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>>COMMENTATOR: Hi everyone. Thanks for coming.
It's great pleasure for me to introduce Tom Bissell.
Tom is the author of two previous books of non-fiction: Chasing the Sea and The Father
of All Things, as well as, the wonderful short story collection God Lives in Saint Petersburg,
which won him many well deserved accolades.
In his newest book, Extra Lives, Tom shares with us his long-time fascination with videogames.
It's neither a history of the medium, nor a survey of the industry, nor a technical
treatise on game design; but rather, it is one man's opinions on what playing games feels
like, an examination of why videogames matter, and why they do not matter more.
Whether or not you're already the gaming addict that Tom reveals himself to be; Extra Lives
provides a unique view of what these games have become and makes a strong and provocative
case for their continuing relevance and significance.
Please join me in welcoming to YouTube, Tom Bissell.
[APPLAUSE]
>>TOM BISSELL: Everyone, thank you for coming out today. It's a real pleasure to be here
and I don't know if the camera's ever gonna turn around and look at this room, but I really,
I really like this room 'cause of it makes me feel like I'm trying to explain to the
Galactic Senate why the Trade Federation invaded Naboo.
[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES] [PAUSE]
And I think I could make that case.
[PAUSE DEEP BREATH] So- [PAUSE] As, Dan said, the game's called Extra Lives, Why Videogames
Matter. And a couple of the reviews that I've gotten have claimed to-have enjoyed the book
whilst, while also expressing some frustration that I don't really make the case why videogames
matter. That rather I make the case that they matter to me.
I've kind of, I've conceded that point a little bit. I- I think that there's probably something
to that. Maybe I do not make that case, so-I'd like to take a few minutes before I start
actually reading a, a little brief part of this book why- why I think games do in fact
matter.
So let me, let me just ask the room here. How-How many of you guys consider yourselves
gamers-in the room?
[PAUSE LOOKS AROUND]
Wow! That's about half. Interesting. So this is-there'll be some internecine arguments
and bloodshed at the end of this session, I hope, while we all debate whether or not
they do, in fact, matter.
So, the first videogame is genuinely regarded as a thing called "Tennis for Two", which
was invented in the late 1950's by [PAUSE] an engineer, the guy who actually invented
the timers that were used on the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War
II.
He-He later became an-an engineer and so there was some open house, I think at MIT that they
were having; and this guy ginned up this very simple device ta, it was basically, it was
like a proto-palm that this guy invented. And what's funny about that is, you know,
15 years later, whatever it was when palm finally, went- when palm dropped nationally,
it was still basically the same thing.
And so, it's these two things shooting a ball at each other, it's repetitive, it's kind
of like a digital approximation of an-an athletic activity. It's repetitive, it's competitive,
and it had to do with like the same thing over and over again until someone failed and
someone won. So that's how games sort of begin. They begin in this sort of digital approximation
of something that happens over and over and over again.
And then the next wave of like popular games, you know, you get in the late 1970s, late
1980s, you start seeing games like Donkey Kong and Pacman. And suddenly, these are goal-oriented
activities with a very vague storytelling overlay.
Like, for instance, Pacman has cut scenes, which are interstitial things that go on between
bits of game play. And so, you realize that there's history between Pacman and the ghosts.
There-there's something between them. And they've obviously shared -- there's some bad
blood there.
And, it's not storytelling the way we have traditionally come to understand it; but it's
definitely there's something more to the game than just the activity of going through these-these-these-these
passageways. That the game designer actually wants you to feel that there is something
narratively going on here.
And Donkey Kong is the same way. We don't really know why Donkey Kong has captured Mario's
girlfriend; but he has and he has to get her back. And so, there's this-s, why did she
fall into his grasp? Why does she maybe not seem like she's fighting it quite as strong
as she could be? Does she, does she actually like Donkey Kong? These are all things you
can think about within the parameters of the Donkey Kong story. This kind of vague thing
that happens in the game.
So then after that, a lot of the big, commercial games-s-s-s, the-the-the-the pendulum sorta
swung the other way. They were no longer goal-oriented activities with the vague storytelling overlay.
They were actually a storytelling medium that were organized around successfully obtaining
goals. And so these, this is where the games that I'm kind of interested in come into this
and why I think games matter.
And this form of storytelling that the games started doing in the early 90s, late 80s,
wherever you wanna date it from, wasn't really very good for a long time for all sorts of
technical reasons that we can talk about later.
But, I think we can concede that the knock on games for a long time was the stories weren't
as good as stories in traditional medium because well as a game the story was supposed to be
stupid. It didn't matter. In a way it didn't. What did matter if the game was fun?
Well, by 2005-2006, I started to notice the game's storytelling was actually getting pretty
good, and more and more designers seemed less satisfied with the-it's a videogame, it's
supposed to be stupid-approach to game design.
And so, why I think games are important is that however garish and clumsy and sometimes
ridiculous they seem, that I do think that they constitute an entirely new form of storytelling,
and moreover a really important one because the rules of this form of storytelling are
not really very well established yet. For instance-do you have a silent protagonist
or a speaking protagonist? Do you use cut scenes? Or not use cut scenes? What is environmental
storytelling and how can games use that to their advantage? How useful is exposition
in a game?
There's all very-within game design circles these are all semi-heated topics that people
are making games endorsing various design principles, and you see these things worked
out now. Just about every year, a couple of videogames come out the really reset the table
when it comes to what we can expect from videogames' storytelling. And there is not another medium
that I know of that is so open to sudden, swift decisive game-changing sort of developments;
and that's what I find really exciting about it.
And this is why I focus in this book on narrative games; it's why I talk about narrative games.
