established a widespread theory of their own. Eventually they will do one or the other, or a mixture of both: we’ll start seeing more and more games that fit into the conventions our academic system prescribes, and, as the videogame culture interbreeds with academic culture, a formal theory of videogame writing will manifest. I have no doubt that this process has already begun.

Right now no part two is planned, but this topic has a lot of potential to be continued in the future.