Challenging Games

Videogames have long been debated in many realms.

That's obvious, so why state it? Because while it's been debated for quite some time, there also hasn't been any real consensus formed. Videogames are still being debated as art, decades after their establishment. Videogames are still being debated as to whether or not they're fun. Videogames are still being debated as to whether or not they're challenging. But there's a common thread to all of these, one I might put forth as a sort of "Origin of the Species" of videogames. Consensus on how best to address these issues has obviously not been touched upon to a satisfactory level. At least, not yet.

So rather than start at videogames, let's look back a bit at games before they were digital. Senet is probably the oldest boardgame in the history of the world, an Egyptian game which likely has ties to the more modern game of chess. While it's unknown what the actual rules to the game were, the game's name means, literally "a game of passing." While in the deterministic era of Egypt under which this game was played, it was a talisman that sought the blessings of the gods, it also had a specific ruleset and required decisions. As games became more modern, passing through Mahjong and Chess, eventually arriving at card games and other board games, games have continued to use simple rulesets with complex decisions and were purposeful in that they provided an outlet for the application of skillful thought.

But skillful thought is what many might think games "once were," rather than "currently are." Perhaps this is the wrong way to think about approaching videogames altogether. The videogames that are perhaps most fondly remembered are those that require what is only, at their core, simple decisions. Put into a complex container, such as a Rubik's Cube, however, can provide for an entertaining, but not exactly life-altering experience. Still, a videogame is also quite different from a game in that it exists under layers of obfuscation. A game of Chess, or a game of Go, or a game of Trivial Pursuit are all games which lack the ability to obfuscate simplicity. They can be made to fit any aesthetic, but if the rules are kept intact, a game of Chess will not evoke any great emotion. While Chess can move a person to think in ways they never had before, it cannot plant the seed of an idea, nor cultivate it by sharing garnered experience.

In a way, videogames already understand that their potential lies in the shared experience. The jRPG (Japanese Role-Playing Game) that is giving you "experience points" is basically just a numerical way of telling you that you are participating in an experience. This is a problematic example for many reasons, but only one of quite a few problems that currently mix with the shared experience. Part of the problem is the semantics and etymology of words like "fun" or "competitive" as they relate to videogames.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to the shared videogame experience is the idea that all games need to be fun. Or even worse, that all games need to be competitive. What is "fun" and what is "competitive" are often used semantically to infer that a game must establish that it is one or the other or risk losing an audience. Videogames take great pains to establish themselves as consumer-friendly in this regard, typically alienating audiences as a result. Sometimes, by trying to be all things to all people, they end up being watered down by fawning over their audience.

The idea that a medium must be "fun" is something demonstrably disproven by history and by videogames already in wide circulation. First, let it be said that there is a subset of any entertainment medium that is throwaway. Most of it is, in fact. But, that's not the purpose of the argument here. Whether one needs a ton or a pound is something someone else can justify. So what does it mean for something to be fun? Well, for example, summer blockbusters are meant to be fun. They aren't aiming to be high-minded concept pieces that shake one's conceptions of modern cultural realities. But the Count of Monte Cristo? Not fun. Old Man and the Sea? Not fun. Or at least, not the same type of fun as a summer blockbuster. But what they are, is challenging.

A game then, by its nature, is not competitive, but challenging. A competitive game is one played against another person for the sake of a goal. A challenge, on the other hand, is something more personal, that provides a different sense of fulfillment than fun or competition. Also unlike competition, a challenge need not include another person to provide a sense of fulfillment. But more than that, when a person challenges themselves, they are taking on the characteristics for change. Learning how to cook, or how to program, or listening to Bach provides rewards that provide for one's future sustenance, skillset, or learnedness. These things provide rewards when the person who is accessing them is challenging themselves. Cooking once or twice will not make you a patisserie, nor will using a hand phone to record video on occasion make you an auteur. But a person who does either of these things enough while continually learning can eventually attain such refinement. This is why, as in so many other forms, simply skimming the waters will not do.

A person who plays a videogame must both challenge, and be challenged by the material at hand. A videogame is unique in that it offers tactile challenge. Really. At the end of the day, what is different is that interaction has an effect. One cannot tell a book how to end, or direct a movie as they watch it, and this is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, because there is a unique barrier to entrance, not all players have equal access. Second, developers design for audiences.

The first problem is part of challenge, which has already been discussed at some length as to why it is valuable. On the other hand, the challenges provided here are also problematically skill-based. What that means in the case of videogames is that most problems are designed around the conventional thinking of programming. Which makes sense, because games are created by programmers. But programming is also something that is clasically linear and binary, meaning that the conception of thinking outside programming's limitations is difficult.

The result is that many games are not about thinking outside the linear solutions proposed, and that can actually be limiting to the challenge and create a tunnel-vision that is somewhat relatable to Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Scientific Revolutions. In the theory, he summarizes that as science develops, it becomes increasingly restrictive. For example, the way in which electricity evolved throughout the scientific community is one in which terminology and understanding became increasingly more structured and stratified. This created a class of people who specialized in electricity and a certain subset of its properties, mostly to the exclusion of everything else, even, in some regards, to the exclusion of other properties of electricity. The result is that the thinking on the subject of electricity can be limited due to their specific approach towards the broader implications of electricity.