Partially because I'm a writer myself, I'm a fiction writer so storytelling is my fascination.
It's my passion. It's what I'm most interested in.
So there's a lot of hard-core game people, a lot of people who seriously love their games
who kind of don't like narrative games and think the narrative game is kind of a dead
end. And they're more interested in the mechanics of play and how you tell stories just through
play without all those bothersome, clunky, storytelling crap that games have never done
very well to begin with. And I have sympathy for that position.
But I ultimately, for me, I-I kind of reject it because I think that there is a reason
why that the game medium desperately wants to become a storytelling medium and I think
it does. You can see it. I think it desperately wants to become a storytelling medium because
human beings desperately love to be told stories.
And so my passion and my argument is that I don't want game narratives to be unnecessarily
stupid, anymore. And-and that's kind of why I wrote this book, and I wanna distinguish
between unnecessarily stupid things in games and things that are kind of core to the game
experience.
My girlfriend is an actor and I just came back from Texas seeing her perform in a couple
uh Shakespearean performances. One of which was Much Ado About Nothing and the other which
was Hamlet. And I realized watching these performances that there are all of these core
artificialities to the stage.
Like the Shakespearean soliloquy's about as ridiculous as a convention as you could possibly
think. When one character turns to the audience and speaks his heart while people are standing
two feet away from him, and we're supposed that this is-that this is not obviously a
realistic depiction of what is supposed to be going on in the play world. It's a stylized
approximation of something that's going on in the character's head.
So games obviously have this kind of stuff happening all the time. And novels happen
in chapters, which is also a very weird, artificially, arbitrary kind of convention to the form that
we don't really question.
So- what I think games need to be doing more of is learning how to soften these things
that seem ridiculous into things that seem acceptably ridiculous within the medium; and
separating those from the things that are unnecessarily ridiculous and just coming up
with some very stronger ground rules as to how the medium works best.
And I'm sure all of you have heard the "Are games art?" question, and I'm not going to
address that much beyond to say, it's the wrong question. It's not the question is not,
"Are games art?" but the question is, "Can artists express themselves through this medium?"
And I think the answer to that question is, "Absolutely, yes!"
And a lot of the basis of people saying games are not art comes down to this weird misunderstanding
that because games are quote "games" and because they have goals, that like chess, or like
football, or like basketball they can't really be art.
Roger Ebert's position is that Michael Jordan's not an artist. And that is true, but Michael
Jordan is also not telling a story.
And I think any medium that is- serves as a storytelling medium provides a basis for
an artistic experience.
'Cause to me an artistic experience-whether it's like a good artistic experience or a
bad artistic experience or a high or a low art artistic experience-to me an artistic
experiences allows you to go into something created by another person or another group
of people and come out of it transformed somehow-emotionally. And some games have done that to me. And I'm
sure that some games have done that to those of you who game. Maybe not as many as we'd
like but it-it's definitely happened.
And so I think the biggest problem with this question for a lot of people who are ignorant
of the medium is that just-just-just this term game gets in the way, videogame. It just
sounds so ridiculous.
And I think that everyone agrees that it's the worst title for something ever. But I
think we're kind of stuck with it; but I would also remind you that thinking about "movie"
for a minute it's a -- [CHUCKLES] -- it's a pretty dumb name for that medium as well.
Something-a movie is something that moves. And it's better than talkie though, I suppose.
So I would hope that at some point this idea of things being games or game-like -- that
all the childish, adolescent associations we have with the idea of games will-will sort
of fade.
And I think it is also why videogame -- in my book I use the two word, I represent it
as two words "video game" whereas most of the real serious critics and game designers
I know all prefer to use the one word spelling of it. And I now think that the one word spelling
of it is a way to sorta get away from this-this-this [Pause] the childish game like association
that we have with 'em so I really regret having spelled it with two words throughout this
entire book.
So egg is on [SIGHS] is on my face.
I'm here to read a-a little bit of Chapter Two. Which is a Chapter called "Head Shots".
I'm going to read the first half of it. And, it's about, about an experience I had playing
games, god, about four...thirteen years ago now. And some of you may recognize this game
and some of you may not.
[PAUSE]
And-I will just start.
[Pause]
"So it begins here, in your stepfather's darkened living room, with you hunched over, watching
as a dateline title card '1998, July', forcefully types itself across the television screen.
1998, July? Why not England, London? Why not 'A time once upon'?
"A narrator dude views to describe Alpha Teams in medias res-in medias res search for something
called Bravo teams downed chopper in what is mouthfully described as a forest zone situated
in the northwest of Raccoon City.
"Okay, this is a Japanese game. That probably explains the year-date swappage. That also
makes Raccoon City a valiant attempt at something idiomatically American sounding. Though it
is about as convincing as an American-made game set in the Japanese metropolis of Port
Sushi.
"You harbor affection for the products of Japan from its cuisine, to its girls; to its
video games- the medium Japanese designers have made their own. To your mind then, a
certain amount of ineffable Japanese weirdity is par for the course -- even if the course
in question has 15 holes and everyone is a par 9.
"A live action scene commences in which Alpha Team lands upon a foggy moor, finds Bravo
Team's crashed chopper and is attacked by Baskervillian hounds. But all you are privy
to is the puppetry of snarling muzzles shot in artless close-up. To the canine puppeteer's
credit, the hounds are more convincing than the living actors whose performances are miraculously
unsuccessful. The cinematography, meanwhile, is a shaky cam evil, deadish fugue minus any
insinuation of talent, style or coherence.
"Once the hell-hound enfilade has taken the life of one Alpha Team member, the survivors
retreat into a nearby mansion. You know that one of these survivors, following the load
screen, will be yours to control.
