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

Slouching towards Bethlehem: Darksiders II and the Modern Apocalypse

The word "apocalypse" originally referred not to a cosmic, metaphysical event, but to the act of divine revelation. Roughly translated from the original Greek apocalypsis, the word more literally means "a lifting of the veil," or "an uncovering." The final book of the New Testament, the Revelation of St. John of Patmos (often erroneously called "Revelations," and my inner biblical scholar cringes), is sometimes called "The Apocalypse of St. John." Other apocalypses, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter found their ways into early Christian canons (though later made apocryphal), and, as a result, the term "apocalypse" became associated with an entire genre of literature, extending to Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, the poetry of William Blake and William Butler Yeats, as well as visual media. My personal favorite is Albrecht Durer's Apocalypse, a series of woodcuts depicting in vivid detail the visions of St. John the Divine. THQ and Vigil Games' Darksiders franchise offers the most recent attempt to bring a biblical apocalypse to the video game medium, and it's second installment largely succeeds where the original failed--though it's not without its shortcomings.

"Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" by Albrecht Durer (1497-98). From bottom left to right: Death, Famine, War, Pestilence (Plague) 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse provide a great central concept around which to build a video game mythology. In this aspect, Darksiders works very well. In fact, my favorite aspect of the original Darksiders is its story--though I do have a fascination with Judeo-Christian texts and mythologies. I love the comic book art direction and the over-written story and dialogue. I also enjoy its bizarre mixture of Talmudic, Babylonian, and various other biblical mythologies that re-purposed the names and stories of gods, angels, and demons. In the original Darksiders, the Apocalypse occurs ahead of schedule, and War, one of the four Horseman (along with Death, Fury, and Strife), gets the blame as the hosts of the High Heavens and the Burning Hells use earth as the location for the biggest cage fight in the Creation. The game follows War as he seeks to clear his name and defend himself against charges of premature apoculation. The first game sticks so close to its Hebraic hegemonic structure that it can come across as awkwardly complicated, but I always wanted to know what War would encounter next. It's a fun, fresh take on the biblical Apocalypse. Its scope, however, is weirdly limited. The Apocalypse seems only to have smacked one small part of the earth--an unnamed city--which seems at odds with such an epic event. Localizing the Apocalypse may be the only way to capture it in a videogame, and perhaps creating a third-person adventure that can encapsulate such a cosmic event is impossible commercially and practically. Nevertheless, Darksiders, for as much as I enjoy it, left me wanting. This feeling magnified when the game ends on the biggest cliffhanger since God of War II.

Though Darksiders II does not provide closure to the story left hanging in the first, it is a better game. Most aspects of the first are improved, as the player shifts from control of the duty-bound War to the mysteriously remorseful Death. The traversal mechanics of Darksiders II work very well, though sometimes the game does not register button presses every now and then. The clunky menu system of Darksiders has been thankfully addressed, and using certain weapons/abilities no longer ties my fingers in knots (like that damn boomerang). New leveling systems allow you to craft your character and his armor in significantly, albeit streamlined, ways. Death even begins with his mount, Despair, readily accessible, unlike his brother who spends the first half of the game's predecessor as a Horseman without his horse. Death is a much more approachable, if not complex, character than his younger brother; Death's confidence and sense of humor facilitate more interesting interactions than War's stoic demeanor. The angels, demons and all between fit Joe Maduiera's comic book apocalypse aesthetic extremely well, offering modernized interpretations of preternatural characters and eldritch creatures.

"And over them triumphant Death his dart / Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invok'd"-- John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book XI)

Where Darksiders II truly surpasses the original, though, is its world. Darksiders sat comfortably in its ruined metropolis, and, though the world has a few interesting locations, it never really shakes the "been there, done that" vibe. Players visited post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. in Fallout 3, slaughtered enemies in the bombed out world of Gears of War, survived the zombie-infested sewers of Left 4 Dead, and fought with Chimera across the war-ravaged U.S.A. in Resistance. Darksiders' vision may be a different version of the apocalypse, but its setting is certainly not unique. Darksiders II, however, takes place across multiple planes, each as imaginative as the next. From the verdant plains of the Forge Lands to the ashen mausoleums of the Kingdom of the Dead, Darksiders II boasts some of the most inspired architecture designs I've seen. If the story of the first game kept me playing, the locations of the second made me want to see more of this bizarre world. Unrestrained by the established tropes of apocalyptic settings that tethered the the original Darksiders, the team at Vigil Games came up with some truly awe-inspiring locations and set pieces.

