With the recent backlash that arose from Jim Sterling’s article on why “indie games don’t have to act like indie games”, one point of contention came up repeatedly: can games be art? The game that Sterling primarily criticized was The Path, a game that promises players "an atmospheric experience of exploration, discovery, and introspection through a unique form of gameplay". The gameplay mechanics are as follows: stick to the path to grandmother's house and have your expectations "subverted" or disobey your instructions and wander through a forest with various things for you to do. Either way, you are wasting your time.
"Go to Grandmother's house and stay on the path." That's certainly straightforward.
The reason for why The Path is a waste of time is that it breaks one fundamental game philosophy: it wastes your time. Regardless of the quality of the The Path, as long as some degree of interaction is present, I would call it a game. The Path qualifies in an arcane sense, as your only controls are to walk and turn. However, I personally find that two more qualities must be present for a game to be good: it must respect you as a human being and it must be compelling. The Path has neither of these qualities. Some may argue that The Path is brilliant and a true masterpiece of the gaming medium. I don't care. The Path could be the magnum opus of humanity and I would be indifferent simply because it fails to be a good game, something that should be its most important goal.
The first insult that The Path makes lies in the controls: you are given either a long path or a large forest to walk through, and your only option is to walk. This could lead to either three minutes of listening to an obnoxious song, or more than an hour trying to navigate a bastion of bullshit. This plays into the second insult: the game does not respect your time. The developer, Tales of Tales disrespects the player by assuming, wrongfully so, that the player has free time to spare. Furthermore, should you decide to walk the path, you are rewarded with the following image:
Oh my! My expectations have been subverted! Failure is the ultimate reward for wasting my time!
Please excuse my moon language, but what the fuck is this? How does "You know where grandmother lives," relate to the original goal? During the course of the three-minute trek, you have to endure an awful song and crappy flower graphics in your periphery. How does this relate to you going to grandmother's house, crawling into her bed, and making your grandmother wake up? The game developers obviously anticipated some players following the path as told, so why couldn't they make the "bad" ending a self-contained story. Instead of presenting me with a story that is unsatisfying because the game tells me a better ending exists, the ending is unsatisfying because it isn't actually an ending and the game mocks me condescendingly for spending time with it and for not understanding its important point. Masking your game's quality with a pretense of an important message does not justify it, even more so when the message itself is disingenuous. However, not all indie games fall into these trappings, and that's where Iji comes in.
My savior
Iji, developed by Daniel Remar, does not look or act like a game affected by the "indie" movement, but it is still an indie game in that it is both independently made and distributed. It does not act different for the sake of acting different, and it only benefits from that. In fact, I would so far as to say that Iji succeeds at what The Path ultimately failed to do: it is actually a good game. Iji can subvert your expectations: you can either play the game as a straightforward 2-D action game, or you can play differently, such as playing through the game without killing a single enemy. The game never forces you to make one decision because the other option penalizes you. Sure, you are rewarded for playing within restrictions, but the game doesn't punish you for playing otherwise, presenting a method through which a message can conveyed without limiting freedom of the player. Furthermore, the game respects you by actually giving you a sense of progression in exchange for your time investment. This allows Iji to say more, despite having less to say.
Iji actually has depth. The game is well-constructed, and it is obviously the product of legitimate thoughtfulness. Sure the graphics are inferior, but if you're playing a game for realistic visuals, then you should play a game like Red Rover...outside. What ultimately matters is the mechanics and the way the game plays; if you're using games purely as a catalyst to convey an ill-conceived message at the expense of making the game compelling, then you have failed at being a game developer. Games don't even need to be fun; a game that trivializes the holocaust for amusement would be entirely tasteless. What matters above all is that a game can actually grab an audience and keep it interested. The Path isn't entirely bad, but the messages that are conveyed are poorly delivered, and the game isn't good a being a game. If it stated that it was purely an interactive experience and not a game, I wouldn't have nearly as much criticism as I do now. However, The Path unfortunately is a game and must be treated like one.
P.S. By the way, Iji is free and The Path is $10.00.
P.P.S. If you want to waste your time, try re-reading this post while listening to the song I was complaining about.
Of course, if you want something truly though-provoking, try the No More Heroes games. Matt Razak over at Destructoid has written several pieces explaining the metaphors littering the games:
No More Heroes 1:
http://www.destructoid.com/what-no-more-heroes-really-means-73998.phtml
No More Heroes 2:
http://www.destructoid.com/what-nmh-2-desperate-struggle-really-means-part-1-163503.phtml
http://www.destructoid.com/what-nmh-2-desperate-struggle-really-means-part-2-163596.phtml
Posted by: Narmalade | 02/13/2010 at 08:45 PM