"Given the majestic incompetence of the proceedings thus far you check to see that the games receipt
remains extent. For most of your life you have played video games. You have owned in
turn the Atari 2600, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Genesis, the Super Nintendo,
the Nintendo 64, and familiarized yourself with most of their marquee titles.
"The console you are playing now -- the console you have only today purchased is categorically
different from its ancestors. It is called the Sony PlayStation. Its controllers are
more ergonomic than those you have previously held and far more loaded with buttons. And
its games are not plastic cartridges but compact discs. Previous consoles were silent but your
new PlayStation zizzes and whirrs in an unfamiliar way as its digital stylus scans and loads.
"It is 1997. The PlayStation was released to the American market one year ago. You missed
this, having been away in the Peace Corps teaching English, which service you terminated
in a panic 16 months short of your expected stay.
"Now you are back in your hometown in the house you grew up in, feeling less directionless,
and mapless, compassless, in lack of any navigational tool at all. You are also bored, hence the
"The live action sequence has given way to an indoor tableau of surprising detail and
stark loveliness like no console game that you have hitherto encountered.
"Three characters stand in the mansion foyer. There is Barry, a husky, ursine, ginger-bearded
man; Wesker, enjoying the sunglasses and slick-backed hair of a coke fiend; and Jill, your character,
a trim, brunette looker in a beret.
"A brief conversation ensues about the necessity of finding Chris, your fellow Alpha Team member,
who has somehow managed to go AWOL in the time it took to step across the threshold
to investigate.
"The dialogue bad enough as written, 'Wow! What a mansion!' is mesmerizing in performance.
"It is as though the actors have been encouraged to place emphasis on the least apposite word
in every spoken line. Barry's, 'He's our old partner, you know,' to provide but one example,
could have been read in any number of more or less appropriate ways. From 'HE'S our old
partner, you know.' To 'He's OUR old partner, you know.' To, 'He's our old PARTNER, you
know.' 'He's our OLD partner, YOU KNOW,' is the line reading of artistic miscalculation
this game goes with.
"Upon entering to the new room you are finally granted control of Jill.
"But how the game has chosen to frame the mise-en-scene is a little strange. You are
not looking through Jill's eyes and movement does not result in a scrolling, follow-along
screen. And still Ji-instead Jill stands in what appears to be a dining room.
"The in-game camera angling upon her in a way that nulls any wider field of vision.
Plenty of games have given you spaces around which to wander, but they always took care
to provide you with a maximal vantage point. This is not a maximal angle. This is not at
all how your eye has been trained by video games to work. It is as though you, the gamer,
are an invisible, purposefully compromised presence within the game world.
"The room's only sound is a metronimically-metronimically ticking grandfather clock.
"You step forward, experimenting with your controllers 17 buttons and noting the responsiveness
of the controls which lends Jill's movement a precision that is both impressive and a
little creepy.
"Holding down one button allows Jill to run, for instance, and this is nicely animated.
"A pair of trigger buttons lies beneath each of your index fingers. Squeeze the left trigger
and Jill lifts her pistol into a firing position.
"Squeeze the right trigger and Jill fires, loudly, her pistol kicking up in response.
"All of this, from the preparatory, pre-firing mechanic to the unfamiliar sensation of consequence
your single shot has been given, feels new to you. Every video game gun you have previously
fired did so at the push of a single button. The resultant physics no more palpable or
significant than jumping or moving or any other in-game movement.
"Video game armaments have always seemed to you a kind of voodoo. If you wanted some digital
effigy to die you simply lined it up and pushed in the requisite photonic pin. Here, however,
there is no cross-hair or reticle. You fire several more shots to verify this. How on
earth do you aim?
"As you explore the dining room, something even more bizarre begins to occur. The in-game
camera is changing angles. Depending on where you go the camera sometimes frames your caper...your
character in relative close-up and other times leaps back, reducing Jill to an apparent foreground
afterthought.
"And yet no matter the angle from which you ju-you view Jill, the directional control
schema, the precision of which you a moments ago admired, remains the same.
"What this means is that with every camera shift your brain is forced to make a slight,
but bothersome, spatial adjustment. The awkwardness of this baffles you.
"When you wanted Link or Mario to go left you pushed left. That the character you controlled
moved in accordance to his on-screen positioning which in turn corresponded to your joystick
or directional pad was an accepted convention of the form.
"Yes, you've experienced mode shifts in games before but never so inexplicably or so totally.
So far the game provides no compelling explanation as to why it has sundered every convention
it comes across.
"The dining room itself is stunning though, reminding you of the flat, lush, realism of
Myst. A personal computer game your girlfriend adores that-that-that- has always, that has
always struck you as a warm milk soporific. You've not played a tremendous number of PC
games. It's simply not a style of gaming you respond to.
"You're a console gamer for better or for worse. Even though you are aware of the generally
higher quality of PC games, anyone who claims allegiance to the recognizably inferior is
in dire need of a compelling argument.
"Here's yours: The keyboard has one supreme purpose, and that is to create words. Swapping
out keys for aspects game control -- J for jump, the lesser sign for switch weapon strikes
you as frustrating and unwieldy. And almost every PC game does this or something like
it.
"PC gamers themselves meanwhile have always seemed to you a kind of-have always seemed
to you an unlikable fusion of tech-geek and cult member - a kind of mad scientologist.
"You gance-glance at the box in which this game came packaged -- Resident Evil. What
the hell does that even mean?
"You know that this game is intended to be scary. You also know that zombies are somehow
involved. The box art promises that much.
"The notion of a scary game is striking you as increasingly laughable. While nothing is
more terrifying to you than zombies, calling a zombie based game Resident Evil is a solecism
probably born from failing to fully understand the zombie.
