Art/Anti-art -- Games/Anti-games: The Indie Platformer

It's no secret that I value, quite deeply, the connections that exist between 20th century art and video games. I've already mentioned how certain games adopt stylistic conventions that have been around since the dawn of Modernity, and I wish to re-visit that concept less in terms of a game's art direction and more for its mechanics. During the Modernism movement, art gained significant momentum due to mechanical reproduction; so much so that Ezra Pound (the poet known for his dictum "Make it new," which became a sort of mantra among modernists) remarked, "You can no more take machines out of the modern mind, than you can take the shield of Achilles out of the Iliad." People saw new machines of locomotion (planes, trains, and automocars), of reproduction (printing presses, phonographs, film, and photography), of manufacturing (steel mills, assembly lines), of infrastructure (suspension bridges, cranes, elevators), and of destruction (tanks, bombs, gases, automatic weapons). As a result of this mechanized world, art became more protean, shifting among different movements--the anger of Vorticism, the violence of Futurism, the subconscious mind of Surrealism, the perspective-shattering Cubism, and the political fire of Dada. Art became often reactionary, a glaring "fuck you" to established tropes of beauty, and it found its numerous homes in the publishing world of the"little magazines," publications where groups of artists could share ideas and works. The poems and images contained therein often took the form of "anti-art," a terribly ill-defined term describing numerous movements based on rejection of aesthetic ideals rather than an attempt to embody them. Anti-art is still art, but it's art that is self-aware to the point of self-destructive irony. I elaboratetthis background of anti-art and its world to provide context for my larger point: just as certain art movements use their own mediums of paint and language to reflect on the construction of the piece, so too do games use the mechanics of play to adhere to and reject the genres they embody. And, like the market of the literary magazines, the indie game scene gives the developers of what I call "anti-games" a community to publish their works that arise as responses to the more widely-played mainstream games.

So what makes an anti-game? On a small, fundamental level, I would consider an anti-game to be a game that is about itself, that signifies, to some degree, on its own mechanics. For example, Duchamp's readymades--physical, found objects that he made artistic by small augmentations so that they are still recognizable as individual objects--are quintessential examples of early anti-art. They exist to reject the notion of artistic creation; something could become art by simply signing it, tilting it, putting it on a pedestal. Taking a urinal and calling it a Fountain made a statement about the object itself as well as the viewer and critic. Anti-games do the same, using mechanics to provide experiences that make the player aware he/she is playing a game while simultaneously altering our perceptions of such mechanics. I'll show you what I mean by moving from a theoretical approach to a practicum by looking at the most recognizable of game types: the platformer.

The first game I want to discuss is Jonathon Blow's Braid, a game that is mechanically complex as it is conceptually simple. Braid plays like a normal platformer until it transforms into a puzzle game. The puzzles rely on manipulating time, and they increase in difficulty as the game progresses. Just as the player gets used to reversing time, the game shifts, adding new dimensions like characters who are immune to Tim's (the protagonist) control or by adding a ring that slows down time by varying degrees regarding its proximity to certain objects and characters.

Where Braid becomes more than just a clever platformer with a twist, though, relies in its relationship with the platformer genre. Braid constantly tests what a platformer can do mechanically as well as narratively. Tim is a character searching for his "princess" which may, depending on how you read the game, be a lost love or the secrets of the atomic bomb. Nods to Mario abound in this game, but the game seems less focused on homage and more geared toward revealing the nihilism inherent to the genre. Mindlessly jumping over gaps in some feeble attempt to right some past wrong is pointless and self destructive because the character can have no true agency. Sure, Tim can manipulate time, but he can only do so as the game allows him. By reading books that appear on pedestal's in the game, the player learns that Tim is some sort of narcissistic control freak, obsessed with his own work. It's only fitting, then, that game makes the player participate in Tim's solipsistic pantomime, forcing us to relive our own mistakes, and learn from them, only to kick us in the teeth with the game's explosive ending. It's as brutal as a Futurist painting and as maddeningly confusing as a Cubist poem, and this mechanical and thematic violence crashes against the game's beautiful visuals and (initially) serene music. Braid gives the player the opportunity to jump through mechanical hoops, experience the ins and outs of platforming in its most complex ways possible with the singular purpose of showing how we don't play games--games play us.

While Braid achieves its anti-game status and self-awareness by pointing out its own complexity, PlayDead's Limbo provides more of an experiment in abject minimalism. Narrative, complexity, color, music, hell even characterization, all take back seats to the trial-and-error gameplay. Limbo, like Braid, is a platformer/puzzle hybrid yet with an all-too-familiar narrative (the protagonist is a boy searching for a girl) and initial mechanic (death is your teacher). It differs from its predecessors, however, through its gruesome depictions of the protagonist's many demises. It's a widely accepted rule in almost any medium that you don't kill children, and this is especially true in video games. Skyrim is probably the latest in this long run of debates, and it's understandable why they don't allow. The media fallout would be more than severe. Yet the child protagonist in Limbo dies time and time again in some of the most brutal ways possible.

