Barrier to participation -- No Bangs for Video Games, Pt. 2

In my last post, I introduced the idea of video games not being art as my first reason for the lack of serious video game criticism in journalism. Next, I want to explore a factor that gets intertwined with that idea: the barrier to participation.

This factor may prove, in a different sense, to be just as crucial a piece in this puzzle as video games' inability to achieve art status. The crucial thing here is that film, music, any art, has a drastically lower barrier to participation than video games. In fact, video games, again, are singular among their own ilk, games, in that they pose a higher barrier than traditional kinds of games like Boggle or Parcheesi.

Poor ROI
For you non-business attuned, that's "return on investment". In consumer language, bang for your buck. Simply put, the ROI for video games cannot compete with art or other forms of entertainment. Video games have certainly matured in complexity, sucking in older and older ages to the addiction, but it still has not reached the pitch of music or movies or television.

As long as this ROI cannot come into some kind of parity with film, at the very least, to say nothing of music or television, then I see little probability of there being any necessity for quality criticism. Despite the fact that its core audience now extends to thirty-somethings, and its annual revenue rivals the Hollywood box-office, it is still unequivocally a niche phenomenon. A very large one, to be sure, but still merely an oddity, nonetheless.

Here are a few things that make the ROI so poor:
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1. Time
There is only one art form I can think of that requires near the amount of time a video game does: books. To put things in even more perspective, the only fair comparison is if we talk about the very shortest games and the most lengthy novels. If a game developer dares to throw a game on the shelf that can be finished in 10 hours, it better be prepared for reviewers' and consumers' complaints. There are games like The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, and World of Warcraft that consume -- and remember, these tend to be the mega hits -- hundreds of hours.

So long as this is the case (and it's a trend that seems only to be pursued with greater vigor every year), it will prevent people who want to live real lives from finding the motivation to participate. Investing a lot of time in something is far from being objectionable, but what it gives back is often far too little for many people who are not between the ages of 7 and 22.

Movies and TV don't necessarily offer so much more in return, but the time investment makes them far more accessible. (The convenient -- and insidious -- thing about TV is that you can quit after a half hour or hour...or the next...or the next...or the next. Oh, is it midnight already?). And, again, the difference between investing hours in front of the TV and hours in front of a games console or PC is that, with the TV, you can just sit there and "vedge". It wont piss you off by beating you three dozen times before you finally figure out how to get through this stupid boss fight.

It essentially operates on the same phenomenon as any other narrative medium, that is that if you are enjoying it, you are compelled to press on to the end, but the trouble with video games is that this can suck so many more hours of your life than any other option, and at the end, you really have nothing to show for it (unless you're striving for a career in the gaming industry). Granted, you had a good time, but it hasn't helped you down the path of your life. Many books, movies and TV are no better (and TV is arguably at least as bad), but, again, they are more easily accessible and that's why more people choose them over video games.

2. Complicated engagement needs
What do you need to watch a movie, a TV show, read a book, listen to a song, enjoy a painting? These things are immediately and effortlessly accessible. Video games are a cantankerous bear in comparison, one from whose jaws you are asked to rip its only salmon in weeks.

"Now to do this sweet-cool backflip double blade overhead fire-slash, you push this button and then this one while keeping this one held down and then spinning the stick in, first, a half circle counterclockwise, then quickly press up, down, diagonal down left, diagonal down right, and finish by pressing A and B together.... Oh, sorry, you didn't do that quite right so you don't get to make the character do this really cool move I know you're dying to get it to do. In fact, you may never be able to pull the move off. So sorry. Enjoy your game."

My momma raised me not to use certain kinds of language (Welsh, for instance, but that's another story), but it is to language such as this which -- even as a seasoned gamer -- I find myself propelled inevitably toward when game designers insist on this sadistic, hateful madness. I paid for it. It's my game. Let me play the whole flipping thing. The checkout girl doesn't empty out a sixth of my cereal before putting it into my bag. Take the cue, game designers.