"Part of what makes zombies so frightening is that they are not evil. The zombie, a Caribbean
borrowing, is in its North American guise a modern parable for-well, there you go. Like
all parables zombies are both widely evocative and impossible to pin down.
"Part of the reason that you purchased this game was because you were curious to see what
the Japanese imagination had made of the zombie. This was a culture after all that had transformed
its 20th century resident evil into a giant bi-pedal dinosaur.
"On screen, Barry calls Jill over, where he kneels next to a pool of blood. 'I hope it's
not Chris' blood.' That's actually a perfect impersonation of Barry, if anyone has played
that game.
"He orders you to press on looking around while he completes his investigation.
"You are no criminologist, but gleaning the available information from a small, free-standing
blood puddle would seem to you an undertaking of no more than three or four seconds. Barry
though continues to ponder the hell out of that blood.
"You have two options -- leave the dining room to go back and explore the foyer, where
Wesker presumably awaits your report, or go through a nearby side door. You take the side
door.
"Anytime you go through a door in this game you are presented with a load screen of daunting
literalness. The point of view reverts to an implied first person, the door grows closer,
the *** turns, the door opens, which is followed by the noise of it closing behind you.
"Considerable investment has been placed in the dramatic reproduction of this process.
The knobs sound as though they were last oiled in the Cleveland administration, and the doors
themselves slam shut as though they weigh 500 pounds.
"The load screen complete, Jill now stands in a long, narrow hallway. Camera looks down
at her from an angle of perhaps 70 degrees, which leaves you unable to see either ahead
of or behind her.
"You turn her left instinctively only to hear something further down the hall.
"You hear-chewing? No. It is worse than that. It is a wet, slushy sound -- more like feasting
than chewing.
"Camera has shifted yet again allowing you to look down the hall, but not around the
corner; whence this gluttonies-gluttonous feasting sound originates.
"There is no music, no cues at all. The game world is silent but for your footsteps and
the sound you now realize that you have been set upon this path to encounter.
"You panic and run down to the other end of the hall, the feasting sound growing fainter,
only to find two locked doors.
"No choice then, you walk-not run-back toward the hallway corner and stop and go to a sub-screen
to check your inventory. Your pistols ammunition reserves are paltry and you curse yourself
for having shot off so many bullets in the dining room.
"You also have a knife. You toggle back and forth between pistol and knife, equipping
and un-equipping. You eventually go with the pistol and leave the inventory screen.
"Jill stands inches before the hallway corner, but it suddenly feels as though it is you
standing before Hellmouth itself.
"Your body has become a hatchery from which spiderlings of dread erupt, and skitter. Part
of this is merely expectation, for you know that a zombie is around that corner, and you
are fairly certain that is it-it is-that it is eating Chris.
"Another part is -- you are not sure you can name it -- it is not quite the control and
release tension of the horror film, and it is not quite actual terror. It's something
else, a fear that you can control to a point; but to which you are also helplessly subject.
A fear whose elec...whose electricity becomes pleasure.
"You raise your pistol. And this is interesting. You cannot move while your pistol is raised.
You had not noticed this before. You should be able to move with your pistol raised, and
certainly you should be able to shoot while moving.
"This is another convention of the form. In video games, you can shoot your sluggish bullets
while running, jumping, falling off a cliff, swimming under water. On top of this you have
exactly five rounds.
"Zombies are dispatched with head shots, you know that much. But how do you shoot for the
head when the game provides you with no crosshair?
"A scary game seems a far less laughable notion than it did only a few moments ago.
"You turn the corner to yet another camera change. You have only a second or two to make
out the particulars- a tiny room, a downed figure, another figure bent over him- before
what is called 'a cut scene' kicks in.
"The camera closes on a bald humanoid now turning, noticing you. White head lividly
veiny, mouth bloody, eyes flat and empty and purgatorial. There the brief cut scene ends.
"The zombie, now approaching, groans in thoughtless zombie misery, a half-eaten corpse behind
it. You fire but nothing happens. In your panic you have forgotten the left trigger,
which raises your weapon.
"This blunder has cost you. The zombie falls upon you with a groan and bites you avidly,
your torso transforming into a blood fountain. You mash all 17 if your controller's buttons
before finally breaking free.
"The zombie staggers back a few steps and you manage to fire, still no crosshair or
reticle. Your shot misses. Though by how much you have no idea.
"The zombie is upon you again. After pushing it away -- and there is something date-rapishly
unwholesome about the way it assaults you -- you stagger back into the hallway to give
yourself more room to maneuver.
"But the camera switches in such a way as to leave you unaware of the zombies exact
location though you can still hear its awful blood-freezing moan, which, disembodied, sounds
not only terrifying but sad.
"You fire blindly down the hall toward the moaning. With no guarantee that your shots
are hitting the zombie or coming anywhere close to it. Soon pulling the trigger produces
only spent clicks.
"You go to the inventory screen and equip your knife.
"When you return to game play, the zombie appears within frame and lurches forward.
You slash at it successfully, blood geysering everywhere. But not before it manages to grab
onto you yet again.
"After another chewy struggle, you back up farther, the camera finally providing you
with a vantage point that is not actively frustrating.
"And you lure the zommie-zombie toward you, lunging when it staggers into stabbing range.
At last, the creature drops.
"You approach its doubly lifeless husk. Not quite believing what is happening when it
grabs you by the leg and begins, quite naturally by this point, to bite you.
"You stab at the specimen of undead instruct...indestructability until with a final anguished moan, a copious
amount of blood pools beneath it. What new devilry is this?
