Sunday, July 8, 2012

Art, music and games

It's been a long time since I wrote my last entry, suffice it to say it's been a helluva ride. And since in the next year I'm going to be trying to graduate with a PhD, I'm not sure what my frequency of posting will be, so lets give this a shot.

In all honesty, I've always been a mediocre gamer, delving into different games sometimes, but never so good as to hold delusions of earning my livelihood through them, or boast about my skills. In the past month, finally being relatively free motivated me to try once again. Oh that relatively is so loaded a word. I played the usuals, Crysis, Modern Warfare, even the new Max Payne. Ignoring the fact that I ran through these games like a 100m dash (that's the way I do things, the black plague way), I didn't quite like them as much as their predecessors, with the possible exception of Crysis. Don't get me wrong, games have become quite breathtaking, especially if you have the right hardware. But they've lost some of their soul, so to speak. Visual brilliance has taken precedence over other aspects. But I know there'll be some who'll point out that my sample set's quite skewed to make that call. And I agree. The next game I played, was the one that made Bioware famous, Mass Effect. And damn was I surprised. I'm a guy who started playing games when they were designed for things with much less compute power than your not-smart phone. I've played SpaceWar, when it was still new, and that's been a badge of honor of sorts. They made me take up computers as a serious hobby, but that's a whole other story. Speaking of stories though, games have always been very linear, checkpoint oriented cause any other kind of story or choice would be prohibitive to code up. Plus, they were never very complex, only basic shells to assist the protagonist in blowing things up. Mass Effect seems to be the other kind. Yes, there's still a lot of blowing things up, but there are actual choices, ones that make a difference in how your game progresses. Story controls the game, rather than the other way around. Lovers of RPGs, don't take offense, but anything that just helps your character gain points doesn't really count. I expect the hordes of WOW (that's World of Warcraft to you non-gamers) followers to take immense offense to that line, but I'm saying it as I see it. Heck by the end of the game, it had handled complex issues like homosexual relationships, relationships in general, life, death, and a bunch of other things with great sensitivity and panache. That's something you don't usually expect from a bunch of geeky coders looking for aliasing lines at 1080p.

All of which seems to suggest that games are maturing, dare I say, as an art form. Mass Effect is a statement if there ever was one, and the tree or graph like elements in its story where what you choose to do actually makes a difference, is very new, at least to me. I'm sure there are other games which are doing a similar job, maybe even better. The icing on the cake was a background track at the end by Clint Mansell (http://youtu.be/WE8Rhmy8v0E). I'm a big fan of the guy, very few people have the talent to make such haunting music with very little. If you listen to this one, it only has a piano and a string quartet playing. If you don't know who he is, try seeing the movie Requiem for a Dream. I still haven't, but that track speaks louder than most pieces of art I've seen (http://youtu.be/hKLpJtvzlEI). Honestly, as a grad student of limited means, this game offered more value for money than any movie or book I've seen in the recent past.

People talk a lot about art evolving and experiments being done with new visual media. I've been to very weird installations which I couldn't make any sense of, but which a lot of people praised immensely. It might be time to consider games as an art form, but only if it's taken out of control of resolution jocks who only care about getting 60fps at highest quality settings. That's an insult to what a game's supposed to be. The resolution, visual quality serves to immerse you in a virtual world, much like CGI is supposed to do for movies. When it's used as a crutch and made a major selling point, it's stupid. Yes I know you're thinking Michael Bay and Transformers and laughing, but there are other offenders too, even Apple sometimes (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/15/5-reasons-i-hate-my-new-macbook-pro-a-geek-s-critique.html) (yeah I'm a little prone to Apple bashing). Graphics is and always has been an enabler, not an end, and unfortunately that's what some people would like it to be. But overall, games are getting better and more interesting, at least the non-iPhone kind. And that's where I have a bigger problem with Apple and iPhone gaming. It encourages those same toy like games where you grind your finger against the screen. No depth, just mindless droning. Sure, instead of carpal tunnel, you'll get something else. But if iPhone gaming becomes the norm, it'll kill this rising art form, and that's something I have a problem with, cause it'll kill something that's been more than 2 decades in the making.