Posts Tagged ‘Philosophy’
Why do we play games? The obvious answer, and doubtlessly true, is that we play games in order to be entertained, but that seems altogether too simplistic and easy an answer. The sources of entertainment in our culture are legion; our choices are abundant and ever changing. Why are games rapidly becoming the most lucrative and pervasive form of entertainment in the world? They may not yet have completely usurped the dominance of film and television, but they are quickly gaining ground. Why? What is their appeal to our culture? Does their relevance reside purely on the generic level of Western affluence (which can afford the ostentation of electronic amusement?) Or does it extend beyond civilization, to something innate in what it means to be human, and alive?
There seems to be near unanimous consensus that Bioshock 1 and 2 are comments on the fiction and theories of Ayn Rand – and especially those in her colossal treatise thinly disguised as the novel Atlas Shrugged. It’s partially true: Bioshock is a counterargument to Rand, but only within the boundaries established by Atlas Shrugged. It might be a critique, but it’s not a very good one.
There is nothing hypocritical in asking the question, "Are games frivolous?" The answer is obvious: of course they are. But so is every conceivable manifestation of human intellect that does not directly contribute to the so-called human weal. It might also be said of intelligence that it is the rarest of things. Consider the immense size of the universe and the incredible fortuitousness of the circumstances that gave rise to carbon based life here on Earth. It does not take much contemplation to see that any consideration of genius must inevitably become a memorialisation: all life is doomed from the most hopeful moment of inchoate birth to the ineluctable tragedy of death. Why then do we not gnash our teeth and bury our heads in the sand? Certainly we do none of this with regards to the many apocalyptic distractions of culture: but as beings of intellect, we are so rarely called to take heed of the incredible, artistic phenomena of the everyday business of entertainment.
I find deep satisfaction in the recent (ish) trend away from realism in video games. Specifically, high-quality, realistic depictions of fundamentally surreal elements – where 8-bit pixellation and posterization are enshrined in gleaming high-color environments. Let me explain. Start with a gorilla. A real, five-thousand-pound senator dripping chunks of banana and trying to pick lice [...]
When I was a child I harboured a secret from the world. It concerned the places I couldn’t see, but knew of in a way that didn’t really avail itself of words. I am talking about indistinct realities. But then again that doesn’t really do them justice. They are not simply indistinct, or emotional; they are, properly speaking, beyond.
Imagine an abandoned building — let's say a ruined apartment. Somewhere in that building is a stairwell that leads to the basement. Wander through that lightless place until you see an old rusty grate in the floor, and pry it open. Go down the ladder until you find yourself in a small sub-basement full of old rotting boxes and broken tools, and find a little closet at the far end. There's a busted water heater stuck in the corner, but around the side of it you can find just enough room to squeeze in. Don't mind the little puddle of grime on the floor: it's been there longer than you have. Congratulations, you've just found a Shadowy Corner. They're special places, imbued with ancient secrets and a mystical je ne sais quoi, and they scare the hell out of me.
Increasingly, videogames are striving to imitate the unexplored worlds of human imagination — from barely-probed ocean depths to the stalward nebulae and distant stars of space simulations. The accuracy of recent attempts, however, is remained as far from the mark asd early scifi pulp magazines. More often than not, the ocean depths and voids of space are filled with life, pirates, battles, and immidiacy — immitations that do not depict the true nature of these depths: cold, lonely, enormous and terribly hostile. It's hard to communicate the experience of deep sea diving, or to imagine space flight. A few haunting releases — like Wholfin's video of an underwater squid birth — offer us clues.
We have found them. We have fallen into their soulless demesnes. The fortunate have merely seen them from a distance; the unlucky have perished in their hollow spaces, vanished from view and lost even to memory. Only the scuff marks of unwary boots remain to mark their unnatural thresholds. I am referring to the Weird Places of video game lore. They are haunted, nightmarish places; they are unintentional, forgotten places; they are bleak, dreadful, and above all uncanny.
Wandering through the benighted wasteland of Bethesda Studios' Fallout 3, I am struck not so much by the oppressive quality of desolation, as I am by a strange ubiquity: everywhere I travel, littering the ground and filling containers of various types, including the many corpses of my enemies, are the innumerable leftover objects of an enormous and prolific industrial economy.
