Gavin Findlay - Article
It happened yet again, the argument all computer game aficionados (nerds to put it simply) end up endlessly rehashing over and over with the release of every great new game, is it a classic? My answer has always been a definitive “no”. The reason for this, beyond starting an always entertaining argument, is that I don’t think computer games as an artistic medium have progressed to the level where classics games really exist. This may sound like blasphemy of the most heinous sort after all most gamers can name a dozen favourite titles they consider classic but are they really ‘classics’? It all depends on how you define classic, I personally cheat and use a dictionary. “A work generally considered to be of the highest rank or excellence and of enduring significance.” Enduring significance, this is where I have the problem with the idea of ‘classic computer games’.
I feel it is probably worth adding my own thoughts on what makes a work of art, literature or music classic, even if I can’t do it as concisely as the dictionary (screw it it’s my article). For something to be considered a classic it has to have some element to it that is timeless, that appeals decades, centuries or even in some cases millennia later. Despite changes in language and society something about these works appeals to people regardless of how long ago they were created. The same cannot be said of computer games, much as I love Zelda: Ocarina of Time I seriously doubt that a thousand years from now people will still be playing it (partly because of that damned water temple level) while I suspect Homer’s The Odyssey will still be forced onto bored students till the end of time itself. Some may say that this is a hell of a high standard to hold computer games but if every other art form can find some timeless element that always appeal to people then so should computer games. If computer games cannot overcome their humble beginnings and achieve this level of artistic credibility then they shall forever remain in the realm of electrical goods with all the artistic merit of a household vacuum cleaner.
So why have computer games failed to attain this level of artistic respectability? Well that’s what this article is really about; I spend vast portions of my life on computer games happily pissing away the hours on what many people still consider a juvenile medium and I can’t help wondering why it is so looked down upon. One of the big issues, I believe is the benchmark, the standard by which we judge modern computer games and the frankly ridiculous rate that it is pushed forward. This may sound contradictory as an ever increasing standard should increase the chance of some developer spawning a truly classic game but the constant advance means even games that have been out barely a year seem dated, ruining our long term appreciation of them, there is always something shiny and new to distract us. This is a strange by-product of the nature of technological progress which gave rise to Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is a fascinating observation that the power/memory of computers tend to double in capacity every two years. This constant rush of technology means that games are behind the technology curve as soon as they are released with everyone looking for the next technological leap.
One of the best examples I can think of is Call of Duty Modern Warfare an good first person shooter overshadowed within a year by a multitude of other games like it; Gears of War 2, Battlefield: Bad Company, Farcry 2, Haze (and many more) and less than two years later a sequel, each boasting some improvement, from size to length, destructibility to lighting, graphics to game play. Modern Warfare was overshadowed by the games that followed it, the endless march of technology ruthlessly trampling that which came before it. As soon as the disk has been ejected it is back in the case and being promptly ignored in favour of the next shiny new game. We as gamers are spoiled by the ever increasing level of games design.
Not only are we spoiled by this torrent of technology but it is a disadvantage to the games industry as it is constantly playing catch up with itself. The normal development cycle for a game is around two years. The difference between the level of computer games technology between when a game begins development and when it is released is often pretty big. If you compare a current game to one released a couple of years ago the difference is often very noticeable like the difference between Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Uncharted 2. It is impossible for a computer game to fully utilise current, cutting edge technology as by the very nature of computer game development when time a game comes out it already out of date.
This issue of technological progress is not just about graphics but also about techniques used in the creation of games. Things like the player interface, AI, controls and a vast amount of other areas which have improved, often in steps so small they are barely noticeable but they are still much better now than they were. A couple of weeks ago I had a go on an old copy of Medal of Honour: Frontline. Unsurprisingly the graphics would be laughable bad today even for a Nintendo DS. What really shocked me were things like the controls which felt incredibly clunky and unresponsive, the button layout also felt illogical, I normally died from my inability to figure out which button does what. The storytelling was also primitive most of it being done with typewriter writing, page after boring page of it. Again these features seem so dated but the game was just eight years old, there is no other artistic medium where a piece is so obviously outdated in such a short period of time.
