Triumph In Blog

The place of the video game as an intellectual subject

On the subject of video games as an art form, I feel like I’ve already put a few carts before a few horses. I have spoken about the perception of video games and a little about their design, but have never laid many foundations. I regret that some of my previous points may simply come across as spite. This is my personal blog, and I do feel inclined to be vulgar and honest; to this end, I have written a few “essays” about the bloated hog-public of America and how I believe it has betrayed arts and culture, with few concessions. I don’t necessarily take that back, but what I regret is that I came out of the gate with it. I believe it’s a lot more valuable and a lot less annoying to approach video games as important, intellectual subjects in the Marxist sense.

What are the true strengths and weaknesses of the form? How are visions or worldviews presented through a video game? In definite terms, there has to be some kind of ideal form or forms of video games from which we can build a framework to understand them. With so many different attitudes in game design, and a world where video game production is no longer limited to only specific groups of people, why continue to make them? I want to describe how video games can be useful in the “dialectical conception of the world,” (Marx, Hegel) i.e. how can a video game approach “the social existence of men” (Godard) in a way that isn’t already obvious? We know games can bring people together, but what of it? My thesis is that the ability of games to simulate their own worlds in a more thorough way than other forms is what allows them to be more militant, in the sense that they can sort of force people, through interactive mechanics, to engage with an ideology.

As I have pointed out previously, video games are universally understood as vectors for “fun,” popular in the sense that their earliest forms were parlor tricks meant to extract coins from people who wanted to test hand dexterity and reflexes, if nothing else. “Fun” is just not specific enough. “Because it’s fun” is insufficient as an ideal when faced with the question of “why make a video game.” A drawing of the rat fink driving a hot rod would be “fun,” so why not make that? Or, if the interactivity and competition themselves are what you’re after, why not just get involved with a sport?

Multiplayer video games may often be compared to sports, and in a sense transcend some of the logistical, physical limitations of sports. But, as designers, there are far more concerns than simple social interactions and “fairness.” Just like in sport, rules can be set arbitrarily outside of the designers intentions for video games (this is how most competitive fighting games operate,) and the game acts more as an interface than a piece of “art.” This warrants its own whole world of writing, and we’re still skipping some basic concerns. Multiplayer games qua games have a lot of individual details that may seem unnecessary if we think of them only as replacements for other activities. Street Fighter, for example, has a whole lot more to it than simply “simulating martial arts,” and it’s quite far away from real martial arts as it happens. Video games are made with the intent of providing individual players a certain experience.

The theatre must have an idea of what is wanted of it. (Brecht) It is obvious that a video game can contain a multitude of abstract things. The comparison between video game and sport makes it clear that there is an expressive quality to the former, and it is not necessarily an “alternative.” There is a concern for audience, but more than that there is an impetus to capture something intangible, regardless of its basest functionality. Not just “why make a game,” but also “why play a game?” Because we are attempting to engage with a game’s world in order to gain a new perspective through an artist’s model of reality. Experiencing the details of the world they make at our own pace allows our model of reality to struggle against theirs to unify. (Lenin) It’s difficult to discern whether or not a game is something real or not, in the sense that it can only exist with real input but also its existence is built upon fictional, predetermined responses to said input.

More things are possible than simple play. That is the only absolute certainty–the introduction of sound and vision to gameplay adds complexity to what we think of as “game theory.” It may sometimes be better to make something that is unfair or difficult to interact with, in order to convey a certain feeling. Do we only want validation or comfort from art? Not necessarily. In this sense, video games are more than simply stand-ins for other forms. Multiplayer games may not be analogous to sports, for example, in the sense that the specific worlds designed for them are often far more unique and complicated than in real life. They are not simple reconstructions of reality. (Dreyer) In a way, it may be impossible to represent reality in a video game due to the inherent layer of obfuscation between player and game. The video game is an inherently alienating form. In a film, you may see someone jump off the ground–a recording of what is real. (Brecht) Even ignoring aspirations to create images that represent more than simple, productive images, (Baudrillard) or what things really are, (Brecht, Godard) film can at least manage the simple task of generating a real image at its base. A video game cannot be adjudicated on these terms: seeing someone jump off the ground requires an additional push of a button, often with some kind of prompt to do so.

To play a video game is to be constantly reminded of the interface in your hands. Even a game or “visual novel” that relies on pre-rendered graphics progressing through a story or experience without much user input, the interface is still necessary. A video game is a “Brechtian” subject automatically, being incapable of pretending to be anything but a representation of a type of reality, often intentionally different from our own. This gives a video game, theoretically, the power to expose the player’s own perception, and present an alternate model constructed from alternative cultures, values, or even mechanics.

