Why So Serious?

As a 21 year old gamer it feels somewhat out of place for me to be making this statement, given a large chunk of my argument happened while my favourite hobby was chewing on my own foot, but how did mainstream games suddenly become so serious and realistic? Two decades ago we were overwhelmed with unheard of games based on Italian plumbers eating mushrooms and jumping on turtles, bright blue hedgehogs with the land speed that Usian Bolt would envy, and acne-named toads battling an evil Queen and her unyielding army of pigs… in space! Then in 2009 we are presented with: a soldier in a seemingly unwinnable war, a solider in a fictitious war which appears to mirror many factual wars, and an Italian plumber who eats mushrooms while jumping on… ARGH! What happened?! I plan to find out. However, for such an epic journey of discovery, I’m going to need an expert on hand, so please join me in welcoming our very special guest; Jonathan Blow (the creative mind behind the almighty game ‘Braid’).

With my newly found celebrity developer on hand, let’s begin with the basics: I’m not implying originality in games is dead. I just don’t believe adding a contrived ‘Unique Selling Point’ to an existing thought and claiming it to be the next step forward is the correct way to go about things. I also have this (apparently rare) opinion that a constant strive towards realism is not what games should all be about, of course I loved Call Of Duty 4 like my own child, but would it be so wrong to make a game based on fun, not life? I’m curious why the most risky ideas are coming from outside of the big name companies, and instead are being brought to life by the smaller ‘back-bedroom’ developers? SEGA, Activision, and Konami were the cream of the best of fun, enjoyable, never-before-seen games. Now they are making the exact same games, only with a newer graphics engine and in most cases more realistic gameplay and storyline. It borders on depressing to see what they did to Sonic.

If you took every retail game you saw starring: a short, brown haired male lead character with an attitude problem, an overly characterised action girl who has no other aim in life than killing everything that gets in her way and a game boasting the largest area you will ever experience (when it could be the same fifty square meters of land copied and pasted several times) I’d imagine you’d arrive at a number which is equal to roughly half of all the games released for the current console generation. These days it appears it has been left solely to the Indie (such as the Xbox Live Arcade/Indie Arcade, and Playstation Network) and hand-held market to carry the envelope pushing weight on their shoulders.

Such refreshing titles as Braid, Scribblenauts, and Critter Crunch are some prime examples of this. Games where the age old argument “it’s all been done before” hold no ground, even if you find minor similarities from the before time of gaming, these games bring them forward in such new and ingenious ways. What I can’t see, is why we don’t see retail releases of this calibre. Ten years ago, these kind of ideas are what sold the entire gaming systems, not a tiny side-note tucked away for you to play while you wait for Gears of War 2 to get a new Map Pack.

Maybe big name companies haven’t been exercising their imagination enough. They need to do some mental push-ups, and remember the way developers used to think in the old days. The way some Indie developers think today. I know! Let’s ask a real-life innovative thinker! Braid is the best example, so Jonathan Blow seems the obvious choice for this question… so let’s ask him. How did you first come up with the idea of Braid, Mr. Blow?

“As the science of physics has progressed over the last century, we’ve discovered things about the nature of reality that seem very strange. They seem incompatible with our day-to-day experience as human beings. The original idea was to make a game that explores some of these concepts (the “arrow of time” not existing, or being bidirectional; parallel realities; time being a spatial dimension) on a macroscopic scale — to ask the question of what life would be like if these effects occurred in a way that we could experience them every day. That’s not quite how the game turned out, ultimately, but the idea is still in there.”

See SEGA! Jonathan Blow came up with this idea for one of the most successful XBLA game all by himself, and you’re telling me you can’t make a 3D Sonic game not suck out loud? To me it almost feels as if we completely changed the face of gaming overnight when the newest consoles stopped bragging about the apparent number of ‘bits’ it had to offer. I personally don’t see the divide between ‘Retro’ and ‘Next-Gen’, because it’s so subjective that it should be impossible to label; it has been a constant flow of technological advancement. Yet in the games we play on said consoles I certainly do see the divide, they flip-flopped from bright colourful wonderlands (remember seeing colour in games? I loved colour!) to gritty brown and grey blood soaked war-zones out of nowhere.

I asked Jonathan about his views on style and colour:  “From the beginning I knew that I wanted the game to be painterly in style, to feel hand-drawn and have a strong and obvious human element. I didn’t know how good the game would actually look. Eventually, after David Hellman started working on the game, it came along very well, and it became clear that in the visuals we could go well beyond what I would have expected. So the end result is well beyond what I had hoped for at the beginning.”