"None of it has made sense. Not the absurd paucity of your ammunition stores, not the
handicapping camera system, not the amount of effort it took to defeat a single foe,
not that foes ability to play dead.
"You know a few things about video game enemies. When they are attacked, they either die instantly,
or loose health. And for foes as tough as this one you are typically able to track the
process by way of an on-screen health bar. This zombie, however, had no health bar. Neither
do you properly speaking.
"What you do have is an electrocardiographic wave form that is green when you are at full
health, orange when you are hurt, and red when you are severely hurt. Not only is this
EKG stashed away in an inventory sub-screen, it provides only an approximate state of health.
Right now your health is red, but how red? You have no idea. This game is rationing not
only resources but information.
"When video game characters die, furthermore, they disappear like raptured Christians or
Jedi. Your assailant has not disappeared and instead remains face down in a red pool of
useless zombie plasma.
"This is a game in which every bullet evidently will count. This is also a game in which everything
you kill will remain where it falls. At least until you leave the room.
"You stab it again. Revenge! You flee the hallway and return to Barry. Before you can
tell him what has happened, the door behind you opens.
"The zombie whose deadness was a heliocentric certainty has followed you.
"You, not Jill, you cry out in delighted shock. Your worried stepfather, a few rooms away,
calls your name, his voice emanating from a world that for the last half hour has been
as enclosing but indistinct as an amnion.
"After calling back that you are ok, you are newly conscious of the darkness around you;
the lateness of the hour. For the first time in your life, a video game has done something
more than entertain or distract you. It has bypassed your limbic system and gone straight
for the spinal canal.
"You lean back, cautiously. You are 23 years old. You have played a lot of games. Right
now all those games, all of the irrecoverable eons that you have invested in them, seem
to you suddenly like nothing more than a collective prologue."
[PAUSE]
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
So, I suspect I might be probably one of the older people in the room. And so I'm curious
as how-as to how many of you actually played Resident Evil, the first one that ever came
out? And do any of you remember it feeling like sort of mind blowing? What-what-what
it was like?
I think we all have like our own resident examples of games sort of kind of impressed
upon you like goodness gracious, this is-this is no longer Dig Dog. This is something really
sort of intense and weird. And for me Resident Evil was that game. It's not even a particularly
good game in a lot of ways. In fact, I go on in this chapter to jus-just excoriate its
terrible, terrible dialogue and absolutely ridiculous narrative.
But the one thing that it did really well, that sense of immersion combined with just
the terror of not -- well, you know in a horror movie the protagonist is always safe, 'cause
protagonists don't die.
But in a vid-horror videogame, you're the protagonist and you can die. And it just creates
this totally different expectation of-of fear.
And I also explained that the other thing that it did was it was so hard to save your
progress in the game through a very complicated in-game mechanic of how you actually saved
your progress.
That as I write in this chapter, I've had like friends have died and I've had relationships
end, and I've run out of money, and had terrible experiences; and I would still place being
torn apart by zombies with an hour and a half of unsaved Resident Evil game play behind
me, it's like in the upper quartile [AUDIENCE CHUCKLES] of the most miserable experiences
of my life. It was so demoralizing and so infuriating, when that happened.
So that's- from the second chapter of the book, and it's really like the only pre-2006
game that I really get into very much.
And so it is very much a book about today's games. But I really think a lot about today's
games, not that their like Resident Evil very much but-but to me Resident Evil's the first
game that I was very consciously being told a full-blown, narratively ambitious story.
The fact that the narrative ambition was preposterous and the story itself sucked did not change
the fact that it was a really ambitious attempt to do something in the medium that like very
few games had before it had tried, and certainly no game that I had happened to play.
With that I would love to talk some games or answer some questions. And argue with anyone
who thinks games don't matter,
[LAUGHS]
If anyone feels like doing that.
[PAUSE]
Yes, sir.
>>MAN FROM AUDIENCE: I'm curious to hear your opinion on the kind of contemporary argument
about what- what is the best use of tool or combination of experiences for young adults.
Obviously there is a role of videogame play in the maturing of the young adults mind versus
more active types of-of reading or other types of intellectual stimulation. I'm just curious
to hear your thoughts of how videogames play in that whole developmental type of argument.
>>TOM: Yeah, I would have to think based on the little that I have read on the subject
that I just can't imagine that a lot of videogame playing is good for young adults. I just don't
think it's probably very good for them, for all sorts of reasons.
[PAUSE]
You know games should be a part of a rich, cultural diet that people have. I mean, I
grew up playing games and I also grew up a huge reader. I don't think it's impossible.
It's probably slightly more unusual.
And as games-let's face it the games that I played as a kid they weren't really--you
couldn't really play them for more than a couple of hours without going mad from boredom.
Once you'd had Pitfall Harry go through the entire thing, and you'd recycled yourself
back at the beginning of the-of the map in Pitfall!, there wasn't a whole lot to get
out of that game.
If I had to deal with something like some of these multi-player online games where you
can set there with your friends for hours and very time you play it's a new map, and
you're doing something different. Yeah, I don't know if my-if my mind would have really
withstood that.
So I, I, I think if I had kids I would really seriously limit their game playing time. I
just can't imagine it's good for them, which isn't to say that videogames are bad a priori.
I just think that they should be part of a healthy, balanced cultural lifestyle, and
a part of a balanced entertainment intake.
I also wouldn't let kids play super violent games until it was the appropriate time for
them to play them. And the fact that that is even controversial at all seems kind of
nuts to me. People say that games don't make kids violent -- that's probably true. But
I just think mowing down hundreds of people every day for hours.