Perhaps this is no surprise considering the history of computer games and how short it is, having only really begun in the mid seventies. In just under thirty five years computer games have come a long way, an immeasurable distance even, with current games almost unrecognisable when compared with their forbearers. When you consider that the first popular computer game, the game that began the games industry, was Pong one has to wonder at just how far games have come. There is no other medium that has progressed at such an astounding pace as computer games. If you look at the difference between the first motion pictures of the 1880’s and where the film industry was in 1910-1920 period the gulf was not that vast. While editing had been introduced and films were now split into scenes they were not that different, both were without sound and the actual method of film projection was near identical. If the evolution of film had occurred at the same breakneck pace as the games industry Star Wars would have been released around the same time as the First World War.
The relative newness of the computer games medium may be the underlying cause of a lot of the problems that have stopped the creation of a truly classic computer game. Not only are standards ever increasing in the games industry but so are the ideas behind the games and the techniques used to create them. Ideas on what computer games should be and how best to implement that with the available technology. One example is “quicktime events” that have flourished like a well composted bed of weeds. For those of you unsure quicktime events are basically a cut scene that has a random button bashing sequence put in it with bad things happening if you don’t get it right (generally death). They were introduced ten years ago with in the game Shenmue in 1999, now quicktime events have spread like syphilis and can be found in a vast amount of games. Ideas like this are constantly changing computer games design; it is normally for the better, even though quicktime events have become hideously overused.
Even the very core of games have changed, in most genres this change has been dramatic while some genres have all but died out. The platformer is almost non-existent on the current consoles excluding the Wii which is about half a decade behind other consoles. The most positive of these evolutions has been the first person shooter. Nowadays the average first person shooter is short but packed with action; sub missions, planting explosives, chases, assassinations and vehicles sequences. The script for one of these games normally resembles that of an action packed blockbuster, albeit one with shit dialogue, crummy story and an excessive amount of explosives (on reflection that describes about 95% of action packed blockbusters). Sure some FPS games are in danger of transforming it to a sack of barely related gimmick sequences, half baked plots and too many explosions but at the moment it’s all good. When you compare this with the fathers of all first person shooters Wolfenstein 3D and Doom released just over a decade and a half ago the genre is so different. In these games the only break in the endless, pixelated run-and-gun game play came from either doors or getting lost and there was far too many of both. Similarly adventure games have transformed from point-and-click The Secret of Monkey Island to Tomb Raider in less than a decade. No other medium has experienced such turbulent changes in genre, in music jazz is still jazz, modern rock is still rock.
This constant technologic arms race has not just changed the way video games are judged or the way they play it has led to the factor that I feel is most responsible for the lack of any truly classic game. Better technology has become the obsession of the games industry. Every games developer seems focused on improving resolution, texturing and every other aspect of games design except that which really determines the timeless nature of true art, the human drama. I’m not after some kind of Macbeth RPG but great art always makes us reflect on some aspect of the human condition. True classics are timeless because they speak to the part of people that never changes and that part is not really impressed by fancy graphics. The stories of most games are still lacking in any sort of relatable human drama most of the character are clichéd at best, fucking stupid at worse. They are rarely likable as they are so one dimensional that they barely register as people, more like walking plot hooks barely able to spout poor one-liners. For all the characters in modern games have incredible facial animations they rarely have anything worth saying.
So is the lack of a truly classic computer game a poor reflection on the games industry? In my opinion definitely not, I count myself as a gamer and thoroughly enjoy the current crop of games. This is not a condemnation of the artistic merit of computer games, far from it; the medium is still incredibly young and has only recently gained the level of technology necessary to transform it from mere entertainment into an artistic medium. There is no way one could really feel much empathy for the pixelated creations of previous decades, it’s hard to feel too attached to Miss Pacman.
And the computer games of today have gotten very close to creating a truly classic game. Modern first person shooters like Modern Warfare have the pacing and action packed story that is getting close to that of a good action film, Uncharted 2 while no Indiana Jones is clearly trying to aspire to match the great adventure films of the past and the Final Fantasy series are filled with ambitious, epic stories that could one day rival even the Lord of the Rings, hell Final Fantasy XIII even had remotely relatable characters! I’m confident that a true classic game is closer than it ever has been.
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