When I was little, I often wondered what happened to Mario when he fell down a pit. Now I guess I know. But the game makes meaningful the lessons death teaches in a responsible way--namely by assaulting the viewer with graphic images. At a glance, the game tasks the player with guiding a child through some nightmarish hellscape. The echoes of Dante resound throughout the entire game with the protagonist beginning in the woods and moving through hellish settings to find the woman he seeks. Like theDivine Comedy which the game's title directly references, Limbo asks us to go through hell and climb back the upper air. The child is not just the protagonist for Limbo; he's the faceless jumper in every 2D side-scroller, devoid of anything but motivation and compulsion and is completely at our mercy. Thus, when he dies at player's hand, the player should feel bad because it's his/her fault. The character respawns not far from the trap that killed him, but each death is still wince-inducing. You can't help but feel a loss of innocence when, only through shocking brutality, do you know how to avoid death and keep the child alive until his (or your) next inevitable misstep. The game is platforming at its most disturbing, commenting not only on itself, but all other side scrolling games as well. It suggests that gamers have a moral responsibility to the sprites on screen to keep them alive as long as possible, and each time we fail is a sin. Limbo asks us to rethink what it means to pick up a controller and steer an innocent pile of pixels right into the gaping maw of ravenous death.

Obviously, these two games are just a couple of examples of what I mean when I say "anti-games." They are not "anti" in the sense of "not being." They are "anti" in terms of how they use familiar mechanics to make them unfamiliar and jarring. They do mechanically to game conventions what Picasso did aesthetically to aesthetic paradigms. They make us rethink the tools of the platformer genre--two dimensional movement, jumping, enemies, failure--in terms of what they can accomplish digitally, aesthetically, critically, and even emotionally. And without the rise of the indie marketplace, these games would not exist in their current form. It's not hard to see the parallels between the indie gaming scene and the 20th century avant-garde--especially when artists and consumers are willing to take the risk and bet on a gaming experience that expand the frontiers of what it means to interact with digital art.

Cheers,

--David

Finding the Lack of Fun...and Why It Can Be Rewarding

I'm a Scotch drinker. I don't however, consider it a fun drink. I like it because it's often smoky. I like it because it burns going down, and, if you're not careful with it, it can knock you right on your ass. I like my art like I like my Scotch: challenging, complex...and with maybe just a hint of absurd nihilism. It doesn't have to be fun or pretty. I like it to challenge me, make me rethink the way I understand language and narrative or color, subject, and perspective. It stands to reason, then, that I approach games in the same way I drink a glass of Scotch--to experience something complex. Sometimes I play because the story hooked me more than the mechanics. I play because the game is beating me senseless, and I'm too pissed to quit. I play because a game's thematically challenging, and I just want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. I play because I want to see which glitches I can exploit (Bethesda, folks...Bethesda), to discover where the boundaries of the world end, to figure out how I can read this digital text in a meaningful way. As a literature scholar, I constantly ask myself questions regarding the pleasure of a certain text, and I posit that games can be approached the same way. Sure, approaching a game with a goal other than having "fun" seems like a ridiculous idea, but it can lead to new insights on how games function as forms of art and entertainment.

My general rule, like almost everyone else's, is that once I stop getting some type of satisfaction out of a game, I stop playing. There are games that I've played, however, that I found less amusing than was worth the time I put into them. I never finished Crysis because, try as I might, I just couldn't get into it. I finished Dead Space, but I didn't really enjoy it. I just wanted to get my money's worth and see if I like its brand of genre horror (I do, but not enough that I'd ever return to it). I hated Dead Island. I'm worse at Madden and NCAA football games than I am at actual football. I got bored with Red Steel 2. I cannot find the joy in user-generated content. I only played Assassin's Creed: Revelations so I could get the story before ACIII; for me, the game was close to joyless. These games I usually abandon or sell fairly quickly because there's just not enough there for me to keep them.

