Don’t Kick Food!

What follows is a draft of an essay that I intended to be about an experience playing a single mission of Hitman: Blood Money. That point is still buried at the end here, but a large portion of what I aimed to write is missing. I began the piece with the intent of creating a context for what I would relay – it soon spiraled out of control and became the (relatively) unedited chunk of text that follows.

I hoped to make the essay a good example of the kind of video game writing I would like to read. Some points I hoped to illustrate (rather than simply list and argue for):

1. Focusing on a small part of the game (a single mission) as opposed to the game as a whole would show it was possible to say something about the experience of play without having finished the full game.
2. At the same time as narrowing the in-game focus, expanding the out-of-game focus to include the players (without necessarily taking a New Games Journalism-esque “first person narrative of the game” approach).
3. Show that a video game, despite its nature as a closed and fully-constructed system, was open to reconfiguration by its players in ways that do not take place within the game itself – in this case, turning a single player game into a multiplayer social experience.
4. Illustrate that there is a space between the player and the game where meaning is made in ways free from the game’s rules – that the narrative of “us playing the game” is not necessarily the same as the narrative of the game. Total identification with the character in the game is not necessary for engagement with the game world.

As I wrote more, I found that I had more to say about the nature of social gaming than I did about Blood Money. I was unable to write satisfactorily about the game in order to illuminate the above mentioned points. This is my fault – my words are rusty. There is a piece that makes use of those four points above in a readable way, but what follows is not it.

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Interpersonal interaction, as it relates to video games, is weird. When playing a typical multiplayer console game, you’re sitting next to a few other people, each holding a controller. Everyone’s attention is focused on the screen - all your primary interactions with one another are mediated through the game. Your actions are inputted through a controller, run through a cable, and then processed by the machine which determines their visual and auditory qualities.

What you do, and therefore how you interact, become the media you are consuming. If it’s not something you have much experience with, it’s easy to see how it would be characterized as a-(or even anti)-social – focusing on the screen at the expense of eye contact and nonverbal body language (though the movements of characters on screen is a nonverbal language of its own). That’s not to say what goes on in the room is ignored.

It is rare that a multiplayer gaming session is totally silent - insults, begrudging praise, orders and suggestions (in team-based or cooperative play), gloating, and cries of frustration abound. What’s strange to the outside observer, again, is the focus on the television screen. That the person is sitting next to you is inconsequential. The visual aspect of interaction is supplanted by the video game images. You can’t make eye contact and watch the screen at the same time. It’s a risky behavior - if the game is still occurring onscreen, you don’t know what’s going on.

It’s different from watching a film or television - if you remove your attention from the screen, it has no effect on the events unfolding. The screen plays no part in your interaction, where it is the dominant factor in multiplayer video games. It’s a little different than the typical zombie-staring-at-the-TV-mesmerized-by-the-pretty-lights scenario.

This model of video game mediated interaction works when all of the players have their own controller and their own input into the screenworld of the video game. It’s an enmediated interaction, one where the images on the screen are as important as the person sitting next to you (in a way, more so, because they exist within the space
where the interaction occurs, while you and the other person do not).

The images are also far more interesting than the real-world actions that cause them. Watching someone fly across the screen is far more interesting than watching their thumbs fly across the buttons - and despite its digital nature, it’s far less abstract. There are games, though, that require a different kind of play that is more performative in the real world and less abstract with its relation to the game world (if the actions there have any real representation at all).

Rhythm games, like the Revolutions (Karaoke and Dance Dance), make the precisely timed button presses that are required for success in most video games into a real-world performance with its own entertainment value. Watching a person hit all the right buttons to execute a difficult series of jumps in a platformer can be impressive to anyone watching the screen, but paying attention to the person’s actions is as boring as watching someone twiddle their thumbs. The player’s (performer’s?) skill becomes apparent to those watching without having to be mediated through the game system.

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Here was the big problem – I wanted to write a transition that would link these performative games where one player does the work for the entertainment of others in the room to the experience of playing a typical single player game with other people in the room. Explain the potential frustrations of having a controller in your hand but having other people telling you what to do (“There’s a reason it’s called solitaire!”).

