Eff Seven

I wrote a review this week which criticised a game for not telling me off enough. When I put it that way it sounds pretty dumb, but the truth is that there are a lot of things that a game can fail at. Some things people forgive, others find them reprehensible - graphics is a good one. I’m not one to complain about poor graphics in games, mainly because my graphics card is the kind that you have to change the hamster in the little wheel in-between rounds of Team Fortress 2, but plenty of other people want to see their reflections in the pools of blood. One thing that most people don’t forgive, though, is a game not being entertaining.

Most people play to be entertained. They fire up that game after dinner each night because at some level they enjoy it, it provides something that keeps their brain ticking over in a pleasing way. SWAT IV gives me the satisfaction of losing horribly in front of gruff Internet People. Company of Heroes allows me to send thousands of men to their death. There’s something in every game that you love, because that’s where - partly, at least - the love comes from. But what about the games that you don’t love? What about those that don’t entertain? I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, reader - it’s not the game that’s wrong, it’s you.

Humanity’s been a bit spoilt, all told. First technology gave us the ability to reproduce words, then sound, then visual data as well. Before you know it, it’s ‘metaphor’ this and ‘I have a dream’ that. A person could sit down and have recorded ideas spewed all over them from television sets and newspapers, and while that was undeniably great it set videogames up for a bit of a fall. When games arrived on the scene, people tried to use them as if they were one-way entertainment devices, and for some reason this actually worked for a little while.

Take Space Invaders, for instance, many people’s idea of a First Videogame. You dodge in and out of cover, firing up at aliens and hiding from their returning fire. When games were this simple, it was pretty easy to derive enjoyment out of them, because they were really just extended tests of a particular skill. They could hardly be considered similar to films, say, because all you needed to do to enjoy them was follow the rules. Avoid missing ball for high score, and all that.

Okay, so let’s skip forward a few decades and suddenly the world looks like a very different place. The main change that’s gone on is that games have become more ’serious’, they’re a little more like our films and art now, and a little less like skill-based challenges. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that when you sit down to a game nowadays, the enjoyment you expect to get from a game like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is similar at least to that which you get from a Lord of the Rings film.

So you work out the rules - and if you break them down far enough, they don’t look all that different from Space Invaders - and begin applying them to the game world, and for some reason you expect that to be enough to enjoy the game. After all, you’re doing the same you’ve done in any game before. You’re playing it. And if you’re playing it by the rules, then the game should deliver everything it looks like it should, and everything those mean and nasty journalists tell you it delivers. Why isn’t it? Why do they lie so much? Bastards!

Gaming can’t do one-way entertainment like all of the entertainment industries before it, that’s the problem; the entertainment is two-way, so if the player does nothing but play, she’s likely to be extremely disappointed. For a pretty bad example, think of Guitar Hero 3 as being compared to listening to the same tracks on your iPod. The only way you’re ever going to hear the same song is on GH3 is to be very good at the game, and hit every single note. For a much better example, think of how you played the opening chapter to Half-Life 2.

For those of you who haven’t, the game begins with you stepping off a train into an entirely unknown place - a depressing dystopian city run by a harsh regime of part-alien soldiers. Though HL2 is primarily about gunning people down loudly and and prettily, the opening chapter doesn’t let you use any weaponry at all which forces you to take the long route through the City, praying that no-one notices you before you can find a safe haven. Eventually, of course, things go wrong and before you know it you’re running for your life, chased by the police across rooftops still weaponless, until… well… play the game.

There are two ways of playing that segment. You can run through it hammering the jump key and sprinting around like a lunatic, or you can calmly walk through, admiring the sights and keeping out of sight of the guards. There is no difference in the end result, because you’re playing by the rules. The game doesn’t want to kill you now, it wants you to get some exposition before the game begins. You as the player know this, so you’re free to muck around as much as you want, but the point is that you shouldn’t. No matter how trite it sounds, you’re supposed to play along, you’re supposed to be Gordon Freeman.

I know there are two things wrong here - one, I’m asking you to act like a four-year old wearing a Superman cape, but you’re playing videogames so who cares, frankly. Two, I seem to be asking you to let the game off a bit by not trying to bend the rules. That sounds like we should ignore faults in the game and criticise things less, but that’s not entirely what I mean. It goes back to this idea of two-way interaction. People often say that Half-Life 2 frequently destroyed their suspension of disbelief by being too linear, but what they really mean is that they were trying as hard as possibly to find the linearity. They weren’t willing to keep their disbelief suspended, and so they easily found a reason not to do it

As a final case in point, Concerned creator Chris Livingstone wrote a soon-abandoned blog called Living In Oblivion. In it, he tries to live in the expansive RPG as a normal guy, making a living by buying and selling vegetables and chatting the day away. I’m not saying we should all play our games like that, as if every title were an extension of The Sims. But I do think that playing along once in a while, gasping at the plot twist no matter how badly written or obvious, would make most games a lot more fun.

And that’s why you’re there, right? To have fun?