Reflections on Video Gaming Past, Present, and Future

For my first minor quest, I decided to venture up to the Duderstadt Center on North Campus and visit the Computer & Video Game Archive. While I was there, I played several classic arcade games including Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, and Donkey Kong. I also played some more recently released console games like Street Fighter IV and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I will now attempt to dissect several of the differences in game design and playing experience from the perspective of what we have so far covered in class.

Galaga logo.

Before I discuss arcade games and console games, I shall give an overview of video games as a whole. Video games are strictly programmed in a way so that each individual game has its own set of rules, its own “magic circle¹,” or so to speak, that is virtually impossible to violate without the aid of some manner of hacking device. This means once someone decides to play a game (from here on, “game” shall refer to video games), he commits himself to the rules that bind the game unto itself. These magic circles are what gives games their individuality, what separates Galaga from Space Invaders from Contra from Call of Duty. As individuals, we may have a greater affinity for some magic circles than others, hence categories such as “retro gamer,” “MMO gamer,” and “FPS gamer.” This is the same with sports; someone who likes football may not like soccer. Broadly speaking, video games immerse the player in some sort of fantasy element to capture interest. However, in most cases, mere interest is not enough to captivate a gamer. There must be competition.

Pictorial representation of a high score.

In examining the nature of competition in video games, it is useful to separate the arcade games from the console games because the different nature of each category’s general game design determines how each treats competition. Tetris, Pac Man, and virtually all arcade games all have a scoring system in which players may compete for a high score. This entitles them to bragging rights; in fact, there exists a professional society of arcade gamers where a select elite constantly tries to best itself in its already-astronomical “high” scores². In the more recent console games, however, the N-effect, which states that the motivation/intensity of competition increases as the number of competitors decreases3, plays a much larger effect. Perhaps this is the reason why game design today focuses far less on the high-score model, which, although still existent, has declined significantly in popularity. For example, take the FPS (first-person shooter) Call of Duty: several players on two teams duke it out on a battlefield, intimately acquainted with the fantasy situation. As I watched my friends play, I could only describe their energy as a sort of focused intensity, expressing great frustration when their avatar dies or when their team loses and great elation whenever they successfully “frag” a particularly persistent enemy player. 2D fighting games like Street Fighter take this to the extreme: there is one person competing directly, and I emphasize directly, with the other player, turning competition up to the absolute maximum. It boils down to an extremely fast-paced, iterated game of rock-paper-scissors, weighted in favor of superior mechanical skill and heavily in favor of superior mental prediction ability. I suggest, then, that the evolution of competition in games has been mostly actualized. Although there will always be niche markets for competitive models of every type, innovation in player interactivity will probably act as the stage-setter for future games.

Screencap of a battle in Street Fighter IV.

If this is the case, then a deeper issue is at play. A commonality among all the games I played during my visit is that they were designed almost purely for the purpose of entertainment. As pieces of procedural rhetoric⁴, they fall short because they do not deliver any lasting messages to the mind other than “we are fun, come back and play another time.” Which, depending on your perspective, could be either a fortunate or unfortunate status quo. There are some who will advocate that games should be pure entertainment, lest they lose their fun factor. And they have a point, because games that are designed with some sort of social agenda usually fail to capture the audience they want to capture – gamers – due to a variety of factors ranging from poor production value to shoddy design that ultimately make them unfun. More visionary types suggest that, should there come a way for these issues to be resolved, and they believe there will, then a new age of social progress will unfold. Myself, I have high hopes for this, but when it comes down to the heart of the matter, I want to be entertained, and I’m not playing something that won’t entertain me, be it an arcade game, a console game, or the newest form of procedural rhetoric lauded by activists and academics alike.

Huizinga – Homo Ludens ¹

http://www.twingalaxies.com/²

Garcia and Tor – The N-Effect ³

Bogost – The Rhetoric of Video Games ⁴