I'm tempted to posit that, because of its setting, Darksiders II is much more apocalyptic, in the classical sense, than the first game. The game seems much more dreamlike, more like a spiritual vision of a mystical world, than the original Darksiders. Death's journey to clear his brother's name and restore humanity, though not without bloodshed, is far more focused on exploration than War's single-minded hunt for justice. Darksiders II's story takes itself a bit seriously, but no more so than something like Skyrim or Kingdoms of Alamur--though its not quite as focused as the story told in Darksiders. The world abounds with numerous side quests and optional dungeons, but, overall, the large areas are weirdly vacant. For Audrey Drake, these barren landscapes are drab and uninteresting:

"The freedom Darksiders II offers is something to behold - you’re able to journey around huge areas as you please, slashing enemies and seeking out treasure and loot drops to your heart’s content. But the bloated environments are simply too barren and often devoid of anything interesting to do or see. Since so little is done to vary up the gameplay, the pacing drags and the length of the adventure feels more like a chore than a bonus." Audrey Drake IGN Review

For me, this aesthetic of dead lands and isolation resonates with the aftermath of some distant apocalypse. The Kingdom of the Dead should be a hollowed husk of a land, and the autumnal twilight of the Forge Lands drips with sorrow and loss. It also helps that one of the best game scores this year compliments these large areas with atmospheric music that crescendos and dissipates with a serenity I would not have expected from an action-heavy game with light RPG elements. During combat, the score speeds up without overshadowing the action, as Death moves with swift precision in his danse macabre of blood and steel. As satisfying as the combat is, the eerily quiet journey across dead and dying planes of existence will be what I remember most fondly.

"Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd / Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc." William Blake, "America, a Prophecy"

Though Darksiders II does not take place in the post-apocalyptic earth, it is certainly more similar to the other-worldly visions that are the genesis of the term "apocalypse"--albeit not a true revelation of new, secret knowledge. There's little to nothing here gamers haven't seen before, but I find it difficult to harp on a game for being too derivative. Sure, I played Darksiders years ago when it was called Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it now. The loot collection makes it seem like Diablo "lite," though it is satisfying when a piece of gear really clicks with your play style. I do have an issue with the game's ending, as it looks like Vigil and THQ are building to an epic conclusion that I'm skeptical we'll ever see--with two games ending on the same cliffhanger, I find it hard not to be a cynic.

Distilling a cosmic apocalypse down to a video game franchise proves to be an overly ambitious project, often revealing its limitations rather than overcoming them. But the medium of gameplay offers a chance to participate in and rectify world-ending events in ways other art and literature cannot, modernizing texts from thousands of years ago to present a contemporary vision of the apocalypse for the video game and comic book era. Darksiders II may just be the end of the world all over again, but there's plenty there to entertain anyone willing to slouch toward Bethlehem for a vision of the end times.

Cheers,

--David

The Great Graphics Debate: Photorealism, Emotion, and the Uncanny Valley

That's not me in my profile picture. Well, it is, but not really. Those are my clothes, my hat, my shape and form, and it was certainly taken in New Orleans when I visited the art museum with some friends the week before Thanksgiving, but I swear it isn't me. It can't be because I'm typing this post. It's a moment captured in time when I was someplace in the past, a snapshot that I wasn't even aware was being taken. In fact, the figure in the photo looks a little too much like me for my comfort. It's a shell, a construct made by a machine to replicate my appearance. It's...unsettling.

In 1906, Ernst Jentsch coined the term "uncanny" as a bizarre state in which an object in perceived in terms of its uncertainty, but it was not until everyone's favorite psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, took the term, injected some sexual insight, and produced the meaning we have for it today. I'll spare anyone reading this the details, but the "uncanny" is, more or less, a concept of a particular moment when something is both familiar and alien at the same time, creating a feeling of discomfort. It is this concept that led to Masahiro Mori's hypothesis of the "uncanny valley" which posits that as robots and graphics become more human-like without behaving exactly like humans, people will approach these technologies with a fair degree of disgust and discomfort. The most oft used examples now involve robots that look so close to human that their flaws become magnified, making them, well, creepy. Video game graphics suffer from the same obstacles as robotics; the uncanny valley seems impassable.

Recently, 2K Games' Chris Hartmann spoke out in favor of photorealism and how it can help evolve the industry and elevate the medium in terms of emotional content.

"Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now...To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic; then we will have reached an endpoint and that might be the final console." Chris Hartmann, 2K Games

The photorealism Hartmann so earnestly strives to reach lies on the other side of the uncanny valley, the gulf that separates the recognizably false from the earnestly real (as seen in the following chart):

Current graphics and character models seem to be stuck in this uncanny valley. Sure, character models look great in stills, but as soon as they start moving, they seem off. The lip sync is strange. Sometimes they float above the groundf. The character's hair doesn't move like it should. And in the instance when sex is involved, it looks about as convincing as smashing two naked Barbie dolls together (and almost as arousing). In order to get to the emotional photorealism that Hartmann sees as the zenith of graphical progress, traversing the uncanny valley provides the only logical route. This is the promise held by every single next generation console since the days of the 64 bit machine. I, for one, can't help but see the ultimate goal as a calculus limit rather than the graph above. We'll get closer to zero, but I can't tell if we'll ever breach that invisible wall. I do agree with Hartmann, that there are indeed merits to striving for photorealism in graphics, but I don't think that they are the only way to get a new ranges of emotion. And I've arrived at this conclusion because this is not a new issue.

When photography and film were young, many people had adverse reactions to it, finding the replications of themselves a bit frightening at the honesty it captured. Images looked a bit too real (or uncanny), so much so that some found them initially disturbing. When the camera came into common use, painters and artists of all traditions began to question whether or not there was a purpose for what they did when an object could capture an image with realistic clarity better than a paintbrush ever could. Their goal, then, shifted to offer new perspectives of the "real" or rather to reveal alternative ways of seeing the world. Hence the rise of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, and a few other "-isms" that seemed to pop up and disappear as quickly as art trends tend to do. Video games, especially indie games, enact a similar reactionary process of rebellion and perspective shifts. As graphical fidelity approaches photorealism, some developers provide alternative experiences, similar to the ways in which artists experimented with form, structure and subject during an age of technological revolution.

For example, below are two images, the first a Post-Impressionist painting from 1891 and the second a still from an indie game in 2012:

"Plage a Heist," by Georges Lemmen (1891)

Journey, thatgamecompany (2012)

The images are strikingly similar. Lemenn's painting shows a beach, a sailboat, and a lone figure. The dreamy movement of the picture captures something that a camera cant quite do in 1891. There's an unreality to the painting and a blending of water, earth, and air that are distinguishable but somehow draw together in an array of natural and unnatural color. Quite similarly, the lone figure of the desert in Journey evokes a feeling of isolation, loneliness, and quiet contemplation amid a sweeping landscape. To say that these images cannot depict emotion because they lack the photorealism offered by the technologies of their respective eras seems absolutely ludicrous (though the Post-Impressionists were often mocked by their contemporary critics). Here's another example from a different school of art:

"Quarry Bibémus," by Paul Cézanne (1898-1900)

Landscape from Minecraft (2011)

Cezanne's proto-Cubist landscape (like the "high" Cubists would a decade later) highlights not the subject itself but the shapes that compose it. The image challenges the viewer and critic by changes perspective and forcing us to think in terms of its construction of shapes rather than its fidelity to reproducing a "real" image of the quarry. Similarly, the landscape from Minecraft foregoes realism in favor of showing the components of the game. Since Minecraft is a game about building and composition, its aesthetic enforces this concept by boldly showing the blockiness of its architecture. Gameplay is reflected through art direction in the same way that Cubists reflected the act of building art by focusing on the shapes that make up the subject rather than the subject itself.

As games evolve and attempt to bridge the uncanny, we will see games come closer to photorealism, and this is not a bad thing. In fact, it's a great goal. It will keep pushing artists to reach for smoother textures, utilize more complicated engines, and strive for the true emotional impact that Hartmann posits. As a result, we will see more independent games work with alternate aesthetics to build games that are not focused on photorealism, offering different approaches to emotional experiences. In this sense, I disagree with Markus "Notch" Persson's rebuttal to Harmann, in which he said, "No, Christoph, you LIMIT the number of new genres if you focus on photorealism." Without the focus of photorealism of the mainstream market, we wouldn't have great alternative games like Journey, Minecraft, Limbo, and Braid. The smart money says, the indie market isn't going anywhere.

However, these are just visual goals; the gameplay has to match the emotional weight of what's on screen. I can get visual emotion from paintings, photography, or film. I play games because gameplay can offer experiences that other media cannot, and unless developers can use gameplay to provide emotional context for what's on screen, they are missing the point of a game.

Cheers,

--David