Videogames today have problems. Problems they didn’t have to cope with in the past, questions about their validity as a medium. While the medium is in question, the form is in trouble. This site has been established in hopes of opening a forum for discussion about videogames as a form. Today will present questions of theory, questions of design. What videogames do right, what they do wrong, and how to improve upon their impact on the world of noise that we live in today. And what is a videogame? It is just so. et tu.
And with you, it is as lost as the sleeping babe on the doorstep. Uncertain as to whether or not the door will be open and empower the crying communicative process, or be siphoned away by the storm that brews around any form of discussion. The result of such a process is a question of how that miscommunication strengthens one’s appraisal of the world surrounding them. Yet in such profoundly poor communication, there is also a seed of brilliance. For those who cannot speak also dream of worlds that are extensions of themselves. Such is the design of any game.
To some degree, Mario is an extension of ourselves, whether he is an iconic Italian plumber or a stereotype in overalls, he explains experience. Not our experience, not his experience, however. He explains our expectations of an experience. Mario signifies a kind of experience, but not the exigencies of the interaction. As an avatar, he is essentially an extension of the unresolved placement of self. He is something, perhaps someone to which we ascribe a value. Design achieves the goal with usage of color, space, differentiation. But these are fundamentals, you might shout or sneer. Yet games are, at their most basic, their most complex.
The elements of design that construct any game and any discussion are of fundamentals. Understanding of fundamentals provides for intentionally well-constructed theory. Yet games have no well-constructed theory, despite having a great range of text spanning their depths for secrets, for troves, for bounties untouched. For fundamentals. There is no zen experience for Chrono Trigger, no mastery of Marathon, no inception in Portal. But these games have inklings. They poke at something underneath the surface, for brief moments. These brief moments are perhaps where games should start. Where gamers should start, perhaps, looking for their theory.
There is no great game that currently exists. There are only many with inklings of inception. Touch just beneath the surface. Stop searching wide for the message, for it is in the bits that it exists. et tu, Gamer?