My name is James Newton, and this is my website - a collection of my writings about
videogames, music and all my other thoughts.
Play
After much hassling from me, my good friend Jim Parker finally set up a blog the other day, and the first post - about the nature of play - is a cracker. Click here to read it.
Jim and I clearly see very much eye-to-eye on this issue - I would much rather play a game that gives me the chance to do something I can’t do elsewhere. Escapism into a simulated reality very rarely interests me, with the possible exception of Pro Evolution Soccer.
I enjoyed the whole article, but this section stands out to me:
I’d prefer an ultra un-realistic game to be quite honest, a game where I can fly, a game where I can do super human feats, a game with no gravity, no rules and no limits.
Although such a game would be near-impossible to design and play, the message is clear: play is our chance to take on new personae, escape the limitations of our human world and embark on new adventures, exploring fantasy worlds and our imaginations. To play is not to simulate situations we find or avoid in our own lives, but to give ourselves experiences otherwise impossible.
There’s obviously a lot of money to be made from games that simulate reality as closely as possible, but it’s a futile endeavour if you ask me. “Reality games” could end up with the same reputation as “reality TV”, another media attempting to capture our everyday lives for entertainment’s sake that often falls flat.
As a future games programmer, Jim has the chance to shape what games we’ll be playing in years to come. It sounds to me like he’s got exactly the right idea not only about what we play but, crucially, why. Let’s hope developers around the world agree, and that we start to see that reflected in their games.
Related links:
1 Comment by Godot | Thursday, November 9, 2006 @ 12:26 am
I’ll keep it short because it’s late and I’m about to go to bed.
I do think that the argument here is very reductive - it is not the case that Pro-Evolution Soccer, GTA, etc are relaity games simply because they set themselves in a more relasitic representation of the world. Let me take the example of GTA, as mentioned in the article you link to.
GTA is an interesting game as far as catharsis and ideas such as the death-drive are concerned. In my every day life I must subjugate myself to the laws and rules of society - as a teacher, indeed, I must enforce them - although I might feel myself to be a free thinking agent, in reality my actions are inhibited by social conventions. Through playing a game like GTA I am in a sense in a very un-real situation because it is one in which these laws are withdrawn. I may steal, kill, throw myself screaming from a building on a mountain bike - I can give vent then to the Dyionesian elements of my personality those which thinkers such as Nietzsche would say are supressed constatntly by herd morality.
So the reality offered to me is real and un-real, consequence free. I have more desire to have simulated command and freedom in a relaity more cloely resembling my own than I do in a totally foreign one.
As for Pro-evolution soccer, it simply allows one the unreal situation of being a famous footballer. This is not “reality” for the majority of the game players, surely? But it is a desire that the game satisfies. The real question? Do real professional footballers feel the need to play the game - to simulate what is to them a reality?
So thank-you for giving me the opporunity to articualte these ideas, but in conclusionI would urge you and your friend to rethink your position as I beleive it is untenable.
And yet back on your bike. Or have you given that up? You’re a long way from York and I’m curious which pub you’d recommend there. Mine’s probably the Ackhorn on Micklegate the the moment.
Think on.
G