Games Aren't Numbers

Descent II contains twenty four main levels, six secret levels, countless secrets inside its levels, ten different types of primary weapons, and dozens of enemy robots waiting for a challenge. There is a certain fascination we have in seeing all of a game's information laid out for us. To see games gutted, their insides pulled out and strewn all over our computer screens. To look at all of the charts and the screenshots and the levels in level editors.

There is a lot of talk about what goes into a game. We worry about all of the features that a game has, what its graphics look like, how many levels it has, and so on. When games are played they are expected to function just as they were programmed. Every detail should be authored, every cliché should be adhered to. It is expected that sometimes the unexpected events will happen. Games are judged based on everything that can possibly happen inside them.

When I played Descent II in the mid 90s I never reached even level twenty, and probably only found about three secret levels. Who knows how many hidden rooms I found or didn't find, or what other details I may have overlooked. It doesn't make a difference to me how many levels there were on the disk, I never saw the last few anyway. But isn't this a very negative way of describing it? My experience is defined by what I did accomplish, not what was possible to accomplish. What happened to me in those virtual mines was my unique experience. It's nice to know what else there was to explore, maybe some day I'll return to it and properly finish the game, but that will be a different story.

Games are like places. I always want to learn about new interesting places to visit, I want to know what's available. When visiting a place I try to get as much out of the experience as I can. Each visit is precious. Only so much can be done, only so many sights can be seen, only so many people can be met before the time to leave comes. After I leave I may reflect on what I did, consider the chances I missed and would like to return to, decide where I would like to go next. In the end what was most important never is what I could have done, or what other people did, but my personal story.

Games are like people. I'm rarely as concerned with what makes a person as I am concerned in what that person makes. Games don't exist in a museum for us to examine and move on, they are only worth anything as long as they are actively being played. It's the union between a player and a game that creates their worth to us. The player's act of exploring what can be done with the game mechanics and discovering details in the game's environment is what gives them meaning.

The greatest game can be ruined by the worst player. Players have just as much of a duty to play a game well as games have a duty to provide opportunities. When I say “play well” I don't mean to earn the top score or to unlock every secret, I mean to explore the game's possibilities in creative ways. Challenge the game as much as it challenges. Don't passively ride through the game, take control over it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson criticized passive reading in The American Scholar:

One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, "He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion.

If reading a book is full of labor and invention, then is it necessary to explain why playing a game would add an entirely new dimension to that? A book is completely authored, any invention happens in the mind of the reader. In a game the invention is not only inside the mind, but is also literal. A new story unfolds every time the game loads. It's impossible to play a good game passively.

Yet some games try to be as passive as possible. I've hated playing Gears of War and similar titles due to the way they are designed against creativity. They're cinematic to the point of being comparable to a giant quick time event, without the artistic touch that makes cinema compelling. There's barely any room available for literal creativity, much less mental creativity. Playing such games are like entering the portal in Being John Malkovich for the first time. Craig Schwartz could see, hear, feel, and sense everything Malkovich could, but he wasn't really in control over the body, he was only along for the ride.

Gaijin Games' Bit. Trip series has with every release captured a different degree of agency a player can have in a game. In Bit. Trip Beat the player could only move along a fixed line and had to hit pixels at just the right moment to create the perfect melody. Bit. Trip Core had four possible directions to move, which allowed a degree of flexibility as to when a few pixels can be hit, but it still mostly required predetermined choreographed timing. The latest in the series, Bit. Trip Void, gives the the player full control over where to move. Pixels can be hit at any time, and their corresponding musical notes as well. The game uses a large element of quantization at work to keep an appealing melody, but the responsibility to elevate the tune from “appealing” to “awesome” is handed over to the player. At a glance the music in Void may seem pale in comparison to it's predecessors, but a player with fast reflexes and musical creativity can produce something far better. And more importantly, invent his own superior experience.