Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Invisible Indies: David Cage is Right
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Games: At the recent DICE conference which just took place
in Las Vegas, David Cage gave a speech which outlined nine points supporting
his message that ‘the industry needs to grow up’.
For further details on what he said, there's a great summary
here at Kotaku, or you can watch the entire speech here at YouTube.
Predictably, his comments angered many people and I've been
seeing comments across the gaming spectrum disagreeing with him or trying to
prove him wrong in various ways. The most recent was this piece from sharp
writer @EthanGach, blogging over at IGN.
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| David Cage |
Gach raises a good point in that there are certainly people
within the indie/small gaming sphere creating the types of experiences that
Cage suggests we’re lacking, but holding up these projects as proof is missing
the point of what Cage is saying. The way I see it, it's a matter of perspective.
To players like Gach, myself, or anyone who pays even half
attention to the indie scene, I have no doubt that a long list of titles could
be given that show hope for the games industry. However, when viewed from
outside (and please forgive the term) hardcore circles, those titles might as
well not exist.
To people at large in the world, or who don't play games on
a regular basis, their conception of what games are is quite a bit different
than the conception held by those of us who play them daily, blog about them,
or review them.
When at work or at social events, I can recall several
conversations where fellow parents were coming to me as ‘that
guy who makes games’ (sic) and seeking my advice whether Game X or Game Y was ‘safe’
for kids to play, or what I thought about the current level of violence in
videogames. In almost every instance, the person asking me spoke about
games as something dangerous, or as something that was bad for their children
despite having no current personal experience themselves to base an opinion on.
Just to make sure that was still the case, I decided to do a
little non-scientific research and asked several people who were not gamers
what they thought of the industry. The friendliest response I got was something
along the lines of ‘I don't know what those games are about, but my kids spend
way too much time playing them’ to ‘they're really violent and have too much
sex’. This latter theme was more popular, and it proves Cage’s point -- despite
the existence of titles like Journey, Dear Esther, The Unfinished Swan, To The Moon, and many
others, these experiences are utterly unknown to the outside world.
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| What non-gamers see. |
When asked to give detail about the perceived sex and
violence as viewed by these non-gamers, the most common example given was Grand
Theft Auto. Every single person mentioned that the player ‘gets points’ for ‘killing
cops’, ‘beating up hookers’ or ‘having sex’. In their minds, these were the
main functions of gameplay in that title -- and please note, no one had any
knowledge of the difference between GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas, or GTA 4, or
that those titles existed. All they knew of was some persistent, generalized and monolithic version of Rockstar's biggest franchise.
Other examples of games given during my chats included Pong, Pac-Man, Super
Mario (no version known), Call of Duty
(no version known), Halo (no version known) and surprisingly, I had one parent
mention Minecraft although they had no idea how ‘bad’ it was or how much
violence there was in the game. All they knew was that their child (age 7) ‘was
addicted to it’.
Following up, when I asked these people whether they knew about ‘indie’ games or Steam, not a single one had any knowledge of either, whatsoever. Not a single one.
Interestingly, I also got several happy mentions of ‘Wii’,
although it was meant in reference to Wii Sports, and not the console itself. I
found this fairly telling for a few reasons, but I do give credit to Nintendo
for managing to produce something which was seen as universally positive to
society at large.
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| What non-gamers don't see. |
Again, I fully grant that this was a non-scientific,
anecdotal inquiry, but I think it's useful as a general indicator that only the
most popular titles reach the level of cultural awareness required to penetrate
the non-gaming populace, and that the overall cultural attitude towards games
is that they are more negative than positive. I think it also suggests that
most non-gamers have absolutely no idea of what gaming is like in the modern
era.
I suspect that anyone conducting their own line of
questioning would find something similar. Of course, this will likely change
over time through cultural momentum as older generations die off and become
replaced with younger ones, but for the moment, it is what it is.
