The other day I watched Tarkovskiy’s Solaris (the long, boring, Russian version). The film’s protagonist, Kris Kelvin, receives an eerie visit by his late wife, Hari. She’s not really his wife though, only a copy based on his memory of her. In consequence, she violently struggles with the fact that she’s not a real person. The only memories, thoughts, and emotions that she has in common with the real Hari are the ones that Kris knows and remembers. Hari II can’t even bear to leave Kris’ sight; her existence is so dependent on him. It’s a meditation on what it means to be a human, and what it means to love another person.
Some games are like Hari: real people with their own independent thoughts and feelings. Some games are like Hari II. They were made only to be mastered by whoever’s playing them; they have no existence beyond their players.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is like Hari. Just as with a real person, all of the details I don’t know, don’t understand, and will never learn are what make it a genuine experience. Every time I play this game something new happens, something that I didn’t expect or even imagine. There aren’t any instant rewards; I had to get to know it well before I started truly enjoying the game. And also like a real person, sometimes it doesn’t seem to want to play. It creates inconvenient or downright unfair scenarios leaving me no choice but to quickload out of them, and then when it's fed up it crashes just like spoiler!. It’s a painful game sometimes, but all the more fulfilling.
Animal Crossing is like Hari. It keeps on living even when I leave it alone. I haven’t played it for months now, and the thought of returning now is scary; how much will its game world will have changed? Even though I know the anthropomorphic villagers will be willing to forgive me for abandoning them, I still know that I’ve hurt their artificial feelings. All of my responsibilities, cleaning trash, picking weeds, delivering packages, will have all been left undone in my absence. I’ve let my town down and it’s all my fault. Will any of the villagers still like me? What if my favorite neighbor, Jitters, has left town and forgotten me? What will they say if they see me again? Animal Crossing isn’t just there for your enjoyment, the game has a life and feelings of its own. Every single thing you do, or don’t do, effects your relationship with it.
Civilization V is a Hari II. Its strategies are simple and predictable. It exists not so much to challenge players as much as it does to deliver a steady stream instantly gratifying rewards. From the moment a game begins, the player starts getting popups praising the good progress he or she is making. In Solaris when Hari II first appears she immediately lies with Kris in his bed; she exists because of his desires. Unsurprisingly enough, Sid Meier seems to look at games as predominately focused on the player. Just scanning through a list of his GDC 2010 quotes consistently show the gamer, not the game, as the subject. He and his studio deserve commemoration for implementing this philosophy so exceptionally well in Civ V.
I’m sure the list of examples for both categories could go on and on. The analogies however are only really relevant in games based around emergent situations. A linear game like Half Life is going to much more closely resemble a movie itself than a character in a movie, so the comparison doesn’t make sense.
And speaking of Solaris, midway through the film it suddenly features a montage of iconic classic paintings. It’s a charming scene, but it wasn’t simply included to look pretty. Tarkovskiy was going out of his way to push his belief that film as a medium is a mature form of art, just like these paintings. Does this sound like a familiar story?
Now, nearly forty years later, an audience may just as easily misunderstand that scene’s purpose just as they may misunderstand the film’s long shots of a seemingly normal present day cityscape. 1972’s sci-fi city of the future is now the city of today, and film as art is now taken for granted. Maybe in 2052 we’ll all look back at Deus Ex and wonder why it makes such a big deal about nanotech-augmentations, and also why anyone didn’t think this game was art in the year 2000.
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1 comment
"I haven’t played it for months now, and the thought of returning now is scary; how much will its game world will have changed?"
There's only one way to find out! :)
There seems to be this trap that Animal Crossing players fall into, where they see the maintenance of the world as their responsibility and any deviance from it as a failure. Probably because that's the way we've been trained to relate to video games -- you win or you lose.
Speaking personally, I've moved away from that frame of mind. I don't go to the town of Elms to save it from weeds and cockroaches -- I go there to see it. And if there are things I like to do that need doing, then I'll do them. If I slack off for a month or a year, well, that's the way life is sometimes -- it's sometimes a long time between visits to some of my favorite places in real life. If someone I like moved away -- which has happened to me too many times to count -- I see it as an opportunity to meet someone new.
I know this is sort of beside the point you're making here, but... it seems like players get scared off by how the world deteriorates when you don't play it, and they really don't need to worry about it. :)