Take another cue from C-3PO, if you want more people to play your games, "Let the Wookie win." Do a better job of making games for novices. Too few games employ the option to set difficulty levels (though, thankfully, this seems to be improving). Even at that, programming should be getting very close to being sophisticated enough to make "smart" games, games that behave like a good sensei, learning the pupils expertise level and providing the challenge accordingly.

The constant refrain from gamers is that they want a game to be challenging. Personally, I've found life to be enough of a challenge without my entertainment being a bleeding so-and-so to me on the weekends. Unfortunately, game designers say, "Yes, sir. How high, sir," thus widening the gap they should be trying to close, leaving millions to decide that watching a fun movie or TV show or going to a concert is much funner and easier.

3. Anti-social
This is not meant in the typical negative sense, but merely descriptive, that it does not promote and is not a social activity.

"Wait a minute," Sims fans and Warcraft fans and Everquest fans object, "Our games are social." Funny, I wouldn't have thought you wanted me to slap you in your face, but you're talking like it.

Going to a movie with friends is social. Going out for coffee or ice cream with a cute girl or guy is social. Playing volleyball with your coworkers is social. Being the Druidic warrior Fontopolous Graithwhite on a quest with your merry band (Joe down the street, Amber in Biloxi, and Xing Chi in Taiwan) isn't social; it's fantasy. I'm not saying there's something bad about it, just don't confuse it for being social. It's not. ... And take those Spock ears off.

And that is the best case scenario. Many games are single-player stories. You sit by yourself in front of the PC or TV and play by yourself...for hours...by yourself. This characteristic simply keeps the gamers and non-gamers separated. The gamer becomes less social, the social people prefer to remain around their friends. Of course there are a handful games that are "party games" (the Mario game Super Smash Bros Melee probably being the best example) that do a commendable job of being social games in a limited sense, but as a medium, they are decidedly anti-social.

4. Cash
When you tot it all up, it actually isn't such an expensive hobby, unless you have other sort of expensive hobbies. It looks intimidating, with $300-600 systems and comparably priced "performance" video cards, $50-60 games (and now rumors of games approaching $75-$100 for the upcoming PS3), but think of going to a movie. If you're like most people, you'll go to a chain theater (suckers), pay at least $8 for the ticket and another $8 if you want a small drink and a small popcorn (Shylocks). Chances are you'll want a date, too, possibly doubling your spend. All that in one night for only two hours of entertainment. How many times a year do you plan to do that. It starts to even out.

Once you leave the theater, it's over. I can play Gran Turismo for hundreds of hours, virtually indefinitely. If I want to take a Saleen S7 around the insanely superb German Nurburgring a few times, I plop in my PS2 disc and get after it. Then maybe I'll switch to an Aston Martin Vanquish on the sublime Circuit de la Sarthe. Remember, too, I'm not just watching this, I'm driving the thing around the track. Get a bad game, and the price really stings, but a good game is worth every penny.

Still, all the other factors considered, the financial price tag puts the nail in the coffin. You could take a nice little vacation on that cash.
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The root of the problem is that games don't yet warrant that kind of criticism for reasons of content, design, accessibility, and lack of cultural saturation.

There may be a handful, maybe even a couple of handfuls of games since the industry's inception that would, if not warrant, provide sufficient material (ICO, Metal Gear Solid, Medal of Honor: Frontline, for starters) for a contemporary Pauline Kael or Lester Bangs to wax profound about what the game is about (philosophy, not plot), what it means, what it says about society or requests of it, how it reflects or tries to influence life, what profound beauty it tries to impart.

The problem is that, by design, it cannot tell a story or convey a theme in the way art needs to to illicit critical, perceptive observation. To try to extract such from this medium seems as shallow and fluffy an exercise as the medium itself.

I think a kind of bastardized form of the Kael/Bangs criticism that Klosterman refers to may emerge for video games, since they incorporate devices and elements of art, but it will never be truly akin to anything written for real art.

Whether a game like ICO is able to move you deeply, that is still, unlike a movie or book, incidental to its primary goal, which is to provide engaging gameplay. The deeply moving element of it may help make it compelling, but, as Hamlet said, the play's the thing.

The point of art is to understand it, appreciate it, and hopefully grow from it; the point of a game is to play it, and never the twain shall meet.