NON-GAMES
HAVE VALUE
TOO
ROBIN WILDE
T
he Non-Game. The
Walking Simulator.
Story-Based
Games.
They come in many
names, but they have
one thing in common they’re commonly maligned by the rest of the
industry. It’s a bit of a
running joke in some
quarters - that anything
without at least one onscreen death every 30
seconds has been cobbled together by pretentious art students and is a
good cure for insomnia.
For the sake of not being criticised for things
outside their intention,
I think games like The
Beginner’s Guide need
a new label. The title
of non-game is frustrating as a gamer because these experiences
couldn’t offer the basic
prospect of playing any
sort of game, digital or
otherwise. They suffer
for failing to perform a
duty they never wanted
to perform. These games
aren’t fun; they’re slow,
often gruelling, interactive experiences; and
when done well, look
like the first entries in a
new form of artistic expression.
For example, Dear Esther doesn’t do well any
aspect we expect from
video games. It’s slow,
plodding and with very
little interactivity. Most
of the game consists
of trudging around an
empty island at a snail’s
pace, listening to a man
replay unpleasant memories.
But as a piece of narrative fiction, it works
nicely. We’re free to
wonder why this man is
here and why he doesn’t
simply leave, and the
desire to see this question resolved drives further explanation.
It jars with many
players’ impression of
what a game should
be because it provides
no clear objective or
marked progress. It also
has no real failure state
other than getting lost,
so it has no challenge
as such. But film never
required any input from
the audience other than
having watched prior
instalments, yet remains
very popular.
Also confusing is that
games without an explicit ‘game’ part have
long been welcome
and warmly-considered
in the industry. Lucasarts' adventures in the
1990s were renowned
not for their huge challenge - they, too, had no
possibility of death - but
for their witty writing,
charming
characters
and beautifully realised
worlds.
Perhaps it’s a matter of
time. After all, The Stanley Parable certainly fits
the broad category of
‘non-games’ but is fondly regarded having been
out for a while. It’s been
ingrained into the collective consciousness,
so like an odd-shaped
clock, it’s part of the furniture.
"The abstract,
the symbolic,
has value."
The Beginner’s Guide,
from the same creator,
Davey Wreden, is another great example. The
game frequently uses
gameplay and level design as a means of communication, rather than
methods of reaching a
message placed at the
end of a level.
Regrettably the messages being transmitted
to the player through
these symbols had to
be clarified by a narrator, but that’s because
we aren’t accustomed
to games of a symbolic
nature yet. As gamers
we’ve been weaned
on mostly unambiguous products. We know
who's good and bad,
why they don’t like each
other and what they’ll
do about it.
Video games exist to
make money. That’s not
cynicism, it’s fact - while
artists have long been in
the games industry, they
have never at any point
been responsible for a
majority of big hits, and
it was only because of
gaming’s mass market
appeal, first through
arcades and then consoles, that we are the
size we are.
We’re unaccustomed
to artistic games, which
don’t constantly demand
virtual quarters and offer
quick bursts of action,
because, well, that’s not
what gaming is, dammit.
That seems to the thought
process, and it’s stifling
creativity.
This isn't to say that
‘non-games’
always
have artistic merit, nor
that more traditional
games have none. Platformers, FPSs and RPGs
have told incredible
tales and done stupendous things with game
mechanics.
Similarly,
there are no end of halffinished Game Maker
projects lurking in Early
Access which would fail
high school English.
But the abstract, the
symbolic, has value. If
done well and not mystifying or ambiguous
purely for the sake of
mystification, it draws
you in and encourages
you to evaluate matters.
And even if it is found
to be posturing, at least
you took an active part
in debunking it instead
of sitting there while it all
washed over you. There
is enough vapid escapism to enjoy in the industry already, and it’d be
nice to have more stimulating games to keep us
on our toes.
To a lot of gamers,
less action-heavy games
m ^H