Mature Games
Let’s try to transform videogames from smut to class.
Image originates on flickr.
Mature games are the ones you’d like to share with family and friends without being embarassed about it. The current equivalent of mature content in gaming is porn and splatter movies. It isn’t satire, it isn’t grindhouse. It’s less mature content period. It’s desparation to justify the own work as more than just a toy. “Look! Naked chicks with huge racks get rescued by space marines saving the world or vice versa. Isn’t that mature?” No it’s maturity like a 13 year old would illustrate it. No 18+ rating turns it into valuable mature content. It’s dumb fun and it may even be unique but it’s not a mature content yet. Not even close. Even games wich target a mature audience, still lack years of experience how to craft and stage a piece of fiction for the rumored 30+ audience. Either that or this demographic never read or saw a genuine piece of fiction.
The best analogy to use here is Comic fiction. It took decades until we got Watchmen and a new term - graphic novel - until the medium could be read without feeling embarassed when outgrown the core audience. I’m all for dumb fun entertainment. I’m all for less serious content but i can not stand current games anymore, that try to sell themselves as high fiction for mature players and the first thing you do is blowing someones head off, throwing cheesy one-liners to your virtual female companion, whose clothes are already shredded, allowing to view her special assets. P-lease?!
One of the main issues about this is the creation process. You do not have one creative authority. Even worse: many experienced creators quit the industry way before being old enough to think outside the box. What’s called Game Designer today many times is about juggling numbers in complex systems. It’s not about delivering fiction and outside expertise still is an exception. The medium grew on programmers doing the writing. We should be way past this point, but we aren’t. Technology still sucks the most of the financial and creative ressources. A film starts with a script. A game starts with a document and or protoype demoing the mechanics of the game. The fiction gets ductaped onto when the project gets greenlit.
There’s light at the end of the tunnel. We now witness the market to break into many new fragments. Game budgets plateaued and technology is losing focus. Games can be created by very small teams again and they are. This is where we do see real progress. On the other side i also believe that the single human being still gains importance and the rockstar developer image will lead future progress in mainstream productions, especially when those guys are parents and maybe start to think about the smut that is polluting their children. Digital distribution is a key factor too. Publishers lose power again and studios may be able to create their Watchmen instead of the X-Men their publisher wants. Don’t get me wrong, i love me some smut once in a while but it’s not going to be my bread & butter for gaming content anymore. I wish there would be more and better alternatives. There’s exceptions to the fomula of course, but your average mature game still offers a very immature experience.
12 Kommentare
Had yesterday the exact same conversation with a friend. And I also can’t stand games these days. I’m tired of all that immature storytelling - well, if there is even one - and lack of being taken seriously. I don’t want new graphics, I don’t want more technical improvements, I don’t want the next new shooter/action-adventure/athousandtimesseen game. I want to be taken seriously, I want a game that gives me the freedom to experience a personel story and a story that doesn’t have to be explained in every way. I want a real game for grown ups. Not Heavy Rain.
Oh, what I forgot to mention: Did you try the Indie-Game Sleep is Death by Jason Rohrer? Yes it is Indie and OK it’s not the perfect game, but it does what I want. And I don’t even mean the freedom to do literally what you want, but to get a story which can be so deep and personel, that I can’t play anything else anymore without seeing there mature failure. Every quote in sleepisdeath.net is true. I didn’t believe it either.
Meiner Meinung nach ist das mal wieder ein Zeichen dafür, dass Du mittlerweile scheinbar einfach keinen Bock mehr auf Computerspiele allgemein hast. Gerade im Moment ist sehr gute Unterhaltung für Erwachsene erschienen wie Heavy Rain, Read Dead Redemption und Alan Wake - nur eben nicht für den PC. Was erwartest Du denn von einem interaktiven Medium?
Komisch, dass sich immer die selben Leute beschweren. Es ist doch im Moment so gut wie noch nie in der Spielewelt.
And it’s pretty significant, that there’s no word in German für “graphic novel” as well as for “mature games” …
When ist come to “Heavy Rain, Read Dead Redemption and Alan Wake” … sorry, these games still have the visual and narrative qualities of adolescents art. Imho, the problem of many Gamers as well as of the gaming industrie is, that they never really experience real works of art in other media … even Shadow of the Colossus still has more of a Manga than of a Novel.
And also I humbly suggest a text from my own Blog on the topic: “Die Pest”.
I actually fear, that we will not see the rise “mature games” in the way you define it. Maybe in a hundred years or so, but we won’t see it. Games in general have a far too bad standing in our Society. They are only accepted, when they ar sport, or you play for money, like Poker. Board Games … although many people like them … are still a Fun for Geeks. Although more people have PCs and Consoles at than they have Boardgames, Computer- and Video-Games still will never leave the realm of “immature”, “casual” and “meaningless”, not matter how much sex or gore is in there.