What do all the Indie developers make of this though? Are they happy to have it all hinging on them to come up with the next big thing, making it all the sweeter when it pays off and gives them the edge? Or would they want to see more of it in the mainstream, and really get the budget to sink their claws into the idea? It seemed Jonathan would have been reticent to have a mainstream partner for the production of Braid. “Probably not, because Braid is a very personal game design-wise. Collaborating with someone else on ideas for levels, and things like that, probably wouldn’t have worked unless it was an unusually strong or inspired collaboration. Maybe that will happen in the future, but Braid was not the game for that to happen with.” So if I were to say that while big AAA titles, while still having smaller visions of innovation, avoid almost any and all risks in the process, would you agree that all too often we’re seeing this tragic pattern of safety and familiarity in retail games? “Absolutely. This is obvious to anyone who looks at the situation.”

Phew – at least I’m not alone. As best I can surmise, this divide didn’t happen until at least the mid-90s. That may sound like a controversial statement with the Nintendo 64 not breaking onto the scene until ’97, but my conclusion is that I have to erase all of Nintendo from the Super NES onwards from this investigation completely. “BUT WHY?!” I can hear the Nintendo fans cry from behind their Wii Fit boards. It’s simple, though they did release some of the most fantastic, colourful, and enjoyable games of all time from the N64 until the present day, every single one had already been tried and tested on at least one previous generation of console, if not more (excluding Smash Brothers, which was more of a mash-up than a brand new tune).

Since the pattern has continued until this day with the Wii releasing 10 Mario games a year and doing very little to innovate the franchise other than the setting, and making you waggle a stick shaped remote instead of a joystick. I believe can justify saying Nintendo is not the pioneer of risk taking with new ideas (at least in terms of games). I will however award a big gold sticker and my own personal thumbs up to Nintendo for sticking to its guns all these years, and making themselves the most profitable gaming company of our time. If they were to release a new IP every so often for an unreleased entity and put as much effort behind it as they threw towards Mario Galaxy, they may well have stopped this article from ever being written. Sadly, no dice. Maybe Jonathan could spill some extra information about what his upcoming game ‘The Witness’ could be bringing to the table to inspire them? “I’m not saying anything specific about this game right now. Even though it’s been in development for a while, substantial changes could still be made in what the game is and how it plays.”

Sorry everyone, I gave it my best and subtlest shot. With Nintendo now firmly out of the running, as their last plunge into the deep abyss of story was back in 1992 with the SNES, I’m to jump to the first 64-bit console. No, not the Nintendo 64 or Playstation 1, the Atari Jaguar. It wasn’t a huge success, but with a title called “Attack of the Mutant Penguins” (a game where you control a penguin who uses gremlins to collect letters to spell out weapons which you use to kill your evil arch enemy – penguins with hats) I cannot begrudge the system for refusing to try something new. Given there was only about fifty games poured out to the public, it should be considered a minor miracle Atari had the guts to do anything that stuck with the safe and familiar titles. With Tempest 2000’s brilliant ingenuity and addictive soundtrack, coupled with Mutant Penguins, the last of the so-called retro consoles served us well to the end. Rest well now old friend.

This leads me to one extremely painful conclusion. Sony. Why painful? Because the Playstation 1, was and always will be my first and most adored console of all time. However, as Abraham was told to sacrifice his only son, so must I to my beloved. IT WAS YOU SONY! You caused this monopoly of seriousness in the market. You brought us the first realistic sports, racing, and flight simulation games. The first action adventure, strategy, and FPSs based on the real world. Sure you tried to hide it all behind a clingfilm thick layer of veneer by throwing in some giant ants, or the occasional platformer with an overly cute purple dragon, but it was too late! They soon all faded where the realism and overly serious storylines ploughed on. It breaks my heart Sony, it truly does.

I can only hope this investigation may warrant some changes. While many games have evolved beyond what they were ever destined to be, I hope the mainstream soon remembers its roots, and at least considers dipping its toe back into the LSD waters of madness where gaming originated.

So as Jeremy Paxman would say: it’s goodnight from me, goodnight from all the games and companies mentioned, and goodnight from Jonathan Blow with my personal thanks for his participation (and for Braid, it was freakin’ awesome).

“Thanks; I’m glad you liked it!”