One common complaint about new games is that the writing is ‘atrociously terrible’. Some of these games are indie games such as Sea of Stars. What is going on here?
Let’s take a look at older, more classic, games. In terms of the craft of writing, these games do not have it. I know this because the games have absolutely NO WORDS or VERY LITTLE WORDS. How can a game be declared to have ‘good writing’ where there are no words!?
“Why are there no words, Master Malstrom?” sniffs a gamer.
Memory was expensive and words took up a bunch of memory. Therefore, words were expensive. Early games used words very sparingly. Even ‘modern’ games like Final Fantasy 6 (yes, it is a ‘modern’ game you ever-growing-younger readers…) use no paragraphs, except a few, and very few words. What the game does have is heavy use of choreographs. A game like Super Metroid (also a ‘modern game’, damn you, youngsters) uses heavy use of environments instead of words.
What classic games do use a ton of words? Well, there is Star Control 2. But that was heavily influenced by other science fiction books, the aliens being written by different people, and the language was purposely designed to not explain anything but to tweak the imagination of the player. In other words, the words are the spice, not the meat to the storytelling.
Look at Ultima VII which has tons of dialogue. Backwards engineering its writing, we find the words are actually short. The NPCs talk a ton mostly because during that time, NPCs didn’t talk like that in games! The NPCs are written as extremes of that personality. The NPCs have two major non-word things going for them. They have the NPC schedule which gives the NPCs personality as the player sees how the NPC behaves rather than what the NPC says. The other is that NPCs have fleshed out furnishings with interactable belongings which tell far more about that NPC than any conversation can. For example, a NPC who is a scientist will have scientific equipment around. The NPC doesn’t have to say he is a scientist for the player to understand the NPC.
“So you are saying, Malstrom,” sniffs the reader, “that good writing came about because there was no writing?”
Exactly!
“And that what we perceived to be good writing was actually environmental storytelling and choreographs?”
You’ve got it!
In Wing Commander series, they didn’t have to tell you that Maniac was ballistic (although they did). With Maniac on your wing, he would just charge ahead and attack the enemy regardless of what you ordered. Words didn’t define Maniac’s character, his actions did.
Again, much of the ‘stories’ of classic games are yanked from the Well of Myths or Well of Pop Culture. Wing Commander clearly came from Top Gun and some Battlestar Galactica. Ultima came from Tolkien and elements of Hinduism. With Mario, I see Alice in Wonderland. With Metroid, I see Alien. And, once again, this is a compliment to them, not a criticism.
So why are games so poorly written today despite hiring ‘professional’ writers?
I do not wish to bore the reader with disparaging against ‘professional writers’ today, so I will get to the point. The fault is not confined to the writers. This fault extends beyond the writers. The fault goes to the game designers, to the programmers, to the artists, to everyone.
When we talk about ‘bad writing’, we really aren’t talking about writing. We are talking about ‘bad storytelling’. So let us take out the writers here. Recent games, in general, have bad storytelling. Why is this?
It is about a modern notions of creativity. It is the belief that Humans CREATE this concept or idea… not unlike a god. And since everyone wants to become a god, everyone throws themselves onto the Creativity Shrine. Programmers, artists, game designers… everyone. Everyone wants to be ‘creative’. “I don’t want to be a cog in the machine,” says a game developer. “I WANT TO BE CREATIVE.”
Then they make shit and die.
I can hear the reader protesting. Hush yourselves, and let’s hear from the Shakespeare. This is from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2.
Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o’erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature’s journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
Since readers today cannot read, let me tell you what Shakespeare is saying here. You cannot force the point. Play it out. The mirror to Human nature is the audience seeing Human nature on the stage.
You cannot ‘hold the mirror up to Human nature’ if you are interested in being creative. Creative means you are disregarding nature and making something new. Now, you can make something ‘new’, but can people associate with something ‘new’? Since the audience is likely to be humans, they will most associate with anything representing human nature. Your ‘creative new’ nature will seem alien. The most inclusive content made can be nothing more than holding a mirror up to Human nature.
And to the programmers and engineers, you are guiltier of this fault than the artists. I am reminded when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. “Our interface uses the same one Humans have always had… our hands.” In other words, no stylus. No buttons. It was always a Steve Jobs philosophy to use the Human nature to design the machines instead of the other way around. Accessibility is not a creative invention but the translation of Human nature onto the machine.
Game makers who desire to be ‘creative’, I give them a red X. They will fail, and their product will inevitably fail. Game makers who desire to be ‘reflective’, I give them a green check mark. Their work will be closer to the mark.
“I am a writer,” says the snob as he sips his latte. “Oooohhh wheee! I am soooo creative! Watch as I CREATE this character.”
How do you create a character? A better question is how do you reveal a character?
The ‘creative direction’ is the greatest red flag of a budding game. By ‘creative direction’, it is referred to which direction the creativity is going. No one says that the ‘creative direction’, itself, is the problem. Games need less creativity and more reflections of human nature.
The delicious irony is that gaming’s cherished IPs came from passionate consumers who appropriated it from other sources… be it books, movies, history, or something else.
A reader protests. “Cultural appropriation is bad! You hear that, Malstrom? Bad!”
Who told you that? In some cases, the cultural appropriation is hilariously poorly done. Many kids’ first introduction to India’s Yoga was with Street Fighter 2’s “Yoga Flame!” I do now know Yoga, but I do not think it allows you to breath fire.
Cultural appropriations of gaming includes…
Super Mario Brothers- Japanese developers appropriating Alice in Wonderland and New York City plumbers.
