We've been talking childhood nostalgia here lately -- last week, a lot of you responded to my call for stories of childhood play, and hopefully you'll be seeing the fruits of that little survey soon. Hearty thanks to everyone who participated!
We also again beat our previous record for SVGL polling with 887 votes! You guys are awesome! I asked you whether your emotional relationship to games has changed as you grew out of childhood.
I was under the impression that for most of us, the good old days were the best old days, and that even though games have evolved by leaps and bounds since our youth, it's been hard to recapture that lovin' feeling, whether it's because we're not imaginitive little kiddoes anymore, because we're attached to the past or because today's titles are so sophisticated they leave less room to fill in the blanks.
But that's not true for most of you, apparently -- 43% of respondents said they feel just as emotional about games these days as you did when you were kids. 27% of you said it's just not the same anymore -- but almost the same amount, 23%, said you actually get more out of games emotionally as an adult now that you really "get" what you're doing when you play and why. Just 5% of you said you'd never felt "touched" by games.
I've been really interested in imagination and abstraction lately, if you hadn't noticed -- my last Kotaku feature, between whose lines you probably picked up an aversion to gesture-based control schemes on my part, asserted that classic buttons-and-sticks work well because it's more interesting to abstract interaction in game worlds rather than act it out literally. And it gives you more options, too.
At the same time, when we all discussed Fumito Ueda's work recently, we all concluded that one of the main reasons why his games inspire the imagination so much is because of all of the things they leave unsaid. The quietude and minimalism of ICO and Colossus make you want to fill in the blanks, and that's a big part of why they get your gears turning. I always believed that we're so fond of old games for a similar reason -- when your hero's just a little blob on a screen, when there's no narrative and only a minimal, generalized backstory, it's more fun to make up your own.
Anyway, more on all of this stuff later. Meanwhile, I've got a new poll question for you -- just how big a role do games play in your life? Vote in the right-hand sidebar, please. Can we top the last turnout? Yeah. I think we can. Let's do this thang!
15 comments:
I kind of grazed the nostalgia bit myself (albeit in a very different context) in my musings yesterday.
I almost chose the "same as I was" option, but I broke down who and what I was as a child and who I am now and there was only one vote left available to me.
I only have one thing to say about abstraction & imagination though...
It sounds like an extremely dangerous creative tool that I'd like to see more of.
~sLs~
1 interesting thing to know would be what percentage of the people taking the survey were actually "adults"?
More to the point for how long have they (we as I replied) been playing video games?
What if those 43% are just teenagers that have NEVER seen a really good video game before?
Just kidding (I'm part of those 43% and I started playing on a Sega Master System), but experience plays a big part on how we experience things... I thought that's a point worth raising.
I always get a little nervous when discussing the benefits of purposely ambiguous elements in games. I feel that the developer must keep a close eye on the balance here, as a game with too-vague elements can quickly become far too confusing.
In successful cases, I'm often reminded of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. A successfully vague game, such as Passage, will give you a distinct feeling of a greater idea behind the ambiguous portions of the game--a sense that there is indeed an elephant amongst all of the skin, tusks, and toenails. When this sense is absent, however, the game quickly becomes a trainwreck. Of course, I guess the same can be said about any work of art.
I'm curious, however, to see if anyone has done any research into whether gamers feel closer to ambiguous avatars than well-defined avatars, as this seems to tie in nicely with Scott McCloud's opinions on comic art.
I think your point is close, that it's more interesting to abstract an action with buttons/joysticks than to act it out literally. I actually see it from the other angle: It's much more fun to go through the REAL motion (of playing kickball on a field, going bowling in an alley, or shooting some arrows at the range etc.) than it is to act it out in front of your TV.
@JhOjo
Speaking for myself, I am undeniably an adult (physically, at least), and my first console was an Atari 2600 that I received as a Christmas present when my tiny hands could barely hold, let alone manipulate, that clunky joystick. I've owned just about every major console since.
I'd say that I fall into the category of gamers who get just as emotionally invested in games today as I did when I was younger, but my tastes have become more discerning over the years, and the games that really get under my skin are fewer and farther between. While I'm a sucker for a good narrative, for a game to really take hold of me and not let go, it's all about the gameplay. And my gameplay tastes definitely lean toward the old school.
