Mechanics allow aesthetics.

I recently completed Valkyrie Profile, the original PS version, after a leaving it long in limbo since I played the majority of it in Fall 2006. It reminded me of the role of writing and narrative in games, and I think it represents something rather unique and compelling. Instead of a story of characters that one plays through, as the collector of souls, all one really knows about the characters in Valkyrie Profile are their ending moments, their deaths, regrets, and sorrows. It’s actually quite stark and brutal, and not something I’ve seen in any other game. Perhaps one might write them off as being too dramatic, sort of dramatic opera style deaths, but nevertheless I found them rather compelling. The bold questions the game outright asks about human suffering, of pain and loss, “Who is the one who remains? and who is the one who departed?” It’s quite bold. Few narratives of any type, ask such questions out right, rather they chose to depict such questions through their stories and characters.

I find that these vignettes offer a much more reflective view of a character, and open up the question of what it is to die. A question that is silent in our youth saturated, live for the moment culture. Clearly death is something plenty of games have tried to work into their narratives, and Final Fantasy 7’s death of Aeris is the oft referenced one. What it is fascinating is that while that death produced shock, as it was the death of an innocent, sudden and shocking, the characters of Valkyrie Profile are from a wide range of backgrounds, several being far from ‘heroic.’ It’s strange that a game whose overall story is that of preparing noble souls to do battle for the gods, allows such non heroic figures to be recruited by Lenneth Valkyrie, but this also speaks to her status as being part human.

But it represents something unique in game writing, the down and out suffering ignoble deaths. Though their souls live on to fight with a Valkyrie, they don’t quite become ‘heroic’ in the typical sense of a down and out character who finds their nobility. Though it’s true there is little character development, I find these small portraits quite compelling, and they seem to offer the idea that perhaps even the wretched and weak are worthy of something other than the lives they have led as human beings. Without going into the metaphysical or religion questions, it is something I’ve never seen a game do, or most of popular culture, to which most games belong. Indeed, the moment of death, and the exposure of human frailty and suffering is not something games death with, and for many games shouldn’t. They should remain the fantasy distractions that take us away from the daily realities of life, a escape. Indeed games should serve this function, but much like literature or great film, I see why no reason that escape cannot allow us to open up these issues and from within them come back to our daily world with some new insight into the sufferings of others, and that we too must someday die.

A game that poses the question of death, indeed this recently was just dealt with in the graveyard. In that case it was about the player understanding the frailty of old age, but it also represents a peaceful death, in a place of death. It’s quite contained, and I think that is it’s main flaw. In attempting to be a simulation it doesn’t allow for much beyond it’s context. Valkyrie Profile maybe a fantasy, and function within medieval and mythological tropes, but focusing so much on the moment of death, with such a variety of characters and from such a variety of backgrounds makes the question all the more real, in that it reveals that death strikes may come at any time to anyone, from the ugly criminal, to the innocent girl, to the successful professional.

Perhaps the dialogue isn’t a great literary masterpiece, and the overall story arc is forgettable, but the theme is poignant. Everyone must face death.

It seems we have a new popular phenom game reviewer, who not only is internet famous, but now has secured himself a spot on television. This British-born Aussie seems to have made quite a dent with his tongue-in-cheek profanity laced reviews. Yet for each part of vitriol and sheer disdain, there is a refreshing amount of insight and stark opinion. Yahtzee’s short video reviews represent the full fury of a uncensored critic, something no other professional game reviewers get a chance to do.

But the question remains if this type of review adds anything to the overall dialogue of discourse over games. Yahtzee is at least forth coming in that he feels his work is only the gateway to a career in gaming development, and he himself has is a amateur game designer. His unabashed love of PC gaming, and scathing remarks about console games have my grudging respect. But his reviews are not really reviews so much as comedic criticism. I can’t say I see Yahtzee ever informing my purchasing decisions, the way the reviews of EGM and other review houses often do. They merely provide an amusing contrarian view of well known games, and a bashing of some games that I might never have noticed.

What Yahtzee does do however, is bring a wider audience the esapist. A online rag I have followed on and off since it’s inception and wavered with my attitude towards its content. Sometimes it has interesting pieces, other times I think they are just drivel, perpetuating and defending societal practices that I personally cannot reconcile my personal beliefs with. Nevertheless, Yahtzee’s work is a sort of gateway drug, as the style fits in with the rest of the escapist, both visually and content-wise. While the Escapist wants to be a non-review/preview based journalism, Yahtzee provides the alternative style review. In the way most of the Escapist’s contest is more or less editorial style articles, Yahtzee provides an editorial review, that more often is a commentary on the entire game industry and game genres.

But that is Yahtzee’s genius, his video reviews are gateway drugs. There a plenty of viewers who just tune in for the laughs, but I think the management behind the escapist is hoping his open style of game review and frank questioning of game developers choices, as well as game players choices, is a sort of gateway drug into the content of the escapist magazine. Yes, Yahtzee sees his work as a personal gateway, for the Escapist he is a gateway to their work, and I think for every game player Yahtzee might serve as a gateway to a more thoughtful and critical way of playing, designing, and thinking about games.

I finally got to reading Gamer Theory, alas I found no value in reading the whole thing. I read the beginning but towards the middle, found no motivation to read any of the chapters, so I skipped ahead to the end, to see if there was any insight worth leading up to.

That is not to say, that Gamer Theory is a bad book, it just may not be for the gamer/ casual video game academic (such as myself). Wark starts the book off with a brilliant notion: that the gamespace (ie the rules we follow and the “games” we play to get the prize, money, a date, etc.) of contemporary society is an imperfect digital game, which makes a lot of sense. In the beginning of the book, he(?) goes on to say that the digital game is the representative medium of the modern condition, which also makes alot of sense. However, for the rest of the book, he tries to map reality onto digital games. Mostly he tries to elucidate some postmodern cultural theory through digital games (or is it the other way around, it’s hard to tell). He introduces alot of concepts, such as topology versus topography, but doesn’t explain those concepts very well, instead, he jumps into applying them to the case study game. I didn’t find much of what Wark had to say about either postmodern ideas and how it relates to digital games very interesting.
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Last week I randomly indulged in a nostalgic whim and picked up copies of Super Star Wars and Super Empire Strikes Back off Ebay. If I remember correctly, I used cheats on these when I was a kid, and I think it was justified.

These games have something that we simply don’t get anymore, and I don’t think it would be allowed. They are punishing and unforgiving. You do not want to die, and you will die. Both games are not amazing, but play fairly well, probably averaging a low 80s in my book. But even on easy these games are hard. You miss a jump, you die. Bosses will kill you if you are not damn careful. Enemies hurt you bad, and only the plentiful health-power ups prevent you from dying. There are occasional cheap deaths, Wampa freezes you, then whacks you, you slide into spiked pit an die. Yet I don’t feel totally cheated, as it was my own stupid ass fault for getting frozen and trying to frontally assault a Wampa. Yes, this game says “be careful, take your time, there will be no coasting through this game please.” (more…)