Today on my Shit List: People on both sides of the Gater-adjacent culture war operating under the assumption that there is some kind of inherent ideological conflict between progressive narratives and quality, challenging, mechanically complex gameplay, action or otherwise.
If you’re referring to the post I made that went sort of viral… that wasn’t what I was trying to say, at all, in any way shape or form.
Even if everyone on the left decided tomorrow that progressivism was Dumb and we were all going to become some variety of libertarian- there would be some people who would prefer challenging, mechanically complex gameplay, and some people who would prefer simpler gameplay with a very strong story backing it up. This is a competing access needs thing, not a tribal values thing.
I personally cannot play games that require me to do complicated action gameplay, or complicated physics gameplay, or anything that requires timing and not running into the walls on a frequent basis. I play games on easy most of the time, and like to be able to take it slow. I prefer Bioware games, interactive fiction, and sim games for these reasons, and I loved that Undertale gave me a way to ‘cheat’ (by using the Tem Armour) so that I could keep playing and experience more of the game.
That doesn’t mean that someone who likes doing more complicated and challenging gameplay is in the wrong! It means that we need two different things out of gaming, and that’s okay.
I don’t think it was about your post (which was very well written by the way)
But if you traverse the bowels of twitter you will find plenty of people from the Hardcore /v/-is-always-right scene proudly saying “Liberal politics are just an excuse to fill games with avant-garde mechanics and mumblecore aesthetics!”, and people from the Alt-Games scene proudly saying “But what’s even the POINT of liberal politics if we don’t also get avant-garde mechanics and mumblecore aesthetics??”
The hardcore case seems based purely on ”my enemies like this therefore it is inherently bad” … I mean… did they all forget that beloved FPS based entirely on Objectivist-bashing? Did they forget that groundbreaking RPG about how corporations that pollute are bad?
The alt-games case… is… far deeper, and far worse.
It’s based on the idea that any game mechanic that can be read as a metaphor for a reactionary idea– e.g. “Character levels replicate the distinction between Ubermensch and Untermensch, Quest Rewards replicate capitalist ruthlessness, logically consistent rules replicate the myth of perfect meritocracy”– necessarily encodes reactionary assumptions. So it’s not enough to make the game’s story a liberal fable, a game isn’t ~truly~ liberal until its very software architecture has been subjected to a struggle session.
this is the line of thought that gaters lovingly refer to as “Going Full McIntosh”
I know it sounds like I’m making this shit up.
(Necroreblog, yay.)
Is “subjecting games’ software architectures to struggle sessions” really more insidious than other kinds of progressive media analysis though?
If we allow that gameplay is as worthy for critique and analysis as story and art direction are - which it totally is - and that media critisism in general is alowed to include working out the political implications of things, then is it not valid for critics to analyze the political implications of game mechanics?
We can all disagree with the conclusions such critics make. But such analysis can’t be much worse than reading sexism in random cartoons or whatever.
okay, so, sorry for the late reply.
first, an admission of a mistake on my part.
<writes “I will not use ‘mumblecore’ to refer to ‘poorly executed bildungsromans’ anymore” on the chalkboard 1000 times>
second, I think there is a problem with the “mechanics have meaning” framework that’s not present in other, more conventional forms of analysis.
The problem is that there is something inherently flawed in the notion of interpreting engineering as if it were art. To look at a machine and ask of each gear and wire “What does this symbolize?” probably won’t produce any meaningful answers. A machine isn’t designed with the same sort of artistic intent that a work of fiction is– the design process is about accomplishing a practical task within practical limitations, not about conveying information or mood. It’s designed with the assumption that the average end-user will never “peek inside the black box”, as it were, and as such, the stuff inside the black box is not meant to be meaningful to the layman (unlike the stuff outside it). There’s no trail of breadcrumbs to follow. Nothing intended as a signifier. Just numbers and abstract logic.
With no seed of meaning there to latch on to, interpreting it artistically tends to turn it into a rorschach test. The innards of the machine symbolize whatever the critic wants them to symbolize.
When it comes to video games, the practical task of the mechanics is usually entertainment. Giving the player a sense of goals, getting them into a flow state, giving them the exhilaration of risk and reward. Mechanics are rarely intended as a statement on how the real world works, or how the real world ought to work, rather, they’re intended as an answer to the question, “what kind of abstract logical system is enthralling to play around inside of?”