Actually I think, the term “Casual Gaming” is misleading. There are no Games, which aren’t casual Games.
I should mention a few good examples. The poster child for a mature game always is Shadow of the Collossus. It’s the best subtle example i can find. The game is so different just by not including what you would expect from such a game. It’s quite brilliant and holds up very well.
Xenogears carries a very deep and complex story arc almost into the finish. The game stumbles in the end, getting caught in too many characters, but still. There’s very few stereotypes and many working twists. Graphics aside highly recommended.
Rockstar has come a long way. Their GTA franchise is too locked up in the average demographic trap. They need to deliver the hooker kills, language, violence and oversaturation. Their side franchises though pretty much deliver on a more subtle level with Read Dead Redemption right now being a not only a very good game but also one that respects its audience and characters. Again there’s subtle elements that stick out. Their current hero has a real agenda and a noble one so to speak. It doesn’t need Western hooker kills to draw this character. Bully is very good for what it is. This game is full of stereotypes but they are all executed with care and twists and the game doesn’t expect you to kill them all.
One of the most careful delivered games in that category is the Half-Life franchise and to me Valve is playing in another league here by using a cheap trick though. They build everything through environments, a silent hero without any surface and the most realistic side characters in any game. The character of Alyx alone symbolizes that this game is different. Alyx isn’t oversexualized, she doesn’t need a protector, she’s smart and now got a story arc that probably will pay off big. The best thing, Alyx isn’t so special, every character in that game just works by doing less. There’s very little dialog, there’s no cutscene and still it creates a detailed world without many plot wholes. Valve has the best writers in the industry for sure.
I mentioned Heavy Rain once. This game fails so much by trying to be something that it’s not - a movie - that it sacrifices too much. Similar to the game this studio released prior Heavy Rain. Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy started good, punched you in the face (“Want to save his life?”) and in the end just got ridiculous. Heavy Rain is similar. It tries to be so mature so hard that to me is just a string of copied movie scenes with a story twist that makes the developer scream “BECAUSE WE CAN!”.
In my nostalgia older games in general offered the experience in terms of text and value. Today visuals many times should cover weak spots in the script and that’s sad. Imagine Heavy Rain with less impressive visuals and the game breaks down instantly.
I’ll say it like this.
Within the group of my oldest and best friends (all born around 73 -77), I was the first one to have a computer and for a long time, I actually was the only one. I also was the first one to have a Playstation and up today there is still only one other (!) who has a console (a Wii).
I share a lot with these guys and we like the same stuff. Music, Movies, Books even Graphic Novels are pretty popular us. And there have been quite a few evenings when we played Playstation together (mostly Twisted Metal 2, Rollcage and Soulcalibur).
But … if I would show them GTA, Half Live, Hard Rain or even Shadow of the colossus, I’m pretty sure they would never ever ever put these Games on the same Level as “Hana Bi”, “The Godfather” or even the quite entertaining “Big Lebowski”. If you just look at these games like someone how hasn’t played Games for years and years and years they just look like shit … and I just talk about how they LOOK like. I would not dare to talk about the stories.
Games seem to them like the Crap from Michael Bay and James Cameron – brainless and artless Entertainment for the stupid masses … and compared to the movies, books, albums and graphic novels we usually consume, I can’t help but say: They are.
Don’t get me wrong. I love games. And I’d love to see them take up shakespearian spirit. But today I doubt they ever will. Of course, there may come the game, that will bee for Games, what Art Spiegelmans Mouse for Comics. But I doubt that it will reach more than a hand full of people. And I’m sure, it won’t change the status of Games.
Addition: With “I would not dare to talk about the stories.” I mean, that they are even worse, than the games look like.
And … Marcs opinion and overall position towards games is the best proof, that games will never get above, of what they are today.
That’s what I read out of ben_’s post: There may be allready a generation gap here? I can totally understand, that your friends wouldn’t take it serious, because it’s obvious that these games suck on the so many levels. Sure they’re fun and cool and pretty neat looking, but there also so very boring and simple in so many ways. But when it comes to taking up the shakespearian spirit I just won’t agree with you, I’ll even say games will pick it up and they will push it so much further, that one day great movies and maybe - I’m not too deep in that part - literature will look like ancient forms of storytelling. It may be OUR form for the great stories to be told and we may see OUR own Shakespeare. I believe this because I know what this form of storytelling can do and I believe that I don’t know the half of it. And it’s also because I grew up with games, because I saw the change from 2d to 3d, because I saw that we don’t need great graphics to tell great stories. That’s from my point of view the biggest problem: Today graphic is so fucking important anything else just doesn’t seem to count if the graphics are bombastic. And people believe that. But why? I mean we can play Monkey Island these days obviously, why can‘t we make these games anymore? Why is there no game studio, that uses those “old” but beautiful style and gives us great stories? Great Adventures… Well the answer is so easy: There’s no money to make.