Furthermore, a video game is a piece of software, but a film is an image, a novel is a word, a song is a sound. The format is massively scalable and easily manipulable. This complexity is part of what allows it to achieve things other forms cannot, as there is almost no basic form of a video game that doesn’t require combining existing forms. Hence the name, “video” and “game.” The techniques of other forms may be employed and combined at will to create a wholistic experience that can both repel and consume a player. “Progression” may not even be the goal, and a game may simply aim to create a temporary space in the complete control of its creator, with its own universe separate from our own that in some way instructs us as to its designer’s wants and needs.

What we are moving towards is the idea of immersion. Video game designers and critics have discussed this for many years, and it is a difficult idea to pin down. In an answer to some of my earlier queries, the ideal of a video game ought to be the curation of and development of a unique, coherent, and consistent fictional world–an “immersive” world–within an interactable package. Such a world would be capable of conveying an ideology and experimenting with its consequences, allowing the player to be an interloper in the world who might develop their own analysis of their actions and learn something about themselves. To immerse in the surreal is to understand your own world as a function of perception, and question the nature of detail and analysis. (Breton) To immerse in the real is to understand how others perceive your own world and how your perception of it may be altered by external stimuli. Metaphysics versus dialectics. (Lenin)

Both things are possible within the realm of the video game’s world, but they require different perspectives on design. To think of immersion is to think as a designer with the perspective of an ideal player in mind, but the player will not always be the same. The same player may not even be the same between individual instances of play. To make a game as an intellectual subject, i.e. to make a game with intent–a game that is “meaningful”–we must play the game while we are making it, and play the game after making it. (Vertov) The intellectual game is one that is cognizant of the fact that the mechanics of controlling the game keep the player away, so we must find a way to diminish them. All possible player outcomes must be controlled and accounted for through rigorous testing and consistency.

Total fictional immersion is generally the “end goal.” To attempt to make a game adjacent to reality appears to be redundant, as the player is, once again, aware of their alienation already. How much more aware can we be that what we are seeing is a representation? This has been attempted to some success before, most notably by Hideo Kojima and Gouichi Suda (back when they actually put effort into making games, haha). And yet, it comes across as masturbatory in a sense, because what can we learn about reality within a video game that we couldn’t simply learn from asking ourselves why we want to play it? That is a deeply facile question, and almost always boils down to where we started: “because it looks fun.” This isn’t a question that’s never worth litigating, but there’s just so little to it. Spec Ops: The Line dared to ask “what does it say about us that we want to play violent shooter games that simulate killing people in war?” Well, it says the same thing every shooting gallery at a carnival in the last 2 centuries does: people like to test their aim! The images of real war crime and genocide in that game always come across as cheap, because we are constantly aware of the fact that the people depicted aren’t real. Not to mention the fact that this game came out in 2011, ages after the war it depicted had already been condemned by every serious adult on the planet. This attempt to generate a sense of reality backfired before the game came out, when players simply watched the news. Nothing has been added to the discussion, and no revolutionary acts have been committed.

To circumvent this obviousness with FMV or other recorded components is to simply reiterate what other forms have already made well apparent. To make a video game should be to utilize its specific complexity as a tool to overwhelm us with ideology. Games as we have seen so far are primarily tools of metaphysics in this sense, teaching us about our own desires and prejudices but failing to assimilate into material reality. To make games politically (Godard) is not the same as making anything else politically. Counterintuitively, reality must be shunned in favor of building entire simulacra from political ideals, and developing their hypothetical scénarios from political positions taken, adhered to, and followed to logical ends. Representations of reality must be decided upon and sequenced such that all possible player outcomes are accounted for and consistent, then tested rigorously, or even changed and updated as reality is re-evaluated.

Thus a video game may not be able to instruct us about political reality so much as about political theory. The ideal form of a game is an immersive, personal experience that allows a designer(s) to explore and convey their ideology in a more categorical way, performing the same intellectual task in a vacuum as any political film (Godard) that merely summarizes. But beyond summary, a video game can suggest analysis: summarized information may be judged, and a player made to live through a potential judgment. The discussion of theoretical politics and their consequences is not worthless when the groundwork is well informed. Disco Elysium is a good example of this, creating a world parallel to our own where the outcomes of the designers’ (some kind of leftcoms,) preferred revolutionary scenarios are explored through characters, events, and places with tangible connections to reality (use of real language, real technology, references to existing historical events or art movements, etc.). The stakes are small for the characters and the theoretical revolution has already passed, and an enormous amount of dialogue is constructed that attempts to encompass all the different potential post-revolution attitudes, speculated from existing revolutionary documents.

