Games Aren't Numbers

A gripe I’ve long had with videogames in general is their rampant use of vague, generic, ambiguous settings. They love taking place in fictional generic countries, on fictional generic planets, in fictional generic time periods. They love characters with cookie-cutter shells of personalities. Pointing this out doesn’t make for a fresh discussion, so I don’t usually worry about it. Each game has its own reasons for its setting, its characters, its plot, and everything else. Games can be whatever they want, and there’s no reason why any game shouldn’t be generic.

The problem, if you want to call it that, is that there are very few videogames that really take command of a specific, concrete, setting. While I have a hard time making a case that this is truly a “problem” that needs to be “fixed,” I have a deep feeling that games about real people in real places shouldn’t be so rare. In all other media, the everyday reality is the default. Even a book that takes place in a bizarro world with plunger-shaped aliens has to actively set itself in relation to the “real” world, and will have plenty of normal human beings. Stories that are lost completely in their nonsensical fantasies, without any attempt to offer a connection to real society or humanity, are niche outliers. In games however, the opposite is true.

Of course, it’s fallacious to say that games should follow the same trends other media do, simply because books or movies or whatever are “better” somehow. Personally though, I get exhausted of being required to learn and accept whatever unbelievable setting each different game throws me into. For example I never finished Planescape: Torment because I never found myself caring about anything happening in it. The world was so ridiculous and so lacking in any purpose, so many degrees separated from reality.

Not that there are no games that break the mold. There are always classics like The Last Express, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Okami, and so on. Still, I do wish that there was a game out there that took place somewhere resembling where I live, with people who resemble people I know. This issue is entirely personal for me.

What I find fascinating is the fact that as the indie movement has gained momentum, there are just as few games that use any realistic setting. I always assumed that as artistic license became stronger, three dimensional characters and realistic settings would as well. However, games such as Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble are rarities. On the other hand, Braid, And Yet it Moves, VVVVVV, Bit.Trip, and the list goes on of very successful and extremely creative games that chose to move in the opposite direction than I would expect, with decidedly flatter characters and more abstract settings.

I thought about this topic recently while playing From Dust, made by the famous Eric Chahi, or more commonly known as “the guy who made Another World.” It’s the first game he’s made in quite a while, after temporarily quitting the industry because he believed it was too unfriendly to creativity. From Dust seems like such a good symbol for what artsy games are now, and where they may be headed. And if that’s true, then it shows that all videogames, and not just indie games, are not going to stray from genericism for a while.

From Dust is a god-game without religion. Its people are without any culture or apparent social structure. They speak a jumbled non-language. It takes place in nowhere in particular, on islands based on Polynesia and Africa, two completely opposite sides of the world. Most glaring of all, every character is faceless, and not by coincidence or accident. They wear masks, and the developers felt these masks were so important that they chose one of their anonymous raceless nationless people wearing a faceless mask as their symbol for the game’s brand. Any ambiguity is overtly intentional.

When I was a more bitter person I’d blame this kind of stuff on lack of creativity. It would seem likely that a lot of developers pick generic fantasy/sci-fi settings and stock characters just because they’re lazy. But it’s becoming more and more obvious that creativity is alive and well, and that developers see plenty of real value in ambiguity. Every artistic movement has its defining traits, and this one may be one of ours.