I can see why so much people are so tired and I can understand why people say these are the best times for games. The problem is what ben_ said: The word “game” is wrong and missleading. But then… Is this really the problem?
It’s not that these games suck period they just DO not deliver what they promise. It’s like buying Citizen Kane only to find Transformers 2 within the box and just like many of those games Transformers 2 technically is very remarkable. It’s just not mature content. Seriously i don’t expect Hamlet-level of awesome just something upwards Aliens.
It is a generational gap of gamers. There’s 3 big leaps for gaming, every single one widening the market and splitting the audience so to speak. The first serious commercial push is the 8-Bit Generation, marked by consoles (Atari, Nintendo) abroad and by homecomputers (C64) in Europe. This audience grew up with games up to the 3D era, that only could deliver an experience by text. The LucasArts adventures are a prime example of this. Those games live by the text and that’s it. There’s no fallback to visuals or sound. When your script sucked your game failed. It really demands a higher level of commitment to make an 8-Bit game work as an experience from both developer and player.
3D and PlayStation changed everything. Graphics and sound became a focus that could cover for weak ideas and boy it was great the first years. The majority of todays gaming audience is grounded on that era of gaming. There’s less demand for a player to commit to a 3D experience instead of 8-Bit visuals. It wasn’t needed to cover your ass with good scripts as long as your visuals looked “cool”. With graphics becoming more expensive and important, games in the mid 90s till mid 00s only picked up old ideas and packed them with new visuals. It worked so well, cause the core audience now never played the original idea 10 years earlier. The same thing happens in cinema right now, with 70s and 80s franchises getting remade for a new audience. It works here too although the result is always worse, it still makes money for the studios.
I don’t buy the fact, that real mature games could not make money. Heavy Rain is the new Monkey Island it just sucks compared to it but it sold nevertheless. There is an audience afterall it’s just harder to develope and harder to sell for than the 10th clone with marines killing aliens.
@ben: “But … if I would show them GTA, Half Live, Hard Rain or even Shadow of the colossus, I’m pretty sure they would never ever ever put these Games on the same Level as “Hana Bi”, “The Godfather” or even the quite entertaining “Big Lebowski”. If you just look at these games like someone how hasn’t played Games for years and years and years they just look like shit … and I just talk about how they LOOK like. I would not dare to talk about the stories.”
That’s because games are not movies. Games should not be about visuality but about interactivity. Watching Plants vs. Zombies is totally boring and not entertaining and the story is told in one sentence. So why would anyone like to buy it ? Why would anyone who watched Scarface and all Miami Vice episodes buy GTA Vice city?
Because you play it and not watch it.
Half life 2 is such a great game because it puts interactivity above narrative. It never takes the control away from the player and therefore never loses the big advantage that games have in comparison to movies.
And in my opinion one of the reasons why Heavy Rain is so crapy is that it fails do deliver a gameplay experience that makes it worth playing even if the story is totally unreasonable. It was more like a movie with forced button smashing and not a interactive experience that I expect from a game. And there lies the problem : Most thrillers have a more reasonable storyline and are better in evoking emotions than Heavy Rain is but I can’t think of movies that are able to deliver the same experience as playing GTA, Shadow of the Colossus, Half Life 2 or Plants vs Zombie does.
Movies are the most advanced medium, when it comes to using a short time-frame in a very effective way. Written fiction for books isn’t crafted to be consumed in one reading. Movies are. Games? Not so much.
I’m sure Heavy Rain would be much better if condensed into one short 2-hour episode. The flaws of its fiction become so transparent cause the game tries to play longer than it should. I know just as many players that really like Heavy Rain and it depends on what you expect from a “game”. I do not expect games to as an 10 hour-ish reality escape. I’ll give you two hours max to tell a story or 1000 hours max to offer me a brilliant system to master.
Collosus is so brilliant, cause it is a very small idea that’s not overstretched within the timeframe of the game. For most studios the whole story of Collosus would be used for the first act only. Less is so much more and this game may be the best example. You don’t do much in the game, it doesn’t explain much for a very long time until it all plays out in the end and leaves an impression, that no epic RPG could succeed. I can not think of a movie that offers a similar experience. Maybe that’s the best compliment for a game.
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