Metroid- Japanese developers appropriating an American film called ‘Alien’.
Ultima series- American developer appropriating Hindu religion to create the ‘Avatar’.
Donkey Kong- Japanese developers appropriating an American movie [and Nintendo was sued over it too! They had to get Kirby to get them out.]
Final Fantasy- Japanese developers appropriating Western and Eastern mythologies.
Civilization- American developers appropriating world histories. [How dare they!]
Is there any reason to go on? This cultural appropriation should be lauded as it gives color to the games.
How many people learned history through Civilization? Many.
How many people learned mythology through Final Fantasy? Many.
How many people learned plumbing through Super Mario Brothers? OK. Don’t answer that one.
This ‘appropriation’ is not unlike the Catholic Church absorbing pagan religions into itself to create a beautiful tapestry of symbols, art, and rites.
“But Malstrom!” cries the reader. “Absorbing the pagan ways is bad!”
The ‘pagan ways’ includes music. You wouldn’t want to live in a world without music, would you, reader?
Let us take Nobou Uematsu of Final Fantasy music composer fame. He is, perhaps, brilliant because he didn’t have any official musical tradition. Nevertheless, his most famous songs are appropriations from other songs.
One Winged Angel is from Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze.
Dancing Mad and Decisive Battle are from ELP Tarkus.
“Are you belittling the man’s greatest achievements?”
To the contrary, I am saying they are great because he didn’t rely on his ‘creativity’. Hilariously, the gamers who listen to 16 bit Final Fantasy recordings are actually listening to 1970s prog rock music!
As I now burn the candle from both ends, I wish to address the Council of Gaming Elders before being summoned from this world.
Why do we close our horizons by thinking of gaming only in terms of industry? Of analytics and charts?
Competition of skill, Comradery with friends, Child-like dreams, Challenge of Myth- this is gaming. Gaming is a swirling storm that is disrupting technology, absorbing culture, and leaving something newly formed from its path. To the NES kids, your parents were told gaming was anti-life works of the devil, but to you it is a cherished childhood. To the PC gamer kids, society said gaming was going to destroy your lives. Yet, you owe your lucrative technical career due to your child-like work on the PC to get the games to run.
Some say the Storm of Gaming has had its best days, that it will over time slow to a drizzling rain shower. Others say the Storm is will remain as is in its current momentum. But no one asks if the Storm of Gaming has truly began?
What if we said of gaming of the 1970s, “Yes. This is the peak. This is all that gaming will be.” Or what about after 1984? Or later?
What exactly causes this Storm of Gaming to move and have momentum?
Some point to the hardware capabilities. “As hardware innovation jumps decline, so does gaming.”
Some point to the art displays. “Gone are the pixels and small resolutions. There is no limit to the art displayed, thus no more growth to gaming.”
The Generations of Gaming have been seen in the eyes of the game developer and the consumer. The game developer sees the tools each generation brings. The consumer sees the graphics and production values of the game. What if we are wrong of the source of this momentum?
“How could you question the momentum of the generations?” says a shocked reader.
They are based on a false premise that the tools allow better and more creation. If I am correct that gaming’s innovative momentum is based on appropriation as opposed to ‘creating’, then we have a better clue to the feeling of malaise in gaming today.
The innovation of gaming is not the graphics, the hardware, or the programming. The innovation of gaming is the appropriation. Appropriation is the fulcrum of gaming. It is not technology that produced Pokemon but the appropriation of insects and dog fighting. Was it the Wii motion controller or the fact that the Wii motion controller enabled an appropriation of that of tennis and bowling to create the Wii Sports mega-juggernaut? Was it the free-direction play that defined Metroid or was it the appropriation of Alien?
My favorite gaming appropriation is that of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. How and why Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers is up to him to say. But he could not imagine that it would be turned into a movie that is more comedic than serious. Nor could he imagine that such a movie would be seen by passionate developers to create a game called Starcraft which would create the national sport in South Korea. And what about other appropriations such as Hell Divers 2 transparent use of Starship Troopers? This is why I say the appropriation is the momentum of gaming, not your hardware and programming innovations.
The utility of hardware and programming innovations is to allow gaming to create more appropriations. Gaming’s livestock of heroes and IPs would not be as rich if gaming was still refined to Atari 2600 hardware. But it isn’t the hardware that created the IPs.
Everyone sees a different piece of the puzzle. The game developers see their piece. The game consumers see their piece. The puzzle they are putting together is the appropriation.
Have you noticed the difference between sequels that fail versus sequels that succeed is based on appropriation? If a game does little more than to use its predecessor, you have a bland iterative sequel. A good sequel looks beyond its earlier game and adds new elements to the IP. It is the difference between the Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2 and the blessed Super Mario Brothers 3.
One reason why gaming seems stagnant is the common remakes and remasters. These are like the iterative sequels like back in the day. There is nothing truly new to them.
The ‘game gods’ of the past may have been cutting edge in their time. But one thing I note with each ‘game god’ is that they were first in an appropriation. Gaming is a translation. It is translating something from the real world into this digital world. Those who effectively do one first are hailed as creating a ‘new genre’ or ‘new IP’. All these ‘game gods’ have the same story: “I just put into the game what I thought was cool at the time. LOL!”
If the momentum of the Storm of Gaming is appropriation, then stopping the appropriation would be stopping the storm. If Gaming is not allowed to absorb foreign ideas from history, from science, from culture, from everything, then gaming becomes stale and boring.
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