Culture Clash

(December 2007)

Ogres are Like Onions

Layers of meaning in game literature

Leftovers: and here I thought my experience was a rarity. if this is true, if GameSpot really buckled to pressure from Eidos and sacked ten-year editorial director Jeff Gerstmann over his review of Kane & Lynch, then CNET management is a bunch of simpering cowards who ought to die in a fire. Don't ever risk losing a big advertiser when it's just your integrity on the line. And since when is a six out of ten even a “bad” score?

Not long ago I did a column on how games are about stuff, how more and more we're seeing narrative games with deeper thematic meaning. Obviously that's very exciting in and of itself, but the really cool thing about this evolution of games is that the allegorical narratives are increasingly complex, socially conscious and merged with quality gameplay. This is a huge evolution point for the medium. Just as cinema took many years to find its narrative feet – to stop being technical and create its own language of artistry rather than just cadging everything from theatre – games are now on that path too. Titles like BioShock prove that games can be hugely fun and still rich with metaphor. It's amazing how far we've come on this road since just a few years ago. All the credit goes to developers. While people like me just whined that games didn't have enough meaning, the courageous and creative souls who make them went out and changed that.

Actually what I think has changed in the past few years isn't that games have gotten meaning; games have always meant something. But only recently have the meanings shown any real depth or complexity. Of course, in these early stages, it's easy to occasionally stumble… or at least to be a little more backhanded with your meaning than necessary. Blacksite: Area 51 has been called out as an intentional allegory to the war in Iraq, and even a few minutes of play prove the case. But allegory is also about subtlety. That game's approach to the issue is the equivalent of walking up to people and shouting “the President is a jackass” through a bullhorn.

Really, though, Blacksite is neither first nor best to analogize the Iraquagmire: that honor (it's obvious, when you think about it) goes to Half Life 2. Seriously… invasion and brutal subjugation of a militarily weaker people by a massively overwhelming force, puppets installed to run the government, behind-the-scenes torture of innocents, rebellion and terrorist activity on the part of a resistance. The satire comes from the fact that while the U.S. basically just said “hey, let's play war and it'll be great,” the Combine planned and executed every facet of the invasion and occupation masterfully, tying off each loose end and neatly rolling humanity into a ball without a single trick missed: drugged water, no sex, ghetto-like holding pens, ubiquitous security forces, 24/7 agitprop broadcasts. Indeed, the insurgence was kind of a joke until Gordon Freeman turned up. But does the fact that Half Life 2 is about Iraq overshadow the experience of the game? Of course not. A naked allegory is stupid, and you can't have nuance without something enjoyable on top of it.

Here's the thing: videogames, like it or not, are about dimensional rifts and alien invasions and getting revenge on the dude who killed your girlfriend and curing your amnesia and locating the eight pieces of the artifact and visiting space stations and battling the forces of hell. While surely that list will expand over time, the fact is, doing those things is fun and imaginative, which is what games are all about. And there's really no reason for games to stretch beyond that in an attempt to justify their allegorical validity.

That said, they still should try. Jon Blow gave a spectacular keynote at the Montreal International Game Summit where, to a certain degree, he argued the opposite of what I'm saying here. Like me, Jon thinks games are on a big, exciting precipice; but he is less thrilled with some of the recent major commercial efforts than I am. We're certainly on the same page when it comes to Portal, a game so outstanding and so essential it'll be studied for years or decades to come. But he sees less advancement in stuff like BioShock, arguing that the architectural obsession with perfect balance in a game can seriously impede the transformative experiential aspect of great literature, which is often unbalanced and disorderly. I agree with almost everything Jon said in his presentation, including his callouts of recent gems in the hugely innovative indie scene. But I think we need to cut the COTS stuff more slack, because we are seeing explorative work in theme and narrative out of major studios.

Another example: Mass Effect. Spaceships, aliens, laser guns, technobabble and hour-slurping gameplay is what Mass Effect is about, right?

Yup. But Mass Effect is also so obviously a game about racism that I can't believe so many reviewers missed it in the excitement over the hot alien lesbian sex. I mean, sure, you can't go wrong with hot alien lesbian sex, but the game is making a much more relevant comment on society. “We have yokels here, now, prejudiced against other humans for looking different than they do,” says Mass Effect. “Think how we're going to react when we encounter actual other races, when the differences are a lot more than skin deep. Plus: hot alien lesbian sex!”

It's pretty exciting that games are willing to pontificate upon things like the current geopolitical situation, and racism, and religion, and economic theory. It's almost like an art form!

And don't forget stuff like the work done by Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games. It's not exactly the same thing as parables like Mass Effect and BioShock, but it, too, demonstrates that you can put together an interactive entertainment experience with deeper meanings meant to be considered rather than just played. Persuasive games are sort of like documentaries, putting forth the facts and letting you ingest and interpret them as you see fit. It's an important addition to the medium that is on the brink of significant growth.

There's a novel called World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie War that uses a humans-versus-undead narrative to paint a picture of how people react and think, how we seem to get stupider the more of us there are, how groups and nations can almost always be counted on to make the wrong decisions, but individuals are generally wise and correct. The book is a deft indictment of modern society and its many mistakes. Such a thing could have been dull and ponderous, but instead there are zombies and zombies are always a recipe for entertainment. That popular culture, things we enjoy doing, can make us think and feel is hardly a new idea. Associating that idea with games, though – that concept hasn't been around for long. But games are perfect vehicles of self-expression and allegory. The proof is all around us, and growing every day.