That's not to say that I'm all about retro games. While I do enjoy the occasional throwback, like Mega Man 9, what I really get excited about are games that embrace the technology that's available today, while still providing the kind of challenge that I feel most modern games eschew in favor of accessibility. In short, I like games that force me to learn how to play them. I'm one of those crazy people who feel as though you should actually have to get better at a game in order to beat it, and I don't think very many games are made that way anymore, which is why I have a shelf full of games that I started playing, but never finished. I don't finish them, paradoxically, because I know that I can. And once I know that I can beat them, unless the narrative is so gripping that I have to know what happens (which is rare), I don't see the point in doing so. I lose interest.
But I don't mean to say that my confidence in being able to beat a game is based on some inflated sense of my skills as a gamer. A game doesn't have to be tortuously difficult for me to enjoy it. Take Shadow of the Colossus as an example. I don't consider it a very tough game to beat, yet it's one of my favorite games, and one I still go back to, because it's a game that rewards you for getting better at it.
A lot of games these days put you in control of a character who is a bad ass: some big dude, with a big gun, or a big sword, who is able to take down hordes of enemies with a few deft movements. But very few games make you, the gamer, feel like a bad ass, by presenting you with a challenge that at first seems insurmountable, and tasking you with figuring out how to conquer it. In Shadow of the Colossus, you're not a huge dude with a huge sword, you're a rather puny dude with a kind of puny sword, and you're being asked to take down creatures that are hundreds of times bigger than you. And each time you manage to accomplish this task, you feel good about it (putting aside whatever emotional ambiguity the game's muted narrative instills you with), because YOU did it. Because the time and effort that you put into learning the controls until they become second nature, and learning where the enemies' weak spots are and how to reach them without getting squashed, pays off. And now you are the bad ass, not the little avatar that you're controlling on the screen. He's the misguided hero, doomed to suffer for his mistakes. But you, the player, can hold your head up high for beating the game, even as you contemplate the meaning of it all. That, to me, is the mark of a truly great game.
And that's about enough rambling for now.
About your previous poll; it really depends on the age of each voter. The 'good ol' days' could be anything from NES to PS1(or even 2).
Shadow of The Colossus is the first game I've formed a strong emotional attachment to since Silent Hill on the original Playstation.
That's a long time.
When considering what control schemes are more interesting and engaging, the whole issue seems quite subjective to me. Sticks and buttons may feel more flexible and involving for us because that's what we're accustomed to. To the rest of the population, however, they won't see it that way.
Such people are not going to put in the effort and time to adapt to these plastic nightmares I adore and have been using for over twenty years. New techniques in game design or THE WORLD'S MOST EFFECTIVE TUTORIAL might solve that problem. Even if they did, though, I still don't see any reason why someone who'd rather swing an ax with their arm than with their thumb should be denied that option.
On the subject, can anyone here submit an example of a last gen or contemporary videogame that starts you off using only one button and a thumbstick, gradually requiring usage of more real estate on the controller as you progress through the game? I can't think of one.
I love the old classics of yore. Within this year, I hope to have my HTPC set up with wireless gamepads and console emulation.
Yes, I own all the cartridges and original hardware; so the ESA should just remain silent. :-P
Nostalgia is a loving set of glasses with which we look back. In my childhood I think games were more emotional then today because of two reasons, the nostalgia factor and when I was growing up (born 1977) video games as a whole were a new medium. Especially home games. Hours were spent on a small black comfy chair with my Star Wars sleeping bag wrapped around me. My mind was blown when it turned out Big Boss was my real enemy in Metal Gear, and everyone knew to smoke their cigarettes then.
But now we have deeper emotions being touched with the Ico trilogy. I find it ironic that games like Ico, SotC & Half-Life can have great emotional depth & connection to characters with minimalist vocal script.
Oh and is it just me or did every Nintendo game back in the day have a self-destruct sequence at the end of it?
It's an interesting paradox that, as games have become more popular and more powerful, our ability to imagine events in a given world has been crippled for the most part, yet most (let's say) shooters are nothing if not bland and generic. It's also interesting how many fucking exceptions there are to that rule. It's hard to quantify, really, "how much" we use our imagination due to abstract storytelling or even graphical fidelity- it varies so much just depending on the individual. What's easy to say is that the more you surrender yourself to a game's rules and atmosphere, the more you'll get out of it, and some games make it less difficult than others to give in.
RE: the new poll, I think I probably have a little trouble separating work from play in this sense. I don't often get the chance to play games outside of working hours - and, besides, I probably don't want to, if I've just spent Monday to Friday reviewing three awful genre releases, or whatever.
The upside to this writing about games lark is that, every now and then, hobby and work mesh beautifully, and you end up with someone paying you to write about something fabulous, joyous, invigorating and fascinating. But, really, that only makes it even more difficult to separate.
