Shadows on the Screen: A Gaming Canon. Do We Need to Play Zelda to be Gamers?
If we should stop fretting about what game will be the Citizen Kane of game design, can we still worry about which games hold a similar must-play status?
I know that my readers must think that as a pretentious jerk I only read games writing from other pretentious jerks (some of them probably even use words like verisimilitude,) or articles extolling the structural/thematic merits of games people don’t like (no but for serious, read this.) That’s just not true. I do my best to keep my finger to the pulse of the industry by keeping up on blogs, and I try hard to get into the head of the average gamer by reading even the messiest of comments sections, too.
In fact, sometimes the comments section provides the best inspiration for the sort of questions I like to ask. Case in point, when Kotaku wrote up this little story about the addition of free fantasy style homes in Home, OLC Editor-in-Chief Phil Caron joked about the similarity between the design of the home and the first dungeon in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Ha Ha, and all that, but the meat of the issue is in the second comment:
What followed was a dozen or so other comments calling Kotaku user XForce’s validity as a gamer into question. After all, how could he be a gamer if he didn’t play LoZ:OoT? And there is our inspiration.
That somehow the lack of a single play experience disqualifies him as a gamer all together, well, it’s a ludicrous claim. We all have our pile of shame, and it’s a fallacy to believe that lacking one bit of knowledge disqualifies a person from making critical assessments. (Which I guess presumes a lot about what we mean when we label someone “gamer” in that context.)
As a critic, it’s useful to have a broad knowledge base. Understanding Ken Levine’s work on the System Shock and Thief series helps put a new lens on BioShock. Understanding that many early JRPGs were doing their best to emulate western computer RPGs allows for new interesting readings of those titles. Hell, Retro Game Challenge places a large amount of weight in the idea that its players will be versed in the games it lampoons.
Even though we’ve been trying to isolate gaming from other media, I can’t help but peek over the fence in this issue too. Comparison to film and music and theater and literature will happen no matter what. The question is, how long until we inherit some of the more specific qualities of these other art forms. One of those peculiarities is the creation of a librarical canon, a collection of works so necessary that to say you are a fan of the medium means that you have experienced at least some of that collection.
That’s an oversimplification, of course. Sure, being into film noir means that you’ve seen Sunset Boulevard, espousing your love of Cyberpunk novels suggest familiarity with Gibson, and you wouldn’t be a fan of superhero comics without knowing who Superman and Batman were. But you can’t generalize it out all the way. If someone said “I love reading” you’d never assume that they liked James Joyce, no matter how much of a standard he’s become in English Literature courses world wide. The medium is just too broad.
Is this still true in a medium just a few decades old? If not, what other titles, besides OoT, should be included on this list? At what point does a title become required playing? At what point in the history of an art form does “required” downgrade to “recommended”? These questions are all very intricate, interesting things to think about, and I’d love to hear what you guys think. But here’s the twist: It doesn’t matter, because we’re unable to sustain that sort of library.
Penguin Classics works because all of those books are on the same platform: English. The Criterion Collection can be played on any DVD player. You don’t need another cute anecdote, you get the picture. If I wanted to present all of gaming’s best action titles – hell, let’s go more specific, if I wanted to collect all of gaming’s best 3D Character Action titles, I couldn’t do it. Even if I limited it to 3D Character Action titles released on Sony platforms, I’d be demanding that the people who want to check out my must plays spend nearly eight hundred dollars before they even bought a single game. Worse, imagine all of the best fighters, or RPGs?
This is not only a console problem. While services like Valve’s Steam, GoodOldGames, and GameTap do their best to provide classic titles at a reasonable price, PC specs are varied and unpredictable. Plus, none of these services will ever be able to offer Ocarina of Time because of their first-party status, a fact that also helps to diminish the potential of XBLA, PSN, and Virtual Console.
So as time moves forward I have to ask: where are we going? I’m not arguing for a a single-console future here, only stating one of the weaknesses of the status quo. The structure of the industry as it stands is incapable of highlighting stand out software in the long term. Is it possible to really gain mainstream art status when it’s impossible to give an interested newbie a stack of titles and say “go play these” without also demanding they drop a month of pay on all of the consoles needed to play them on?
You really have brought up some excellent points about video games. I think what is important to remember is the games part of video games. It is in the genre of games just like card, board, paper & pencil RPG, athletics (with their own sub-genres), etc. Many people like one sub-genre of video games (shooters for example). I would not call someone who just likes shooters and plays them all the time a “Gamer” because they do not embrace and investigate other sub-genres. This would be like someone who just watches action movies calling themselves a movie buff. They are not, they are an Action Movie buff.