I know, I know, Death of the Author. But as soon as you start saying “Gameplay Mechanic X can be interpreted as an endorsement of Reactionary Concept Y, which means Game Designer Z has some explaining to do”, you’ve moved from the Death of the Author to the Weekend at Bernie’s of the Author, and that’s almost always what critics are trying to do.
Anyway, this shit’s too abstract. I think the meat of the problem is that the mechanics ultimately don’t have meaning on their own. They derive their meaning from the aesthetic/storytelling elements attached to them.
In your average RPG, Experience Points more or less represent muscle memory and physical toughness.
In inFamous, Experience Points represent reaching greater understanding of your supernatural abilities.
In Saints Row III, Experience Points represent prestige in the criminal underworld.
In Undertale, Experience Points represent becoming emotionally acclimated to combat.
does it make sense to lay down the same blanket judgement of “the concept of Leveling Up is reactionary” in those four separate contexts? Of course not. But that’s the sort of decontextualization-ridden approach the “mechanics have meaning” framework encourages.
Anyway. I once had a friend tell me that Skyrim was “anti-science” because you could kill a robot (Dwarven construct) with a sword. But for some reason the actual fucking magic didn’t bother him.
I don’t want to give that kind of nitpicking-but-bizarrely-arbitrary thinking any sort of respect.
OK, uh, speaking of late replies…
Seriously, though, I think there’s a major problem here with boundaries/definitions. Where exactly do we draw the line between “mechanics” (which are exempt from cultural critique under this schema) and narrative (which is not)?
This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical sneer.
Because on the one hand, yeah, there definitely comes a point when we’re really definitely talking about engineering rather than idea-communication, and so it’s really definitely dumb to use the critical language of the humanities. I promise, that arrangement of wires and chips on the motherboard isn’t any kind of statement, it’s just that we need some tool to turn our ideas into playable video games. Same goes for the programming language in which the game is written. At some point the struggle session becomes obvious farce.
On the other hand…“what kind of abstract logical system is enthralling to play around inside of?” might be the world’s most culturally loaded question. Even if we’re talking about The World’s Least Artistic Game Designer, who somehow has no vision or message at all and who “just wants to make an entertaining game,” the concept of “entertaining game” is precisely the kind of thing that cultural critics most want to address.
To explain where I’m coming from here: I write theater LARPs. As far as I’m concerned, to do good craftsmanlike work in that medium – to make an “entertaining game” – there are certain mechanical and structural rules you have to follow. Things like “make sure every player character has agency, and gets to make real independent decisions.” “Make sure no one feels like he’s irrelevant to the game as a whole.” “Make sure every character has enough internality to be psychologically engaging.” Stuff like that. This is not me trying to make a statement, this is just me trying to ensure that my players are satisfied and interested and not sad.
But, wow, following those rules sure has an impact on what kind of stories you tell! In my games, every “real person” – everyone who might actually be animated by a real human consciousness – is someone who has real power of some kind. Powerless people are not PCs (because the experience of inhabiting a powerless person would be no damn fun). And PCs are not only always powerful people, they’re always psychologically intricate people (because the experience of being in thrall to simple motivations would be boring). And it’s very easy to see how you get to each of those places. But you end up saying “to engage with this medium, you have to inhabit a viewpoint where everyone who feels like an Actual Person is a powerful individual driven by his own mental complexities, everyone else will be totally invisible, or maybe played by an index card”…and by that point the critics are salivating, ‘cause damn, they’ve got a whole lot to say.
And I think this generalizes. It’s easy to imagine The World’s Least Artistic Novelist saying “ok, this is the climax, I just have to find a thing that will get my readers’ blood pumping.” Totally mechanical, no meaning at all. OK, what does that? Well, your most reliable answer is probably something like “a good guy righteously unleashing a giant cathartic burst of whoop-ass on some bad guys.” Which is, I believe, the thing that the postmodernists call “fascism,” the thing that they think is the most important subject of criticism in the entire world. I don’t agree with them about that, but I’m not comfortable saying that it’s Obviously Mechanical, Obviously Out of Bounds For Critique Altogether.
I do not know where to draw this line. I really don’t. I suspect it’s one of those things that will always require judgment and sensitivity. So…we’re fucked.