But that's a scientific theory. Why is it so important? Well, because to a degree, that's happening to games. Part of the reason the challenge is being lost in games is partially because of a slow move to lower the entrance barrier, but the larger reason is because the videogames themselves are specializing in certain directions, to the exclusion of others. Now, this wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it were an exclusive issue to specific genres within videogames. But it has increasingly become a norm in the gaming industry at large. In other, more blunt terms, we've been given the vastness of our imaginations to explore and interact with, and we are satisfied to explore the same depths endlessly. We are essentially digging deeper and deeper virtual caves. Plato would be proud.

That's the real danger behind playing and purchasing these videogames over and over again. We are actually weakening ourselves by focusing on skills that aren't terribly valuable, largely challenging our tactile ability rather than our intellectual ability. Games such as Modern Warfare 2 or Mushihime-sama are excellent examples of such design problems. While both are touted by their respective parties as "great games," they are decidedly typecast. That means that the people who will enjoy them will never really be challenged by them, and though they may find some sense of fulfillment in them, you will be hard-pressed to convince somebody that a gamer score is worthy of a mention on a resume.

Beyond that however, these games are also the types of games that actively push out audiences. These games are for an audience that has already purchased the game via pre-order. These are games for a specific subset of the gaming populace and rarely would one expect another come out of their cave and discuss the merits of another's preferred genre. The design of these games is naturally divisive, and unfortunately, encouraged. While it is not to say that these games are without their merits, as I am a huge fan of Mushihime-sama, there is also a necessary realization here. The current way in which games are discussed is divisive, and the prevailing game design philosophy is not one of mutual acceptance. How to fix this, unfortunately, is not the subject of this article, but used for the purpose of moving the debate into the realm of art.

Of the debate of fun, challenge, and art, the question of which videogames qualify as art is contested. What I described above is why. Videogames were art the moment they were created, as per an objective definition of what they are. But the reason there's so much division over which games are art, good or bad, is because every person's playing in their own cave. For the person who loves a First-Person Shooter, it's one game, for a person who loves Action-Adventure, it's another. What's worse is that the community is also up-in-arms when they don't interpret the shadows of "meaning" in the same way. The result is a fractured discussion in which all those who appreciate the differences of games do not tend to appreciate one another enough to have a discussion on the merits and valuable experiences of various genres. The design philosophy of games does nothing to help this. Challenges are almost exclusively tactile, despite having vast potential to expand beyond that experience, and there is an intimate problem of tactile skill being promoted as intellectually challenging.

Yes, tactile skill is something a person needs in order to play games, but it's not the reason a game like Shadow of the Colossus or Flower is challenging. Particularly Flower. Definitely Flower. A game is intellectually challenging for the same reason that any other piece of work is intellectually challenging. The work enriches one's holistic perspective of the world. Indeed, a truly intellectual challenge represents a paradigm shift that a person openly accepts while under their particular characteristics for change. More widely, a game like Shadow of the Colossus is about love and loss, Flower is one of nature and balance. However, these are just themes that color these works, they enrich by interaction and shared experience.

As with the jRPG example mentioned earlier, the types of shared experiences and their presentation are the primary contributing factor to a videogame, and what separates the good from the bad. Gaining numerical experience is not bad unto itself, but it is problematic in that it is indicative of a shallow challenge, mainly that acquiring something (in the case of a typical jRPG, progression) is a result of simply playing the game. That is to say, the shared experience is largely one in which continuous interaction, not unique interaction, is highly valued.

A challenge must contain unique interaction, because as a person gains understanding of the given repetition, repetition is less a challenge and more a chore. However, what most games are, even today, are tests of repetitive interaction. That is perhaps their greatest weakness in terms of challenge, but also the reason they are so lucrative. See this article on being boring. What Goldsmith proposes is essentially that most mediums largely seek to entertain us, though the question is whether it's a school assignment or a hobby.

In a hobby, there are different types of viable challenges, but the majority are ones which provide fulfillment. But fulfillment alone is not the piece of the puzzle we're looking for when discussing art. Few films are Princess Mononoke. In fact, if you asked film makers, they would probably tell you that no other film is Princess Mononoke, and with good reason. That is what games sorely lack, perhaps more in discussion than anything else. That certain games could not be anything else. That taking one part from them makes them something else entirely. Princess Mononoke challenges perceptions and opens people up to new possibilities. Few games can say the same.

What a challenge can provide is growth, and that's what separates the great works from just the ho-hum. When a videogame is played, the player must look for the author to share, as one reads a book intently and views style, or how a film uses camera angles. To interact with a shared experience is a new frontier, but industry has been rather mired in the caves of past times. Game design has insisted on constantly recreating itself and marginalizing paradigms that could lead to new growth. This is the danger of the future of design, as the industry becomes insular and unaware of the potentialities that could enlighten a specifically new beauty, bathed in unique, challenging experiences.

The next time somebody says something offensive about the genre of games you prefer, consider why that might be. Engage them. Talk about their experience. Judge after they have presented their arguments, and be respectful. The reality is that, quite frankly, we're not accepted. And right now, the games industry at large has no one but themselves to blame for that. But to be part of the solution and not the problem requires that well-reasoned, opposing viewpoints be accepted. What does that mean? Videogames aren't going to be art for everyone. They aren't going to be challenging for everyone. They aren't going to be competitive for everyone. They aren't going to be fun for everyone. Some people are always going to see them as a waste of time. That's okay. But if they're willing to discuss the subject, one needs to be respectful of their beliefs. Because otherwise, it's just telling them how right they are, not just about the videogames community, but videogames period.