Back to the point on video games being in the game realm. Think about all the people that participate in other games. Just because someone participates in the realm of games does not mean they are a guru. I go to movies and collect some Blu-Rays, but I would never call myself a movie guru. I love MLB, NFL, college football and basketball, and I play disc golf. I’m not an athletic guru just because I watch and participate in these activities. If I intentionally dedicated my time to researching athletics, cross referencing actors across movies, and spent a vast amount of time researching chess, then I would probably consider myself a guru in those activities.
Am I a guru for games? Well, I intentionally have have 6 websites in my RSS feed to stay in tune with games, I research old games and their impact on today’s games, but most importantly I intentionally spend time playing sports, racing, open-world, strategy, RPG, action, fighting, adventure, puzzle and lifestyle games. Having a deep understanding of video games requires playing lots of games, but you have to play the marquee titles. What baseball fan doesn’t know about and studied Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron? How many board game enthusiasts haven’t played Chess and Monopoly? What’s a paper and pencil RPG guru without Dungeons and Dragons? You can’t be a gamer without playing (at least once) Zelda, Mario, Madden, Civilization, Tetris and Final Fantasy.
Speaking as a classically trained Gamer with experience way beyond my years and an absurd memory. I make references to stuff most people never know existed. I encourage people to play some old games but, hey, you can’t win them all.
I’ll definitely agree on the existence of canon in video games, within different eras, genres, consoles etc. But I don’t think any game is required playing for someone to claim themselves to be a gamer. I mean I consider myself a gamer… but to be completely honest… my knowledge on games far outreaches the magnitude of games i’ve actually played… and even more so when you ask which games i’ve completed/won. Take OoT, I never owned an N64… my neighbour did, and although i was never great friends with him… whenever I could get permission to go to his house I would see him play it (and try it myself) as well as play GoldenEye… I remember the days we’d be playing outside while he described what happened in the story and the crazy things they did in the game. That was how I’ve primarily experienced the game… I plan to play it through on Virtual Console this summer.
in contrast my girlfriend who I consider and she considers to be a gamer… is not exactly one of “us”. She doesn’t read game news… she hears a thing or two from me, she doesn’t play most genres… she hasn’t played all the classics… But as we speak she is replaying a fave of hers Age of Mythology and has won several games I haven’t. She completed Oblivion + expansions, Neverwinter Nights 1/2, Baldur’s Gate 1/2… (just mentioning games she’s won which i haven’t in the past year or so) she kicks my ass in Ridge Racer 4 lol. We played through Phantom Hourglass together taking turns in excitement… but she had never played a Zelda game before that. Do I question her merits as a gamer? Definitely not… she is often hopeless in FPSes and had never heard of Doom, but that didn’t mean she isn’t a gamer… I think especially when it comes to these earlier games… especially if you were a kid or a pre-teen most of the games people consider canon… you end up experiencing them out of happenstance more than anything.
How I stumbled on the Final Fantasy series (my favorite game series.) for example was pure chance. My cousin gave me an ’98 e3 issue of of OPSM when I was in Sri Lanka (where my family is from) that his friend had bought when he was in Dubai… this was New Years ’99. So a year and a half old magazine with a fan drawn Squall on the cover introduced me to JRPGs. And changed my gaming preferences and experiences forever. That cousin is also the one that I experienced SNES through and the one that kept telling me to try out Squaresoft games… some game called Chrono something was supposedly awesome…
Funny enough FF8 came out just that month and I got it for my birthday 3 months later. Didn’t even have a memory card – played through the first 2 – 5 hours 10s of times over (till I borrowed one over the summer)… those were fun times… when I got a game every 3 months or so and any other game I experienced were through others for short bursts.
Damn nostalgia – sorry that was completely off topic and self-indulgent… good thing no one will read that. But yeah this all just goes to show that people’s background will strongly effect what games people play from those people consider canon today. And as you said… today to play these classics won’t be as easy as picking up a penguins classics or going to your local library (or dvd store for that matter) to get a dvd of citizen kane or any other such classic movie…
EDIT: Wow that was long. I’d take most of it away… but it was fun going down memory lane… and maybe just maybe someone who reads this will do the same and appreciate what i wrote… so here it will stay.