So I have recently hit an interesting point in my life in which I can see through the marketing façade of mainstream gaming. Now to be fair, I never have been a fan of the “mainstream” games that rocket into popularity thanks to their realistic graphics and immersive “whatevers.” No, for me games have always been about the adventure, story, and experience of playing…which up until very recently I didn’t realize was unusual.
For a moment I want to take you back. Back to a time before internet culture, before online video was king, and before most home phones weren’t wireless (or just someone’s cell). The year was 1995 (or maybe ’94). I was but a small impressionable child, but I saw a video game for the first time; Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo. Little did I know that experience would shape my concept of gaming for the rest of my life. Form that day at a cousin’s house; I knew that I wanted to play. Not just because it was a flashy image on a TV, but because I was drawn into the adventure of exploring a world.
Fast forward a few years, and the experience between my brother and I became about diving into interesting places in each cartridge and seeing just what new world there was to explore. For the majority of my life gaming was just that, an adventure. A one way ticket out of chores and school assignments, and into pipes, caverns, and dungeons sprawling across dozens of new worlds!
The impact that those games had on me was profound, and in many ways not something I’d fully understand until years later. It took me until college to realize that the adventures I went on as a kid, fueled my desire to “escape” into my paintings, and subsequently create stories and worlds for others to explore. In that sense, gaming for me was always about the next great journey and which princess to save next.
In the past year though I found myself invited into the world of mainstream, multiplayer games…Many of these games I have grown to adore, while others have become a nuisance. There was a time where creating a game was a passion project for programmers, composers, and designers which manifested itself into a rich experience for the player. I think however over the past decade we may have lost that vision for what a game should be. While I by no means want to degrade the quality or skill that modern artists are utilizing to create unique characters and experiences, I have begun to question the validity of certain games as the betterment of the human experience. Recently I have chosen to quit playing a certain game, and as a result I have become more focused, productive, and motivated by doing so. Games that are designed to cause an addiction in the player to “play” rather than “experience” a game I think is causing a disconnect in the artistic experience among many young minds. If I (as a 30ish gamer and artist) can be so easily manipulated into playing for the sake of playing, then I think there is something to be said about the industry as a whole. These days artists are taking work to build a portfolio and put food on the table, but as I’m writing I have to wonder if the same artists are also “selling their souls” to the paycheck.
As an artist I’m concerned that the “art of the game” is being lost to the “art of a business.” More players, more games, more money…yeah a studio can do that, it’s their right as a business, but I GREATLY WORRY for artists that will design for a project for the money, without realizing that the product might be hurting it’s players rather than inspiring them. For me a game should inspire the player to go on an adventure, solve a problem, or just have fun, but with many mainstream games being produced I'm afraid people won't be inspired to create and just will spiral into "the game" which at the end of the day is meaningless.