5.4.24

But what about games?

I’ve spent my adult life-to-date creating entertainment. Yes, I've published a number of books, and written many many more, but mostly, were I done today, my life would be remembered (to the degree that it would be at all!) as a creator of video games. 

Thirty years ago this fall two young geniuses from Borland, David Stafford and Eli Boling, took a chance on an unpolished kid in Austin, Texas. I was honestly surprised when they offered to pay me; I barely understood games an a business at that point, it was a craft. And from there Eclipse Entertainment to Digital Anvil to Microsoft to Electronic Arts to Certain Affinity to Capcom to Kabam to Hasbro and that’s half a life gone by. Devoted – and I use the word with all it implies – to creating video games and software and, later, creating the teams and companies and conditions that allow them to come to life, to entertain the world.

Some of those adventures have been right down in the hot sweaty details of creating, designing, birthing games. Working with obsessively devoted creators, whole teams of them sometimes. Other times it has been a more managerial or clinical approach – all spreadsheeets and the court politics that use favor to decide funding. Certainly the acts of creation are more inspiring, more exciting, but both are necessary for bringing video games to millions of players around the world.

But are games art? Is the creation of video games bringing us as creators closer to immortality?

Games can be art. There’s just no doubt about this in my mind. Consider the moment with the giraffe in The Last of Us. Consider early Electronic Arts advertisements asking, “Can a video game make you cry?” Consider beautiful works like Journey or Flower or Sky. Consider the cultural impact of games like Grand Theft Auto, or – more darkly – the role of first-person-shooters in the debate about incel violence after Columbine. Games combine audio, visual, mechanical interactive elements to transport players, bring color to lives that are sometimes grey, create heroes, allow the lonely to make friends. They can make you think differently, even argue for a perspective. Games can be art.

But do they have the lasting power of the Word? Or are they inherently more akin to the lake-water calligraphy: temporal, performative, fleeting?

I think of this in two vectors.

First, video games, by their medium, are inherently temporal. While Frogger may live on in MAME cabinets or a few niche retro consoles, the Atari 2600 is – mostly – a thing of the past. And the lack of real portability or interoperability between generations of consoles (without a great deal of work from dedicated teams at Microsoft and Sony) mean that, for the most part, games disappear each year. Brute Force isn’t playable anywhere anymore (that I’m aware of.) Which means the passions and camaraderie, the sacrifice – the devotion! – of that group of young men (all of us were men almost back then) are mostly evaporated. Thousands of games disappear each year from public accessibility, and then they are gone. And, for the most part, they will not ever be resurrected. The epic of Gilgamesh, the (prophetic!) verses of a Shakespearean sonnet can live on and be reproduced for new generations. Most games will not.

Second, a person could argue that anything which touches lives and lives on in memory is still around. I like this argument, it makes a creator feel good to think that people remember a game or a character you’ve created. And people regularly tell me about this game or that and how it touched their lives. Indeed, I used this line of justification for many years to try to help teams be inspired to create great things. And despite what a few cynics (thinking of you, Chip) may have suggested, I genuinely believe that we can make the world better by creating entertainment that touches so many lives. This is not, has almost never been, just a cynical commerical enterprise for me, or for most of the games makers I've known over the last three decades.  

However, I do not believe this pursuit can mostly reach the level of longevity that I think would have to be required for approaching real immortality. Games touch lives, sometimes many, then maybe persist for a generation or three tops. And then they are gone. Lara Croft will still exist in the public mind in 2050. But in 2100? Doubtful. Mario for another hundred years perhaps. But even then, these are characters, caricatures, tropes even. Iago is not the text of Othello; he’s a character trope of a villainous jew. And at 400 years, he has lasted far longer than most. Can you name a video game character that will still exist in the public mind in 2424? I cannot make a compelling argument for any.

Video games are a delightful pastime for millions. They are – at times – a great business. They can entertain and elevate. They can certainly be art.

But I am doubtful that video games as an artform will convey immortality to the devotees who create them.