Know your history: death of the intellectual in gaming

In my eagerness to start the blog, I never did outline the real aim of it, which might've been a misstep. My basic intent is to write a series of critical arguments about videogames, how they relate to other media, and so on. Mostly because I love videogames and I love talking about them, but also because it's the sort of thing I'd like to see on the internet: intellectual debate rather than mindless warring over consoles, games, etc. Also because there's no real prescribed format for referencing videogames or the like, to hell with MLA!

I've a personal, intense hatred for standardized referencing. Not in-text so much as the Works Cited nonsense. IMO all that's needed is the author's name, title, ISBN, and pages referenced. The rest is irrelevant and easily discovered if one knows those four bits of information, but I digress.

Part of me wonders if what feels like a leaning towards vast immaturity in gamers (samplings of GameFAQs or 4chan will make this leaning readily apparant) has anything to do with the types of games which have populated the mainstream lately. Over the weekend I was playing Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (GBA Port), and I marvelled at how the level design consistently advanced itself: one skill was acquired one moment, tested the next, and mastery of it was thereafter expected. The game was not challenging in the "Beat your head against a cement wall" manner of modern RPGs and the like (Yahtzee, Zero Punctuation), but involved careful application of the gamer's intellectual prowess and dexterity (I'll be honest; one of the jumps in the game I made purely by fluke after 20 or so tries). The game was and is genuinely hard. In fact, as a ten-year-old playing it, I didn't come remotely close to beating it until a few months' hard work. I completed the game this weekend in about 5 hours between studying.

Essentially what I'm saying is, Donkey Kong Country 2 was hard, and it was not afraid to be hard. This is paralleled in other games of roughly the same era: Super Mario 3, Final Fantasy (Most of the earlier games up until IX or so were deceptively difficult, though this was often owed to a clutter on-screen and a distinct lack of direction). More to the point, the manner in which these games was difficult in an intellectual manner: for platformers one needed to solve a puzzle (and combine timing to execute), while in RPGs one needed to find clues to "unlock" the next series of events. I pick these two genres to focus on primarily because they were two of the most popular back in the fourth generation (SNES), to essentially the sixth (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox).

However, upon returning to modern-day gaming, I find such challenging experiences are lacking, in favour of more visceral thrills mainly bereft of intellectual depth. And though I'm not one to wade into "console wars", I find that one system of the three current-generation home consoles is at deepest fault here: the Xbox 360. Again, I speak not of the more independant, small-scale titles on the 360, but rather of some of the most popular games released on the console. The PS3 is guilty as well, to some extent, but as most of the offending games on the Playstation 3 are found on the 360 as well the 360 will remain the centerpiece of this post. The Wii, meanwhile, is an entirely seperate creature worthy of a post devoted to it alone.

From the List of best-selling Xbox 360 games:
Halo 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; the never-ending title (excuse the bad joke), Gears of War, Gears of War 2
Note that Grand theft Auto IV placed 5th on the list: I have not played it myself, but I believe the above four games reasonably represent the most popular choices on the 360 console.

The first and most obvious similarity between the four games is genre: they are all first-person shooters. But as Valve's arguably classic Half-life 2 shows, it is not impossible for a shooter to be an intellectual, intriguing experience. Having played all of the above four games--and having enjoyed them--I argue that they all feature essential scenes of proceding forward on a linear path ("linear" being a buzzword in gaming discussion which I am using differently here) with no interruption save the next fire-fight. These fights boil down to essentially the same thing in either game: in Halo 3, one typically must take advantage of a vehicle/weapon/environment to defeat the opponents, in Gears of War one must take cover and take potshots at oncoming enemies until they dry up, and in Call of Duty, perhaps best emphasizing my point, 90% of the gameplay relies on being able to twitch to targets and shoot them instantly. I'm not saying there's no intellectual exercise at all in any of these, but it largely consists of the same thing. Halo is arguably the game which requires the most planning and forethought, but this is only really on the entirely optional Legendary difficulty mode. Cleverness is not built into the levels so much as the enemies are made hard as steel while the player becomes made of glass.

Essentially, these games all offer visceral, drive-releasing thrills, transitioning moment-to-moment without bothering to slow the pace for more measured entertainment. In Gears of War 2 one segment features the player being swallowed into the digestive system of a massive, city-consuming worm. Expecting some sort of puzzle or challenge, I was disappointed when the entire section was essentially: run here. Stop. Shoot. Chainsaw. Run here. Stop. Shoot. Chainsaw. Repeat. In Gears of War 2 (and the other games listed above), the player acquires all the essential skills for the game within roughly a half hour of playing: after that, it's a matter of repeating the same comfortable skillset rather than advancing as in Donkey Kong Country 2.

Now back to the beginning of my argument. I believe that gaming's shift towards intellectual dampened, sensationally impacting games is what is contributing to the firey, territorial nature of gamers. Perhaps the games played by gamers affect the attitude of gamers, or perhaps the popularity of certain games attracts a kind of person with a certain attitude, but that is neither here nor there. Games are no longer about simply having fun and engaging with media, but now are essentially competitions: online multiplayer, "Acheivements" and "Trophies" all contribute to this mindset. And because games have become so visceral, I believe that gamers identify so closely with their game/console of choice that anyone simply not enjoying it is so reprehensible that they clearly must be a lower form of human being: thus propelling the mindless arguments that frequent so many forums like GameFAQs.

Come to think of it, there's something to be said for gamer-identification and the evolution of gaming protagonists... but that's a story for another day.

Comment if you've got anything to say, I'd love to hear some input.

P.S. Simply because it's awesome, I've included a track from the Donkey Kong Country 2 soundtrack, which was stunningly well-crafted given the capabilities of the Super Nintendo console. I give you Lockjaw's Saga