In Response: Serious Business

While I may disagree with him in this article, I highly recommend you follow Peter Skerritt’s blog, Consoleation. He is a very well versed writer, and his entries make for highly enjoyable reading.Limbo is a game that has received an enormous amount of praise from the gaming press, noted for its enveloping atmosphere and horror influences. However, not everybody has been impressed, as indicated by a recent entry in Peter Skerritt’s blog Consoleation. In his entry, named “Serious Business”, Peter bemoans the praise lavished upon Limbo, recounting how his frustration with a particular puzzle turned him off the game completely. I have not played the full game, therefore this is not an article in defence of it, in the same way that the original article wasn’t a review of Limbo. This is in response to the criticisms he levied at games journalists on the issue of art games. In particular, he stated that: “I remain unconvinced that these "artsy" titles have advanced the medium.”
 

His primary criticism lies in the idea that games journalists have somehow compromised their integrity by placing the artistic nature of the game higher than its technical nuance when judging it:
“I sometimes believe that reviewers get so caught up in this never-ending argument over video games being or not being art that when an "artsy" game like Limbo and Lightning Fighter 2 Hack hits, it's up to them to carry the torch and support it... because it's art, and that means that interlopers like Roger Ebert get proven wrong”
To this I ask: How is this not a cause worth supporting?
 

The fact of the matter is videogames have grown up. They started life as harmless, happy-go-lucky platformers and shoot-em-ups, then grew into strategy games and first person shooters, and have only now begun to advance beyond their creative adolescence, giving us such wonders as Machinarium, Sleep is Death and, dare I say it, Limbo as well.

Whether or not we need Roger Ebert’s approval is a separate issue entirely, but there can be no doubt that videogames are uniquely positioned to give us the kind of intellectual, emotional experiences that we have previously only been able to get through watching arthouse film or reading classic literature, and arguably do it much better as well. The secret weapon? Interactivity.
It is the idea that the player controls the subject and that their actions influence the setting in either a scripted or unscripted way that makes some videogames so well suited to be considered art. Take the example of Bioshock. The use of a linear narrative dictated by instructions from other characters is used to explore the ideas of complicity. We never question why we, the player, are following Atlus’ orders, but we simply fulfil them as they are given to us, and come the endgame and the breaking of Fontaine’s mind control, we suddenly begin to question why we trusted anybody in such a forbidding place as Rapture in the first place.
 

But you don’t need to be inspired to write a doctorate thesis on the theme of authority to appreciate what the developers are trying to say. Can anybody really say that they didn’t feel betrayed or angry when Atlus’s true identity was revealed? Such feelings are basic emotional reactions, but they’re still just as important as the reactions that take up a thousand words of intellectualism on a WordPress blog.

I say that this is worth celebrating, and I am glad to see that the majority of writers seem to agree. Games journalists should feel an obligation to “carry the torch”, because if videogames are to advance from a simple hobby to a means of communicating messages beyond “Chainsawing dudes is fun!” to an artform, the gaming population needs to be inspired into supporting it. As bloggers and journalists, our job isn’t to tell people what they want to hear, but to tell them what they need to hear. After all, what is lost by encouraging a Halophile to try the latest Jason Roher game?
 

Of course, that’s not to say that we treat fun – and the opinions of those who prefer it to deep emotional experiences – as philistine fluff. Enjoyment is a necessary part of videogames, and there should be as much room in our game libraries for mindless escapism as there should be for more intellectual titles. This isn’t a revolution, this is an evolution. However, I refuse to believe that people who write about art games, be it for review or editorial purposes, take a different view than this. For instance, take Blueberry Garden, an independent art game that uses its non-linear exploration as a means of exploring curiosity and discovery. This was one art game that was not highly revered among the press, managing an average of 68 on Metacritic, not because the message was flawed or too esoteric, but because the poor controls and lack of originality soured the experience. Limbo, on the other hand, has received a great amount of praise not only for its atmosphere and emotion but its mechanics as well.
 

While I say all of this, I respect Peter’s opinion. If he doesn’t like Limbo, or feels that fun is a more important trait in a game than anything else, then I can accept that. As he wisely writes in his entry: “Playing games means different things to different people, and I can understand that.” What I find hard to accept is the idea that artistic videogames have not and will not advance the medium as a whole, and that supporting them is neither progressive nor necessary. I don’t expect everyone to love Eversion or Today I Die like I do, but I will never understand downright animosity towards what they try to achieve. They don’t seek to replace mindless fun, but merely to sit alongside it. Art games are here to stay for a very good reason. You don’t have to like them – or even understand them – if you don’t want, but you would be foolish not to appreciate what they’ve done already, and what they seek to do in the future.