Games certainly used to be a hobby. Now they're just integral to what I do. But I'm pleased that I'm able to be doing this semi-professionally, as "writing about games" is something I really consider both work and play, and the fact that I don't feel the need to separate them means I've pretty much landed on my feet.
In other words, everyone else sucks, and aren't we great? ;-)
What an awesome post! I miss good old polls. Does anyone remember the ones in only Nintendo magazines in the 90s where you'd have to mail back the results? Ah nostalgia.
I found this through Touche, Bitches! blog -- www.touchebitches.com, I think (?). It also made me go back and think about old video games.
Thank you!
I thought I'd take part in posting here since I find your blog posts most interesting.
I'm what I like to call a "Casual-Hardcore" gamer who plays games literally everyday but doesn't go over the top and prefers to actually work on modding games.
I believe that each and every game holds a memory inside of us. Sure, I love the good ol' days when I used to play Donkey Kong with my father but the newer games such as Shadow of the Colossus or Mirror's Edge hold the same feelings.
Although I will say that in my youth I did used to spend a lot of hours in videogames just role-playing and imagining situations but I could never do that now at the tender age of 20.
Regarding the classic controllers; I am not fond of the controller-less Project Natal for reasons that I prefer to push buttons and relax on the sofa. I personally think it takes you away from the feeling that you "did that action" with the few presses of a button. Makes you feel powerful and special.
Ever played Zelda: Majora's Mask? I loved that game as a minor because it was so much darker and each character had a story to follow. I used to imagine all kinds of situations because there were lots of blanks to fill in and that made the game last a hell of a lot longer than games today which spoon feed you all the details.
Finally I obviously voted for "Yep. I Play Whenever I'm Free."
@Justin
Regarding old vs new and how games get under one's skin, I do agree that only a few can qualify.
However that has always been the case and I wouldn't think that it means fewer "truly great" games are made.
I would think that the main problem (if this is a problem) here is that a LOT more games are made now. So the good ones are kind of swamped in the huge mass of the mediocre rest. It's become an industry now, waste is inevitable.
I used to play a lot of emulation until a few years ago (I am quite old school as well) because I thought that most recent games were all looking the same (FPS or RTS blah).
Then I got offered a Wii, so I got back into playing more recent games and got back onto fairly recent games on my PC as well (specs permitting).
So in the past year I got to play (and mostly complete if applicable) games like World Of Goo, GTA San Andreas, No More Heroes, Portal, DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Smash Bros Brawl...
Well I can say that all those games (and others I might have forgotten) have moved me. I mean "move" here as a general thing like the game made me feel something, where I connected with its content somehow (whether I was thrilled or actually moved by the atmosphere, the story, the gameplay, etc).
As you mention, a "truly great" game (TGG!) is made of an awful lot of factors, which all contribute to suck a player in. Break one of them and it could break the spell. That's how video games become an art.
And as such, it can happen anywhere, anytime, but not everytime.
Leigh,
I think your conclusion about the ambiguity/lack of detail in a game's protagonist/environment/whatever leading to greater emotional investment is a bit rushed.
Take a look at casual games, or even hardcore(ier) flash games today: A lot of times they lack graphical detail and/or background information like the games of old (In fact, the caual/web/mobile game industry is much like the olden days of gaming in more than one aspect- but that's for another time) and yet, I generally do not feel that coveted emotoinal connection.
What about you guys?
Is it just because of the nostalgic lens and our excitable youth that the old games echo so strongly with us?
"The quietude and minimalism of ICO and Colossus make you want to fill in the blanks, and that's a big part of why they get your gears turning."
As an animator I have to disagree. In Ico there were very few blanks. Everything was given to you, but only implicitly so.
For the most part everything about the characters tells their stories(at least the necessary parts). The height difference, their individual movements, and the hand holding of Ico and Yorda tell a complete and detailed story of just what the characters are. Ico's horns, as foreign silhouette, tell of his expulsion. His awkward movements and teetering animations relate a pubescent acclimatization. Yorda's timid walk and head tracking pointing only to Ico tell of her nature.
As far as relating two characters rule sets without dialogue or text Ico succeeds in every way. Perhaps it's just that the game makes you think you are filling in the blanks. The context of the world you are in might be of question but it's not necessarily important to the overall story; not even the implication that the shadow creatures are other horned boys is something you need to fill in for yourself. It's all demonstrated non-verbally.
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