Transcript "Digging Deeper - Do Games Have Less Value than Other Media? (Extra Credits)"
How much of you last gaming experience do you remember? I mean, like really remember. Not just the plot or the boss fight. How much of the moment to moment play can really vividly call to mind. Now do the same experiment for the last TV show you watched, or maybe for the last book you read. Notice a difference?
I've run this experiment with dozens of people and time again I found that, minute for minute, people can recall so much more of other media than they can of games. And it got me thinking. They got me asking "why?" Why time again, even when dealing with totally disposable television shows that were of no higher artistic quality than the games people are playing, could people recite to me in much more vivid detail what happened on an episode of TV than in a game. People could recount television events with such detail, like ... wait, lets see... on detective mentioned to the other to circle around the back and then he shouted "Freeze! Police!" and kicked in the door. In the room, inside was this trashy drug den with, like, three dealers in it. One of them went for a gun, but the detective got the draw on them and took two of them out. But the last one ran for the back. And then the camera cuts to him being arrested by the main characters partner who'd circled around the house earlier. And that's a pretty decent amount of detail. But when those same people tried to remember a recent gaming experience, I'd get statements like ... lets see ... I fought my way through a bunch of rooms, then I found a rocket launcher, and then I fought through maybe two or three more rooms, and then there was a boss fight. We weren't retaining the details.
For recollections of a thirty-minute TV show, I'd get a far more intricate picture then I would from thirty minutes of game play. This bothered me. At first, I thought it was something to do with the nature of interactivity. Where we in fact distracted by the fact that we had to interact and that we had to actually play these games? That really worried me because, as a creator, I had to ask myself: was it even possible for games to become the medium I believe they could be? Or for people to get out off them all of that I though they might if they can't even recall the details about the experience the next day? How are we supposed to deliver the mechanics as metaphor, if people don't register the subtleties in the mechanics? How are we supposed to give deeper meaning or provide more for the player to dig into, if they don't retain the very elements that make such things possible?
So I went back and I tried to find an analog. Where else can I find something interactive that people did, that I could test how much they retained? It had to be something that changed every time, so it wasn't just something they'd memorized, like a play. So I talked to a few of my friends who do improv Comedy, and a few more who do improv Jazz, and the result kind of blew my mind. Now mind you, my sample was woefully small, but among those people, they actually remembered their interactive experiences more vividly than passive entertainment like television... but again, not their games. So, okay, good interactivity isn't the inherent problem at least. That's a relief.
So I want back to the drawing board. I asked more people about their gaming experience and listened more closely. I realized that it wasn't that they were just discarding all the details. Rather it was that their memory around games in general was incredibly spiky. They would describe an hour of play with a few bland sentences and then talk for 10 minutes about an incredible boss fight or heroic moment in multiplayer. I think it was typified talking to Mobo players. They would play a 35 minute match and only be able to say a hundred words or so about the whole thing outside a few key moments, where they could take 10 minutes describing something in precise detail, which took only about 45 seconds to play out on the battlefield. Alright, so this was strange.
I briefly wondered if it could be that the majority of our game playing experience was actually mind-numbing filler that we put up with because the high points were so great. But I don't really buy that. Even in the multiplayer games, which most exemplify this pattern of patchy memory, as a player I know I'm often 100 percent engaged in paying close attention to everything that's happening. So what was it? Frankly, I don't know. But I have a guess.
I think we've been trained to think of games in a fundamentally different way from books and television and music. I think, even when we engage in those other arts simply for fun, we're usually open to the possibility of getting more from them. How many times have you looked up song lyrics to try to better understand a piece of music that moves you? How often have you taken a character from a book or from a film and really pondered what made him tick, and thought to yourself "I'm gonna try to be more like that"?
But I think that with games, we've been trained to tune that out. And I think our industry is at fault to some degree with the way we've marketed and positioned the games as an adrenaline rush or a child’s pass time. But I also think the public perception is at fault, like ... okay, the other day I was riding the ferry and I found a certain beauty in the syncopated rhythm at the engines. But most of us don't hear it. Not because we can't, but because we're not listening for it. I think the analog is true for games. I think a lot of the time we're just not listening for it.
So how do we overcome this? Well, comics had to do the same thing at one point, and we saw the feedback cycle that happened: as people started to accept that we could get more out of comics then just escapist fantasy, creators were able to put more into their comics, which led to people getting more out of those comics, which in turn led to people to look for more in comics. Without which, some of the greatest works of the medium could never have come to be. Could we have had Sandman or the Invisibles in the 50's era comic industry with the 50's era comic audience? I would say "no". There was a level of understanding and examination that the creators needed to be able to count on from their audience before works like those could come about. And the cycle resulted in better comics for everyone, whether it was the evolution of Batman or the Green Arrow, or even pop works like Powers. The increased literacy and receptiveness of the comic audience gave comic creators the ability to deliver work in an even higher level than before, making comics a better medium overall.
So how do we do that? Well, the first step is on us as players. I think we can start trying to observe more and think more thoroughly about our games. Even when we don't feel like they may warrant that level of examination. And some people might say you're overthinking things when you do that, but I bet Alan Moore got plenty of that when he first pitched the idea for Batman Begins, and Mark Miller probably got his share when he talked about how interesting it would be to explore Superman's character with red Sun. Next, we need a better way to talk about the medium. Even among designers, there's no real agreement on the semantics of what a mechanic or a system is. There's no language for our routine conventions and that needs to change. Finally, we need to apply the lessons we learn from our games to our lives. There is value in thinking more thoroughly about anything: books, games, music. But the true value comes in taking the insights we've gained from our diligence and letting them inform who we are and what we want to be.
[Note: my colleagues have embarked on an academic mission to find out if and how the latter is taking place. You can read more about it here or here.]
[introduction Mike of PBS Idea Channel]
The thing, Dan, that you said about mechanics is something I've been thinking about a lot. Like, if it is harder to get the meanings or implications or even story of a certain game, could it be because of how we have to learn to play it? And then that becomes what it is about? I guess I'm asking if every game is also about its mechanics?
[promotion for episode on mechanics on PBS Idea Channel]