Games are the next comics
In the last few months, graphic novels have appeared sporadically in the pages of the New York Times’s Book Review (e.g., 1, 2), and have been given their own bestseller list online. More amazing still, a multi-panel comic appeared in the Book Review not as subject, but as a method for reviewing a book. The Grey Lady is conservative in its style and content, so this, to me, seems a watershed moment. Something has changed to make cultured people think of comics as a legitimate artistic medium. I think the same will happen to games.
The transformation of comics in our society is a great one. They were initieally on the very fringe: dangerous, corrupting, worthless to serious people. Later, they became less sinister, primarily geeky and still worthy of condescension. Now look where they are. Other media have made the same journey into respectability, including film and, before that, photography. What is first a gimick, and practiced by very few devotees becomes mainstream and a potential vehicle for serious thoughts. Comics have distance to go yet, but some key milestones seem to have been reached. They are at a stage where:
- People have been making and reading them long enough to have a some understanding of the medium; they’re developed technically, as a craft.
- At least a small number of people have bene thinking about them seriously for long enough to see them as artistic, and be spokesman for that cause.
- Ordinary people are familiar enough with them to start seeing past the medium itself, as a gimmick, and appreciate the message. And because of #2, comics have a real messages for them to see: universal problems of humanity are being addressed.
Games will eventually reach similar points. Today they are common but ill-regarded: at best, a waste of time, and at worst, corrupting. This is familiar, and it will pass. If we want to accelerate the process—and I do—we might consider the following roadblocks. They will have to addressed, at least partially, by those of us on the inside first.
Appreciation of a new medium
Part of what holds back new media is the comparison with old ones. Comics don’t tell the same stories novels do; so if all we know are novels, comics don’t live up. Movies are the same. To stand on their own, games cannot be measured directly against movies or comics or anything else.
In the computer-gaming world, we’ve seen games that constitute political commentary or have some other stated mission, besides entertainment; certainly educational games have been around for a while. Other games can push in this direction, to help show what the general concept of “game” can do.
An important signal regarding changed perceptions of comics is the comic-based book review I mentioned. As a society (or sub-section of it) we can apparently see the medium of comics as acceptable and versatile enough to communicate a variety of messages, including a meta-message: a commentary, and about not even comics themsleves, but about another medium entirely! This is the next level for games. We’ve seen some games that are self-conscious, and serve as commentary on games themselves, or on gamer culture (Vincent Baker’s Kill Puppies for Satan, in some ways; parodies like Munchkin). We’re not yet at the point where games are seen as a universal medium for commenting on any chosen subject though.
The duality of play
Here we may have to make some distinctions between computer games and role-playing games. This has nothing to do with platform per se, but the fact that RPGs are open-ended, and the experience is crafted by the group playing. Computer games, though not linear, are more constrained: the designer has engineered the experience more thoroughly. This is not a binary difference. There is a continuum, and we should not discount the thoughts of the computer-game player to his own experience. But there is a qualitative difference.
This complicates where the “art” of games appears. In computer games, we buy a package, which has been designed and programmed, with art and music, and so on. It’s easy to see this in the same light as a home movie: an experience of a given length you’re paying to have. The art is in all that production; perhaps with pride of place given to the designer, as to a director in movies.
A role-playing game is a set of rules though. It is not one experience, but a system for creating experiences, which you must endeavor—with no small amount of effort—to create with a group of other people. That sounds something more like movie production than movie viewing. Going further, RPGs may have more in common with theater, such that a script is like the game rules, but a theater company must interpret this and create the show; and both script-writing and acting and directing are seen as artistic endeavors. I like this metaphor because the old name for acotrs, players, matches gaming nomenclature. Of course, RPGs tend not to feature an audience: the enjoyment is purely for the performers themselves. And rules are not a script by any means. But as I said, every medium is its own: games are not movies or plays.
I am very clearly of the opinion that equal art exists in writing games and in playing them. Perhaps that is not controversial. But I would also say that game rules can exist by themselves, as art, even if they are never played. Partly this is because the play could be imagined, like a play’s script is read without a production. But anticipation of play is not necessary for artistry, and in fact the game may be unplayable: it may be contradictory, or not work in the social context that exists, or demand things no human is capable of—to name but blunt examples. Contemplating the playability of the game turns the rules into a meta-message about games, and game rules. This is a worthy artistic message.
If we can explore the utility of role-plaing games as a general medium, to carry many messages, we can understand the medium better, and help help advance it to the level comics are now reaching.