I-[CHUCKLES]-I-I, maybe it doesn't turn them into killers but I can't imagine it's going
to turn them into Rhodes Scholars either. [AUDIENCE CHUCKLES] So, that's my take on
that. And most of the games that I like aren't for kids --they're just not. And the people
who make them say, these are not kids' games. We don't want kids playing them. So...[PAUSE]
Yeah.
[PAUSE]
Anyone else?
[PAUSE]
Oh, Yes!
>>MAN FROM AUDIENCE: I was wondering about the one thing that you mentioned with the
Resident Evil, the big hit, was the hour and a half since you saved...
>>TOM: [CHUCKLES]
>> MAN FROM AUDIENCE: ...and then you lose it.
>>TOM: [CHUCKLES]
>>MAN FROM AUDIENCE: There is a sense in modern single player games where the publisher wouldn't
get away without saving a character any more.
>>TOM: It's true. But one game did it - Demon's Souls. Did you play that?
>>MAN FROM AUDIENCE: No, I don't have a PS3.
>>TOM: It's a PS3 game. It was old school, crushing, hard core. If you *** up, you lose
hours of-of progress. It was great; actually, I loved that game.
I-it also, my girlfriend almost broke up with me during the time that I was playing it too.
Because she said I was just going to bed mumbling at night like I was-I was just so -- crazy
-- about that game; and I am really glad that games don't do that anymore. I'm really,
really, really glad.
But it's very cool to play a game that occasionally comes along and says, "Hey, you remember this
style of game play [CHUCKLES]. We're going to give it to you again."
>>MAN FROM AUDIENCE: I mean do you think that your enjoyment was partially this kinda throw
back thing or do you think it was more that-that there is genuinely something about that type
of game that's...
>>TOM: Well, it makes you very careful, and it makes you very tense; and so, but tense
in a way that -- like Resident Evil and Demon's Souls are both fair. They don't like arbitrarily
do stuff.
They make you pay attention and they make you really go slow and pay close watch on
everything that is going on around you. And as long as a game's fair about its sternness,
I don't really have a quarrel with it.
But, I think that a lot of the older games were just hard for the sake of being hard.
And they would throw these really arbitrary kinds of things at you that were-that-that
they weren't hard in a fun way; they weren't hard in a way that rewarded paying close attention.
And I think that's where a lot of game designers kind of got hung up. They thought hardness
was the thing to pursue rather than the encouragement of paying attention. And those are two different
qualities, I think.
So. I will occasionally treat myself. And most of the games that do that are Japanese.
I mean, that-that's the Japanese style of game design. They like hard games. They're
into that.
And western game designers moved away from it, and I think that there is probably like
a middle ground somewhere between the two. 'Cause there is something about a lot of games,
a lot of them are pretty easy, you know.
[PAUSE]
But at the same time these guys want the games to be more accessible and they want people
to be able to enjoy them. You-you-you don't feel like you are getting frustrated at this
thing that you paid this money for.
So I can see all sides of this argument simultaneously. I don't really know if there is a right answer.
I think it's just how the game approaches it. 'Cause it is an aesthetic decision. And
if it is an aesthetic decision that has like a solid foundational grounding to it, then,
I think if it is thoughtfully done; it's totally legit any way you want to do it.
[PAUSE]
Ah, yes.
Green shirt.
>>GREEN SHIRT: Do you know of any instances where the story has originated in videogames
and then gone on to other media?
>>TOM: Well, you mean like movies being made from games?
>>GREEN SHIRT: Yeah, or books.
>>Tom: Yeah, I mean like most of the stuff- times in which that has happened it's all
been like really pulpy, genre, sci-fi stuff. But has there been like- like the Halo-Halo
Series has got a zillion novels come out. Mass Effect has got. And, you know-so-most
games are genre games. That's just something you have to wrap your head around as gamer.
And my-the great weirdness of my life is I'm not really interested in sci-fi mo-film or
literature that much. I don't even like fantasy that much, but I do like games. And so I get
almost all of my genre nutrition...
[LAUGHS]
..from-from-from the ga-game genre. And I read almost no sci-fi. In fact I don't even
remember the last sci-fi novel I read.
So, there's lots of that stuff but I don't really know of any work that is kind of --
I think I know what you mean and I don't think there's ever really been a game story
that has, that has been...
[PAUSE]
...into non-genre mainstream mediums. Other mediums.
But I heard this new movie, Scott-Scott Pilgrim, although it comes from a comic book it's one
of the first films not based on a videogame to actually use videogame grammar to-to tell
the story.
There is lots of videogame imagery in it -- like health meters of characters on screen.
You see stuff like that. And I've heard it's pretty wild and-and for people of our generation
who can look at that stuff and not automatically assume the apocalypse is going to happen the
next day. Then I-I-I am really looking forward to it.
To actually see a movie that has nothing to do with games actually use the grammar of-of
the medium in a way that feels fresh. I think that that could be pretty cool. So I'm really
looking forward to that.
[PAUSE]
You had a question, sir.
Yes.
>>MAN IN THE AUDIENCE: Yes, it seems like for a game to be more than just a game a game
that tells a story to be more than just a collection of cut scenes that are stitched
together? You have to give the players some amount of control...
>>TOM: Yeah
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE: ...over the narrative. Then so what do you think of the argument
that if you give control over the narrative then you can't have the same emotional impact.
That you can have the tragedy then the person can just replay it and do it in a different
way. So, you can't have something like Hamlet where the tragedy comes from the fact that
there is only one way that the narrative could've unfolded.
>>TOM: I think that is absolutely true. Games that are trying to be resonant in that way
are doomed.
But games have all sorts of other resonances. Say you spend a lot of time in game design
creating a relationship between characters, right, that you like. The characters are well
drawn, they're interesting, they're surprising, they're not just crappy versions of action
film.
