I had been playing Final Fantasy Tactics, an old favorite of mine, on my PSP during my stay at my then-fianceé's house. Finally, after a couple of sessions on the bus, on the train, and there in the house, I hit the "confirm" button, plunged my Excalibur into the heart of god (again) and watched the end credits roll. I had made good time in winding my way through the 30-hour epic. I reset my PSP, and thought to myself for a second as my cursor hovered tentatively over "New Game," and with one more button press, I was back on my way to the land of Ivalice. God, after all, wasn't just going to stab himself.
In many ways, a decent game is much more immersive than a good movie or book. Movies are a "cold" medium (did... did I actually just use something I learned in my major?). They're passive entertainment. Pop the DVD in the tray and sit back and enjoy the program. Problem is, you're not a captive audience. You can get up and go to the bathroom or make popcorn, and the story keeps telling itself without ever noticing you're gone. The true masterpieces are those that involve the audience in the narrative in some way. They weave complex and compelling yarns with multifaceted characters motivated by real emotions, enticing you into a world where infants--nay, mere babies--are in fact geniuses. A world where naps are history.
Books and games, by contrast, are "hot" mediums (holy shit, professor Klukovski are you seeing this?). Books don't read themselves. Games don't play themselves. If you want to get to the end, you have to work for it. Reading, therefore, is its own reward. Much more of a reader's time and energy is invested in the narrative, making the payoff that much sweeter upon seeing the story through to its completion. After all, isn't finding out that Bella and Edward have a baby and Jacob becoming forever attached to their daughter (oops spoilers sorry) so much more satisfying when you've slogged your way barefoot through over a thousand pages of literary sewage to find out?
What's more, it's much easier to get attached to a book because it isn't a temporal medium. The author can create an atmosphere over several hundred pages, flesh out characters much more realistically, and ultimately tell the story he or she wants to tell much more precisely than he or she could with a medium that's generally confined to two hours of run-time.
Games are very much the best of both worlds. They offer the sights and sounds of a visual medium, but they let us take control. We are given the tools we need to solve any problem within the context of the game. All that remains between the start screen and the end credits is the question "can you do it?" They immerse us in the narrative by making us a part of the story. A beginning and end are strung together by the player's actions and decisions. And while Roger Ebert embroiled himself in controversy by claiming that games are not art, then later backtracking and saying that they are art, but not "high art," have you ever seen anyone walk out of Casablanca crying like this bitch? Clearly, there is a level of immersion and emotional investment in video games that cannot be denied.
Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Mario Bros. series (and many, many other titles) once said that "games are like favorite playgrounds, places you become attached to and go back to again and again." Thank you, Small, Funny-looking Japanese Man, for making my entire point for me. And making it characteristically smaller and more efficient than mine. Why not just add a clock radio to it and cock-slap my grandma while you're at it?
I'm not trying to say that games are better than books or movies (we gamers are still waiting for our Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane). But, as a thesis statement, games take us places. The medium, by its very nature, transports us somewhere.
My first meaningful experience with a game came in 1994, when my best friend came over to my house for a Cub Scout meeting that my dad was presiding over for the evening. I remember that the theme for that night's meeting was cryptography. We had to decipher a secret message that my dad had written in code using a phone book as a key.
Dad, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. For the life of me now, I cannot remember what that message was. I know how much of a disappointment I am to you.
What I do remember from that meeting is that my best friend brought over a copy of Final Fantasy III that night, and I fell in love (with the game, not my friend).
While my dad was doing the last-minute preparations to ensure a smooth troop meeting, our scout pack of two (even at a young age, we were fucking outcasts) frantically plugged away as my friend filled me in on the story so far. When our expedition of the Imperial encampment ground to a halt so we could pledge to my father how loyal, cheerful, brave, and thrifty we would be, my mind was still there in that encampment. As my friend and I poured over that code my father encrypted, we knew that every error made cost us precious seconds in the race against time and his dad's minivan coming to pick him up from my house. Our fathers were keeping us from our new favorite playground.
We were kind of pathetic that way.
And when my friend finally retired home that night and the glow of my TV gave way to placid oblivion, I went to bed that night wondering what would become of Sabin and Cyan, and our recently acquired character Gau, as they scrambled to rejoin their friends.
Every day at school was a new update from the home-front. My best friend related in painstaking detail every major conflict and story development. A regular fifth-grade war journalist. And when I finally got my hands on a copy of the game, I dropped it into my Super Nintendo slot with trembling anticipation of finally being able to re-live my obsession firsthand.
Much like my chance of getting laid before my 20th birthday...
Almost fifteen years have passed between now and then. I have beaten Final Fantasy III at least fifty times. I am a very, very sick person. I have beaten it by using all fourteen characters individually, beaten it without learning magic, beaten it without gaining levels, beaten it twice in the same day, and beaten it without learning magic or gaining levels at the same time. Hell, I wrote the first guide on how to do it. I can't even play Final Fantasy III anymore on my Super Nintendo. I need to play it on the computer so I can use a fast-forward button. No, I'm not kidding.
But, as I'm sure everyone reading this is asking themselves, "why?" (alternately, the longer: "why am I reading the blog of the world's least talented autistic?") There are hundreds of thousands of games out there. Board games, computer games, card games, console games, and, of course, Terry Tate's favorite kind of games. Why would I--or anyone--play the same game into the ground years upon years after its release? Why would anyone willingly commit to thousands of hours to the same story, knowing that operating within a closed system like a game, book, or movie, the outcome is exactly the same? Is it as the definition of insanity suggests: doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different outcomes? Am I insane? Is my behavior that of a crazy person?
My belief is that it's as far from that as you can get.
Also known as the "rubber vs. glue" defense
It's the comfort of familiarity. It is the state of querencia--a place of strength where we know exactly who and what we are. When you pick up a game--any game--for the first time, you are an infant. There is little connection between the input device in your hands and the game. Your skills are tested and tried until you display enough proficiency and/or tenacity to beat it. Often, this is the point at which we move on and find a new playground to explore. But those devoted enough to stick around find a new level of comfort and familiarity, an intangible bond between themselves and their on-screen personification. It is through that connection that one can do amazing things. Self-actualization made manifest in one's digital counterpoint.
Think of it this way: you can spend enough time with a person and get to know them well enough to marry them. But if you devote enough time to that person, get to know them on a deep enough level, then together your one mind is of two bodies. Your soul and theirs breathe of one breath. You can see right through them. You can communicate with each other without so much as a word. You can shit with the door open.
That connection is a difficult thing to let go. If love is romantic intimacy with another and friendship is comfortable intimacy with another, what I am describing is intimacy with a system. It's the reason that there are still Street Fighter II tournaments being played over fifteen years after its release. It's the reason that Everquest still exists and has just released its sixteenth expansion (despite Everquest 2 having been released in 2004). It's the reason a text-based MUD has survived since 1992.
It's the reason chess is still relevant.
Gaming and gamers have matured a lot over the years. Maybe we've both grown up too fast. But it's important not to forget where you came from, and the places--both real and imaginary--that shaped you. Don't be afraid to play like the child you were. Long summers that, reaching on until forever, begged to be squandered in front of a TV set. You can still dust off that old, beautiful playground.
It's still waiting for you.
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