Free play: the politics of the video game

Reason, April, 2004 by Kevin Parker

Environmentalism, technocratic planning, self-organizing systems--every cause and school of thought with a cultural pulse and a few gigs of hard drive space finds promise in this new form. The socialist writer Barbara Garson has said she wants to "explain globalization ... through a game. "And Ted Friedman, a professor of cultural studies at Georgia State, writes that it's "easy to imagine" a computer game based on Marx's Capital, though he does not elucidate this vision for his readers.

Free the Gamers!

In theory, the easiest way to graft an ideology onto a game is through the story, as with the post-apocalyptic backdrop to Gore. In practice, it's not so simple. Facile analogies to the movies have concealed a deep tension between game play and narrative.

Storytelling has so possessed game design that, with the exception of sports, racing, and a few other genres, it is rare for major titles to forego extensive script and character development. But while stories can supply context and direction, they are told, not played. Full-motion video became reviled by many gamers in the mid-'90s for periodically butting in to tell unevenly produced story-snippets. Though visually striking, such vignettes tend to clash stylistically with game graphics. But the real downside is that they seize control from the player. One moment he is guiding the main character's actions; a moment later that power is frozen while a video clip plays. If the protagonist does something during the scene that the player would rather not have done, that is considered an acceptable cost of telling the story.

Like locked doors and other plot-regulating devices, such "cut scenes" chafe players who are ready for action. In his 2001 book Game Design: Theory of Practice, Richard Rouse III counsels developers to avoid linear design for a deeper reason. "If the player wants to replay the game again, that is fine, but the primary goal of non-linearity is to surrender some degree of authorship to the player." Linear stories are the governors of game worlds. They tell you who you are, what you seek, and how you might succeed. Players go along, some happily, others yawningly--or they take control in the real world by turning the game off.

Yet there is a continual drumbeat for games to be more like movies. The intent is not simply to include more film clips, but to make gameplay itself more cinematic. Pressure comes from journalists reporting on game/movie deals, and from observers and game developers themselves, who for a variety of reasons see cinematic games as the next step in game evolution. One session at last year's Game Developers Conference was titled "Story and Gameplay Are One." Indeed, while many in the industry speak highly of non-linear approaches, other reviewers and developers stress the importance of a game's story above almost any quality except "fun."

Whatever the shape of the theoretical dispute, today's gamers are finding new freedom from constraining storylines. The Sims, that dishwashing, interior-decorating, hot-tubbingjuggernaut, offers no story to unify all the simulated shopping and flirting. (What stories do exist are entirely player-generated: Some people write Sims fan fiction.) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the latest fantasy role-playing title from the publisher-developer Bethesda, was hyped in part because of the autonomy it grants players. Morrowind does have an epic storyline, but the player has unusual freedom to tackle unrelated challenges and even to ignore the main plot--or to continue playing after the story has wrapped up.