So say you make losing one of those characters an irrevocable decision, or-or an irrevocable
event, that if you lose this character; you lose them. You can't go back and re-you know,
you have one save slot per game and anyone you lose along the way they're gone. You only
can get them back if you start over from the beginning of the game.
That's a whole different kind of resonance and in a moment like that where something
like that happens. I-It's not going to be Hamlet but it's not supposed to be. It-it's
-- Hamlet is a totally different kind of aesthetic experience.
But game-game play that actually assigns your agency an awful lot of in-game meaning, that
actually really doesn't screw around with the decisions you make; that actually says
you're going to make some choices, and they're going to be difficult, and they're going to
have real consequences. Not consequences you can just kind of go back and reload.
I think that is a really valuable kind of resonance. That-that's the kind of thing that
only a game can really give you.
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE: But that makes for many, many levels of play that being a solo person-incredibly
frustrating game that a lot of people are not going to even bother playing, right. Like
if you take away that ability that you can kind of go back and change things, which seems
like you have to do to get that resonance...
>>TOM: Yeah.
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE:...that's a game that not a lot of people are even going to bother playing.
>>TOM: Well...
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE: I used to play Demon's Souls. It's the game's impact -- enormous
time
>>TOM: [CHUCKLES]
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE: Because everything is, you know, so difficult, and your choices have
such meaning.
>>TOM: Yeah, I donĀ“t think it is the on...I don't think irrevocability of that kind is,
is not necessss...I mean, here's the thing.
Yeah, as the game designer you can think well people can just go back and reload it and
experience it again.
But when I play games, I-I don't do that. I try to honor the vision of the designers,
and I-I try to resist that game temptation of just revisiting things that I did to see
how they work out a different way.
And so, I think game designers, in my opinion, spend too much time anticipating the kid who
wants to pee in the pool and-and figuring out ways ta-ta-ta-to foil the kid who wants
to pee in the pool. Thereby, and by doing that they kind of make all the rest of us
suffer through all the firewalls that they are putting up around this kid. And I kind
of think that if some people wanta break the game, you can't really protect, you can't
really worry about that.
And so, I think all that you can do is just design and encourage the player to sort of
want to believe in the fictional primacy of the world and not want you to violate it.
And that's really the best you can do. And you can just hope that people kinda go through
with generally what you-you're trying to intend them to experience.
See you don't have to go the cruel Demon Souls path. You can actually also take the s-somewhat
gentler path and not-yeah-and not worry too much about that thing. I mean, I don't know.
I don't think there is a good answer to this question, and I think that it's a kind of
game-by-game issue that you have to approach. So I hear you, that there doesn't seem to
be a very satisfactory answer here, but I do think that there are all sorts of kinds
of resonances that are unique to games, and those are the kinds of experiences that I
love about games. And...
>>MAN FROM AUDIENCE: This is kind of an odd question. What are some of the modern games
that have emotional impact comparable to a good novel or kinda comparable to a good novel?
What modern games have emotional impact experience? ...
>>TOM: Yeah. I would never say comparable to a good novel because again those are two
totally different...
>>MAN FROM AUDIENCE: Give me a comparison to what game have emotional impact.
>>TOM: Well-The game Portal, I thought was a tremendously moving game that really just
freaked me out.
There is a game called Far Cry 2, which just left me completely drained and wrung out by
the time I played it. I felt utterly ashamed and disguste-[LAUGHS]-with the, with the-the
game was just like about relentless slaughter. That-that-that slowly convinces you-that slowly
impresses upon you that unlike most shooters in which you're the good guy, Far Cry 2 gradually
sort of piles upon you the realization that you are the bad guy.
And that is a really novel kind of thing for a game to do. You're not like an anti-hero
you are actually the problem. And-and I love that about it.
I thought there was stuff in GT4-GK4-Grand Theft Auto IV that made me laugh, and troubled
me.
BioShock was a tremendous game for the first 80% of it.
Left for Dead has given me some unbelievably gripping, visceral experiences with friends
of mine.
Mass Effect is like kind of a corny space opera, but because it commits so much to its
characters and it's-and it's a pretty good story. There are moments in that that I was
just absolutely riveted.
I have never felt guilty about spending time on games that give me like a valuable kind
of storytelling experiences.
The games that I'm kind of more and more less satisfied with are these hyper-kinetic Call
of Duty style games that don't really give your heart or mind enough time to really like
absorb anything. Where it is just like a relentless push you through a roller coaster. And hope
you come out more or less in one piece at the end of it.
I'm less and less satisfied with that style of game design. And I really like games that
are maybe a little bit slower and maybe a little bit more mischievous about how they
wanta play with your emotions. Have you had resonant game experiences or-or a...
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE: Yeah, I have. It's funny that you mention some of those games that
you mentioned like Far Cry. I mean, I haven't played that but I wouldn't have thought of
that. That, to me, just sounds like another shooter.
>>TOM: I think it is the best shooter ever made personally, I do.
>>Man In Audience: I'll check it out.
>>TOM: Yeah it's really fantastic. It's kinda slow it takes a little while to get going
but once it gets going it's-it's pretty great.
Yes.
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE: I was gonna mention Shadow of the Colossus.
>>TOM: Oh, god, yeah! I should have mentioned that one right off the bat. Yeah, that-that-that
game's at a whole 'nother level of emotional impact. Has anyone played that game?
>>MAN IN AUDIENCE: What was the name of it again?
>>TOM: Shadow of the Colossus. It's kind of like a famous game that everyone who loves
games like loves today but it was sort of a commercial disaster when it came out. It
didn't sell well in this country at all, because it was so ahead of its time.