The game is no fool’s errand. It is immersive in that its analogues to recognizable things are intriguing for their subtle differences, and discovering which fictional things are meant to be stand-ins for real things in a slow, tedious process is how you are meant to make your own critique of the developers’ worldview. Your interactions with Klaasje, for example, instruct you on the progression of heteronormativity in a socialist world: what is to be made of Kim and Harry’s response to her predicament, and how does a player circumvent (if they wish) the game’s assertion that someone like Harry seems to be unable to quiet his own visceral sexual bias against her? In these instances, we can also learn something about other, existing forms outside video games. The story of the game unfolding through branching dialogue choices the player governs between characters is not a new idea, but the way the game limits the story’s actual dictation to you via random games of chance or the passage of real time: this is the heart and soul of role-playing. You are asked not only to engage with the writers’ perceptions, but also to internalize them and critique them, so you may respond in turn. In the literal sense, this is how we ideally engage with any and all narrative fiction.

It is indeed a struggle to say that video games can be an important part of a revolutionary process. They are scholarly, in a sense, and germane less to the future and more to discussion of the past or present, from which visions of the future are constructed (“relative truth”). These visions may be deep and vast, and more effectively construed than via any other format: video games are emotivity above all else. No other form contains the power to provoke at the level of a video game. Their political utility may not necessarily be to “show the people in struggle” (Godard) but to capture a literal sensation of struggle, which can be conjured in a player. To play a game is to have a willingness to perform acts against one’s will. These may be two paths to the same thing.

When spending a long time playing an engrossing, intelligent video game (of which there are few,) one may come to the end of the game’s intrigue or simply the end of its technological limit, and realize that it is the more puerile, more “fun” games that are now like glycerin. (Straub) Perhaps even the other forms! Immersion can be bewitching. You may realize that the separation of media into categories may wholesale be a thing of the past. You may find yourself willing to simulate things you had never considered even in dreams, by virtue of being presented with dilemmas of varying caliber in a new context. There is an inherent conflict in the giving of oneself to the world of a game while also maintaining one’s own beliefs as familiar comparators. (Adorno) You are required to interlope in a game’s world to extract its value; can what is intended as a dream bring any harm to reality? (Cocteau, Adorno)

I have described one case (Spec Ops: The Line) where I believe the answer is “no,” and one case (Disco Elysium) where I believe the answer is “yes.” The difference between them is in their approach to design: the former is made in a way where the game’s mechanics are highlighted and commented on formally, sacrificing the idea of a whole worldview in favor of cheaply provoking to make a very simple “point.” The latter is oriented around incredibly simple mechanics that are woven into the game’s fiction, and the impetus in the player is to think more about the world they are in and why it was constructed in the first place. The former teaches us only about a brief point in video game history–the hypocrisy and jingoism of 2010s war shooters, something fairly obvious and also unimportant, largely. The latter teaches us about many things from many angles. As Marxists, we may learn about other approaches to Marxism; as writers, we may learn about the function of detail in the written form; as psychologists, we may learn about the perception of the drug addict, and what our main character’s portrayal has to do with the political circumstances of his creators. It is no surprise that the latter was made over a number of many years, adapted from novels and role-playing systems intended to be used separately, but woven together into a game world. It was criticized before writing, made during development and made after development. (Vertov)

Through these diatribes, I am only prepared to say that the immersive approach to a game is its most ideal form. A game should be made with the intention of drawing a player in and using their input to an advantage, providing that player an alternate perspective which instructs them at their own pace. Video games are like an expanded form of surrealism, where entire hallucinated worlds may be traversed, and the inclusion of the player in the world’s system may be able to bring the crucial damage to their image (Cocteau, Adorno) necessary to overcome the mental barriers to new sensation, emotion, or knowledge. At present, video games may concern political subjects and succeed in providing them vital context, but they are more useful as psychological or metaphysical devices. There is a limit to how militant the development of a video game can be when “by any means necessary” excludes most of the means by which they are accessed.

I hope to someday reconsider that stance, but I still believe there is intellectual value in video games. To make them with intent is to make them not to waste time or to supplant existing forms, but to build a complex system of struggle that dispenses ideas through the learning process. Competing models aren’t necessarily wrong: making a game to be “entertaining” is not a crime, but it is certainly not useful. There must be a higher, more universal ideal from which video games can be constructed outside the constraints of their cultural niche as toys or hobbies. The place of the video game as an intellectual subject is to synthesize existing forms into a complete world from which an ideology can be discerned. With respect to that ideology, for lack of a better way of putting it: mileage may vary. As video game development becomes more accessible and technology continues to adapt, the place of video games as containers for ideology may progress into something more–perhaps it already has, and the difficulty of curation has left some of the most forward-thinking games stranded.

Whatever the case may be, I have an optimism about their perception moving forward. The only revolution for which video games may currently provide service is their own revolution, against the ailing AAA games industry that strangles us all, and prevents video games from being considered for their true potential. In my brightest hopes, I want desperately to re-read this in ten years and think myself myopic. Then again, knowing me, I will probably re-read this in ten years and simply edit it to make myself look less stupid. But don’t tell anyone I told you that