But the ones I do keep, I don't always hang on to them because they're "fun" in the traditional sense. One such game that I enjoy without having fun is Dark Souls. I've already written about Dark Souls, so I won't repeat my larger argument there. The game does not entertain me in nearly the same way other games do. The combat system tasks my brain to constantly anticipate my enemies' reactions, making every single encounter a puzzle with a set number of variables. Exploration fills me with dread, as I approach each new area with more trepidation and anxiety than excitement. I cannot play the game for long periods of time, and it, like its predecessor Demon's Souls, requires more time to master than I have to give it. I, nevertheless, have held onto it, returning to the game every now and then when I'm feeling masochistic. I play it because I am fascinated with how it attacks not just my character, but my actual psyche. Yet, in those brief moments after I've killed a massive boss or I've successfully navigated through a trap-filled fortress, the trials seem worth the effort. Dark Souls' play structure functions as a type of Zen master, and the player serves as the game's apprentice, willing to undergo ruthless tutelage in order to achieve "enlightenment" in the form of a successful playthrough. Dark Souls is a digital koan I play to achieve satisfaction through struggle--not a game I enjoy for its "fun factor."

Whereas Dark Souls provides a gameplay experience akin to taxing meditation, the converse type of meditative experience arises in thatgamecompany's Journey and Flower. I love these games because they offer the potential to create meaningful, emotional experiences in digital playgrounds, but I wouldn't classify my experience with them as fun. I did not initially play Flower because it's fun to play; I played the game because I wanted a gameplay experience not built around violence. The first time I moved pedals across the meadow, I was calmed. I immensely enjoyed the responsiveness of the controls as they synced with the waltz-like movement on the screen. I came to Journey with a similar expectation of enjoying an experience driven by emotion and isolation rather than the pursuit of some obvious goal. The haunted vagueness of Journey's world becomes not a series of digital rooms and challenges toward that white light at the end, but rather the game itself, insisting on nothing but its own existence. I cannot (and nor would I want to) deny that my time with Journey was worthwhile and enjoyable (even deeply meaningful), but I still don't see it as a "fun" game.

Beautiful? Yes. Meaningful? Absolutely. Enjoyable? Infinitely. Fun? ...erhm maybe?....

A game does not have to be either brutally punishing or quietly calming to offer something other than fun. Sometimes, a game is worth playing because its content is challenging. Spec Ops: The Line provided the most compelling game experience for me so far this year, and it did so without being fun. The mechanics serve the narrative and themes at play, and that's about it. I did not enjoy my time in Dubai, per se, but I have completed the game twice. The story drags the characters through a hellish pit of surrealist military nihilism with the player in tow. It breaks apart not just the characters but the shooter genre, all by exploring what it really means to play soldier. Every person I killed had weight and significance. I felt every atrocity my digital avatar committed. I've done horrible things because a game directed me to...and I've tread even darker virtual paths because I chose them. I continued to play Spec Ops not because the combat was enjoyable and fun. I wanted to finish the story and continue on this path of self-destruction. And when it was done, I went back and did it all again. It's not a fun trip, but it's one worth taking.

You just phosphorus bombed a group of civilians. Are we having fun yet?

Though Spec Ops proves to be an excellent exercise in gameplay nihilism, it is not alone in this respect. Playdead's Limbo and Jonathan Blow's Braid offer ambiguously dark game experience, albeit through different means. Both are platformer/puzzle hybrids taking place in strange lands, but while Limbo's black and white aesthetic makes loneliness and despair apparent from the outset of the child protagonist's journey, Braid masks its darker, solemn tone with lush, impressionistic art direction. I did not play these two games because I found them fun--the puzzle/platformer does not really appeal to me. I played them because I found their core concepts fascinating. The time-based puzzles in Braid required intricate solutions that, while rewarding once conquered, provided me little in the way of fun in experimentation. I kept playing because the game's mysterious story and surreal puzzles came together in meaningful ways that challenge narrative and generic conventions. Limbo, on the other hand, is built on a "trial-and-death" mechanic that forces the player to kill the protagonist time and time again. While I enjoy the game immensely, I don't focus on the fun of the platforming and puzzle solving but rather the dismal beauty of its art direction and the hauntingly minimalism of the core system. It disturbs instead of enchants me--and that keeps me coming back.

It's terrifying and disturbing, but is it fun?

I recognize how completely subjective my position on the issue of fun is. "Fun" is a loaded term, and positing some objective definition would be an exercise in futility. A gamer's relationship with a game is personal, and while I may find the sadistic gameplay of Dark Souls rewarding for its difficulty but not for its fun, I see no reason why someone could not have a blast with the combat. I get why someone would have a lot of fun playing Braid or Limbo, too. My point is simply this: sometimes, approaching a game for a reason other than fun, yields worthwhile results. With the games listed above, I rarely sit back and appreciate what a joy it is to play the game. I play them because they're maddening. I play them because their emotional. I play them because I want to see just how far the game can punish me without me biting back. I test them as much as they test me, and in the end, I turn the machine off, still thinking about how meaning or insight can be delivered through groups of pixels floating across a screen. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for a Scotch.

Cheers,

--David