It's just a game about loneliness and sadness and...
[CHUCKLES]
...takes the single corniest thing of the videogame medium-- the boss fight-- and it
just makes it about nothing but boss fights. And the bosses are actually these big, lovely,
lumbering creatures that seem to bear you no harm, and yet you have to kill them one
by one.
And-and so there is this level of ambiguity and questioning about what-and it does this
with very little dialogue, very little explicit story telling. All the story-storytelling
is environmental. It's all this sort of this combination of like the-the visual presentation
of the game and what you're projecting onto it emotionally. And it's this unbelievably,
haunting, weird experience.
That at the end of the game, I was-I was kind of a wreck. It's a really special piece of-of-of-of...
It's a really special game. And their remaking it for PS3 I've heard. I'm going to be on
that like white on rice as soon as that-that comes out.
Yes.
>>MAN: I mean -- could you contrast the advertising done in movies to the advertising done in
video games? What is the size of the market? What are the growth rates?
>>TOM: I don't really have those numbers at the top of my head. But I do know that games
make more...made more than Hollywood last year and the year before that.
>>MAN: Ads. I'm talking about ads!
>>TOM: Ads?
>>MAN: Like say if you watch the movie Transformers you see Chevy car, the brand new Chevy car...
>>TOM: Yeah
>>MAN: So Chevy had obviously paid some money to the movie producer to place it...
>>TOM: Yeah
>>MAN: So is similar thing is done on the videogames also?
>>TOM: Well, I do know that I was once playing a driving game called Burnout Paradise, which
is like you're driving around in a city looking for races. It's kind of an open world driving
game, which is sort of an interesting thing.
And I'm driving down the street one day, and I see an "Obama '08" sign [AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]
on one of the billboards. And I'm like literally I have-I actually have the nerdy driving steering
wheel so I like hit the guy -- hit the brake. I'm like wha-a-a-at! And I was looking at
this thing. And the game had come out like two years before or maybe a year before. And
I saw an "Obama '08" billboard, and I thought that was the greatest thing.
So, you know, games don't have that kind of in-game advertising very often right now.
Sports games do somewhat. But I really don't know any of the advertising sta-statistics.
It's just not-not really my-my-my area of-of knowledge on this. But that's the weird thing
with games.
It's-it's basically the most profitable storytelling medium in the world, and yet they're still
weirdly culturally invisible in some very curious way that no one has really been able
to figure out.
Games have a very hard time shaking this stigma of that they're for 13 year-old boys. Some
of them are and a lot of 13 year-old-year-old boys play them. But the statistics just don't
back that up. The average age of the gamers is in his mid-30s. And in most of-like more
and more it's like 60-40 men to women.
So yeah...Someone back there...
>>MAN: I was just wondering as to the focus, I mean it's already is in Asia and it's getting
to more and more shift that way in North America the focus comes more-shifts more toward competitive
gaming and team playing competitions that actually leads in a sense. What do you think
that does to storytelling or the storytelling in the games? And what do you think it does
to the videogame industry in general.
>>TOM: Yeah.
I think those games are not-tho-tho-those games are like sports. And they have their
place.
>>MAN: You mean it's like major league gaming...
>>TOM: Yeah
I get kind of upset when -- and I play multiplayer shooters online. I play with my friends. I
have a good time. But I don't go to that kind of a game experience for anything emotionally
resonant. Just like I don't go see Transformers 2 if I want to like [CHUCKLES] have a thoughtful
experience at a film.
I mean, games have the same-no, not the same-but they have a comparable spectrum of sophistication
of the Hollywood movies. Some action-oriented stuff is actually really smart and fun. Some
of it is complete cynical ***. And some of the like serious stuff is pretentious, bloated
and dreadful; and some of the serious stuff is actually really brilliant.
And so, the whole rise of the competitive sporting thing, I can say that I-I Even though
I play multiplayer competitive games, that world has absolutely zero appeal to me and.
Just personally.
I don't doubt anyone else's interest in it. But for me, I-I do think that the multiplayer
thing is becoming really kind of ridiculous though because I think that people are putting
multiplayer options in games that have no use for them.
And so what this means is that lots of publishers' resources are going toward a thing that no
one is going to play for reasons they don't even really -- they're just doing it because
they think it's like commercial. It will increase game play longevity.
But I don't know. Yeah, I think that the multiplayer thing is a weird, unexpected development that
is in the last ten years has really kind of distorted a lot of-a lot of game-game experiences.
>>VOICE: Time for one more.
>>TOM: Yes.
>>MAN: Yeah. Do you think that online games matter?
>>TOM: Do you mean like competitive things?
>>MAN: Yeah
>>TOM: Um [PAUSE]
>>MAN: I'm thinking of flash -- little
>>TOM: Oh, those kind of games!
You know, I don't see why there can't be like really valuable aesthetic experiences to be
had in flash games. I've not played that many of them but I've seen some really cool stuff.
Yeah. I mean, I think the story telling model of the big bloated triple A storytelling model
of game design is far from the only viable way. I just write about those games because
I find them the easiest and most pleasant to write about for me personally. But, yeah,
I've seen some flash games that are terrific, actually.
I think that anytime anyone wants to create an experience for another person to have that
rearranges their mind or enchants them or fills them with like anxiety or scares them
or-or. Again, anytime you are trying to share an aesthetic experience with another person
-- that matters -- I think. And I think that is why games matter to me. That is what I
want-I want more of that from my entertainment with games.
Are we done?
>>Voice: I think we are done. Thanks a lot.
>>TOM: OK. Thank you guys.
[APPLAUSE]