Next up was the Blood Money section, where I’d write about four people working together to finish one of the missions. One person translated the French dialogue in the game, one controlled the character (a hitman named Number 47), one used years of frequent game-playing experience to read the game for hints that would be obvious to a gamer, and I, well, I yelled. A lot. I couldn’t find a way to make it work.

Now, though, the rest of the piece:

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We were creating that sense of teamwork and camraderie that characterizes our culture’s most optimistic views of group dynamics. The ragtag group of heroes that saves the day at the last minute, the band whose different members each bring something to the table and create lasting musical greatness, the underdog sports team winning an impossible championship - or, in our case, four different people solving the video game puzzle that resulted in the visual simulation of a perfectly executed double hit on child traffickers.

In our lives, we don’t have the clearly defined roles (quarterback/receiver, drummer/guitarist, etc) that the individuals in these other groups have, nor do we have the clearly circumscribed boundaries of Our Team, Our Band, or The Good Guys. Blood Money provided the only unifying point we needed - Number 47, the character through which we could affect the gameworld, and through whom we explored it. We weren’t necessarily identifying with 47 – we were solving a puzzle, playing a game. He was performing a contract kill.

—–

There it is. It’s not a total failure – there are points in there that (though clumsy) need to be made. They’re ideas I’ve thought a lot about. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into them, and I want them out of my head. Not publishing this would leave them to fester in my brain and in the “Unfinished Business” folder of my laptop. I’ve noted my motives, I’ve noted my feelings, and I’m clicking “Publish Post”.

1. Who is the audience?

All literate people of the world? Academics? Designers? People who only pick up a game every so often? People who play games at the expense of all other media consumption?

2. Is there a way around the fact that it takes significant amounts of time to complete a game?

Why does writing about a game have to be published as close as possible to its release? When film criticism was developing, a film’s chances of becoming influential depended on its remaining in theaters where it could be viewed by the most number of people. Cinephiles didn’t have much control other than the choice of a particular showtime when it came to seeing films. With gaming, it’s different. It doesn’t take a retrospective at the MOMA to allow people to play games that are a month or two old. Buying games on release doesn’t really make economic sense, because you know that the price will inevitably drop (unlike, say, a movie ticket, which will only drop in price if a different theater shows it, or especially a particular performance of a play, which is tied to both a specific place and time of performance).

3. Is experience-based writing really the way to go?

If the reason we play video games is to have experiences, and those experiences are guaranteed to be somewhat unique, is an article written about a rise to fame as embodied by Guitar Hero good, useful writing (side note: I believe there is something to be said about Guitar Hero, which I have had a lot of fun with, and its relationship to actual music making: for example, its privileging of rigidly timed button pressing over improvisation for successful music making, and how that is tied to its technology and what that suggests about successful simulation of ROCK GOD SKILLS)?

If all a piece of writing does is mimick what it feels like to play the game, is that successful? Couldn’t you just play the game and get the actual feeling?

4. Is it possible that at the current time the storytelling is more important than the story?

This is pointed towards games that do contain a narrative. Maybe we should be looking at the relative simplicity of the stories being told as a boon rather than a hindrance. After all, when you learn to read, you start with simple, straightforward concepts (”See Spot run!”) in order to learn how the language works. - investigations of complicated moral dilemmas don’t come into play until Doctor Seuss. We’re learning to read these games at the same time the designers are learning to write them. The simplicity of the messages should allow us to focus on the way it’s being conveyed.

Alternatively, wouldn’t it be worthwhile for someone, somewhere, to investigate just why these particular stories are considered juvenile or adolescent male power fantasies and what makes them worth playing anyway (assuming they’re not just a waste of time and money)?

In my ideal world, all of the people whose opinions on various media I respect would come together in the comments section of this post and figure it out and all of the “Where is gaming’s Citizen Kane/Pauline Kael/Lester Bangs/Cahiers du cinema would be redundant and we could move on.