My fellow critic @SparkyClarkson had this to say on the
topic:
Imagine if the only films EVER advertised in any major way
were giant action blockbusters and kids' movies. Imagine if the only way to
find out that films like Lincoln EXISTED was to spend hours every day
exhaustively following movie-news websites. That's gaming. Intelligent games
have almost zero visibility, and even when they rise above the noise, comparatively
nobody buys them. Cage's critics seem to think that he's willfully ignoring all
these smart, serious games, but the reality is probably that he's just never
heard of any of them. In that respect, he's like most of the gaming public.
It is from this ‘we only know the big games’ perspective
that Cage’s charge to the industry makes perfect sense, and honestly, I think
he's right. The points he raised in his speech ring true to me, and rather than
players trying to discredit or prove him wrong, his critics might be better off trying
to understand where he’s coming from, even if that doesn't reflect their own
personal perspective or the entire spectrum of games development today. With all the scrutiny currently being given to games thanks
to horrific acts of real-world violence, it can only be a positive thing to
honestly evaluate where we’re at, how we’re seen, and where we want to go from
there.
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Posts
“When at work or at social events, I can recall several conversations where fellow parents were coming to me as ‘that guy who makes games’ (sic) and seeking my advice whether Game X or Game Y was ‘safe’ for kids to play, or what I thought about the current level of violence in videogames.”
I think this is an interesting problem, and it comes mostly from the thought that games are a children's media (predominantly). I can certainly get behind trying to expand the notion of who and what games can be for.
“Again, I fully grant that this was a non-scientific, anecdotal inquiry, but I think it's useful as a general indicator that only the most popular titles reach the level of cultural awareness required to penetrate the non-gaming populace, and that the overall cultural attitude towards games is that they are more negative than positive. I think it also suggests that most non-gamers have absolutely no idea of what gaming is like in the modern era.”
I'll totally grant all of that. The evolution of my thinking is starting to boil down to this: 1.) All media is skewed toward the "mainstream" most of who only want the most entertaining experience (rather than thoughtful/provocative/challenging/imaginative, etc.), and 2.) games (because of history/economics) are more skewed than most.
The question than is how to address that imbalance. Cage is right to be like, WTF guys, we're all adults, why aren't more of us trying to make games that reflect that? In countering the imblance, and advocating more variety, I think Cage is beyond reproach.
My issue is that I think he fundamentally misunderstands how that can be achieved. In completely ignoring the games that are doing those things, whether indie downloadables or FTP browser-based games, or even small to medium sized titles like Spec Ops, Dishonored, or Simcity, Cage is saying "we have a problem--now follow me into this one man escape pod."
Because I don't think many big budget versions of Heavy Rain can be sustained beyond 1 or so per year. Inception will always be the exception and not the rule, and by telling everyone to go make Inceptions, he's urging a lot of people to go waste tons of money because so few of those will actually turn out to be good, and even less of them will be financially feasible.
Cage clearly doesn't think Simcity can have as much to say about politics or society as a first person interactive narrative. He also doesn't seem to think that platformers or other game-y games can be very "grown-up" either.
So I'm worried that in recognizing the issues that you rightfully explain need to be resolved, he's pushing people to simply try and do interactive versions of Lincoln rather than something more germain to the form and political economic constraints of the "industry."
hey Ethan, thanks very much for your comments.
>>My issue is that I think he fundamentally misunderstands how that can be achieved.
I think you're essentially correct on this, but I also think that Cage's stress on 'different' games reaching a pervasive level of social awareness is appropriate.
That said, I do question how effective any such strategy to achieve that will be at the moment... more likely, such a shift will happen naturally through generational attrition, like I mentioned in the original blog.
also, I definitely don't think that everyone needs to make games of the sort that he does, but I think his heart is in the right place and but I do want to give him credit for trying things that others don't and for putting himself out there.
Bottom line, I guess I'd rather see more people like Cage speaking out and starting some dialogue than not, even if they sometimes go a bit askew. ; )