Preface This article was originally written immediately upon my returning from E3 in May of 1997. This seems to be a fairly popular topics for designer/developers to "whine" about, yet it's also far and away the most popular/responded-to column of mine (as originally printed in Inside Mac Games. Going to the show was on the one hand uplifting: I picked up a copy of the latest Next Generation which had a very inspirational interview with Sid Meier in it, as well as a copy of Game Developer which contained a nifty Chris Crawford column, both of which covered similar ground to this column. On the other hand, the show was hideously depressing as I wandered the fabulously-expensive booths (I heard that Sony's show expenses were $4 million) and looked at the awful, license-driven, derivative, poorly-conceived games that were everywhere. Of course, wandering around E3 looking for innovative, break-through games is like going to the multi-plex in the middle of summer and wondering where all the good movies are. I'm just ever-so-slightly less cynical now than I was then, but I think the concerns voiced in this column are still worth worrying about. We're still just... Playing for the Fanboys My recent trip to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (often known simply as E3) in Atlanta did nothing to assuage my fears about the state of computer gaming today, and the dangerous path we as an industry are currently headed down. To avoid confusion, I'm not talking about Macintosh gaming here, but gaming in general. In fact, the phenomena I'm intent on discussing happens probably slightly less on the Mac, but its effects can be seen nonetheless. This column is going to discuss a topic a lot of you probably don't want to hear, a theory which may be something you'd rather dismiss as just so many paranoid delusions. But, dag nabbit, it needs to be said. And said again and again, until people realize the dangerous path we tread, which may lead to profitability in the short term, but will lead to industry recession - and an overall stifling of creativity and diversity - in the long term. I call the phenomenon "Playing for the Fanboys." Portrait of the Fanboy as a Young Man What's a fanboy, you ask? In all likelihood, you, noble reader, are a fanboy. I personally am a fanboy. Being a fanboy is nothing to be ashamed of. A fanboy is someone who is a fan of a particular entertainment medium to almost the point of obsession. In my case, I'm a fanboy of four artistic media: movies, heavy metal music, comic books, and, that's right, computer games. Fanboys spend a lot of time following their artistic medium of choice, and often their appreciation of what has already come and gone in their favorite genre leads them to expect something, usually in no small degree self-referential, about future releases. And there's nothing inherently wrong with the games that fanboys like. The problem comes when a given industry - be it in the business of making films, music, sequential art, or interactive entertainment - devotes all its time to making games for these fanboys, all but ignoring any sort of a broader, society-wide audience. It's then that I start worrying. What's so Comical about a Comic Book? One need only look so far as the comic book industry - a sort of distant, illegitimate, five times removed cousin to ours - to see the disastrous results of making entertainment only for the fanboys. That industry, which in America first found profitability in the 1930s through telling stories about spandex clad super-heroes, decided that the easiest way to make more money in the short term was to exploit the super-hero genre for all it was worth. Today the comic book industry - after running the whole super-hero idea through endless hoops for the last sixty years - is stuck in a financial slump where many of its readers have abandoned it, having seen the only options the major publishers offer are super-hero books on top of other super-hero books. Again, there's nothing wrong with super-heroes, but there's something very wrong when that's all you've got. So people walk into comic book stores and they see super-hero books, and unless they're the fanboys to whom super-heroes appeal, they walk out immediately. Do they walk out because comic books are an inherently limited medium? Hardly. Belgium is proud to sight as its primary export Hergé's brilliant TinTin comics, something even my "I hate comics" mother likes and encouraged me to read as a child. In Japan you're as likely to see adults on the subway reading a comic book as a prose book. Even here in the States, we get break-out titles like Art Spiegelman's Maus or Edward Gorey's work (collected in the wonderful Amphigorey series), but elitists spend all their time denying these are comic books (just as our own elitists say Myst-a-like #107 is "not just a game!"), and the comic industry continues to deceive itself into thinking the way out of the financial slump is to make more super-hero tales. Poor Joe Computer Owner What happens when most non-fanboys approach a computer game? Much the same thing. Joe Computer Owner walks in and sees the options ranging from "abstract puzzle game" to "kill everything that moves" and says "Oh, that's too bad," leaving the store straight away. Is the medium limited? Hardly. It's the message we're delivering that will keep our art form on the fringes of the entertainment world, possibly forever if we're not careful. But this isn't the only way we keep people away. When stories happen to actually be included with the games, what sort of story are most computer games set in? Well, let's see, we've got science fiction. Hm. And fantasy, definitely got fantasy. And then there's... Aside from some exceptions which prove the rule (such as Prince of Persia, Civilization, ultra-complex war games, ultra-complex flight simulators, and sports games) we are stuck with genres which appeal to mainly, well, fanboys. Not to say that either of these mediums is inherently bad or inferior, but they're just not subject matter which appeal to Joe Consumer. Take a look at the New York Times Bestseller list, or even the top ten movies, where the closest thing to fantasy or science fiction you'll find is the SF-lite found in Independence Day or Jurassic Park. And these films aren't even as hard SF as Duke Nukem; Independence Day and Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum, in both cases a mostly believable character from today's world, and the stories those movies tell use the SF as more a backdrop than as a raison d'être. To be fair, as a side bar, there is a whole bunch of games which do appeal to Joe Computer Owner: sports games and flight simulators, though often the latter of these two is too complex for someone who hasn't already played ten other flight simulators to really "get into." But neither of these are story-telling computer games but rather "pure" simulations, and hence have been omitted from my argument. Sports games appeal to a more mainstream audience, and are to be commended for what they've accomplished. I know a lot of people who play sports games and only sports games, usually people who are, you guessed it, sports fanboys. Still, if story-telling games took the time to appeal to a broad-section of the population the way sports games have, I'd be a happy camper. How Many Keys Must a Man Press? How else do game designers play for the fanboys? Another troubling way is by making our games so complex and self-referential that they're all but unplayable by novice players. Remember those reality-based war games I mentioned previously? If you're not really really into it - as fanboys are - just try figuring out one of those things (with the possible happy exception of Panzer General and its offspring). Similarly, what happens when someone is presented with a complex game like Quake for the first time? When they haven't played Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, or any of the other games that the id Software all but assumes you've played already? Can a novice really be expected to figure out the thirty or so keys one needs to know to play Quake? Of course novices do "figure out" games like Quake, but I would argue most of these novices are young kids eager to figure out what their older sibling is playing. I'm more concerned about adults, such as my 49 year old brother. He's intrigued by computer games, and so I gave him Bungie's Pathways into Darkness for Christmas some years ago. Initially, he was interested in what the game offered, but found himself unable to master the controls and quickly game up. He still enjoys chess simulations, but may never see what else computer games have to offer. And the industry's obsession with sequels, far worse than the US film
industry's, is another way we play to the fanboys. Indeed, at an
"Ask the Publishers" developer conference I attended at E3, we were told
by three of the largest publishers that one of the primary aspects they
look for in game proposals they see is whether, if successful, the product's
profitability can be continued via sequels. As the publishers all
pointed out, whereas in the film business sequels are usually a 25% drop
off in profitability from their predecessors, video games usually see a
25% increase in profitability. Some might point out that such a 25%
increase must correlate to a 25% expansion of the market, but I'd argue
that, to the contrary, the extra 25% are still fanboys, just ones who had
heard their friends ranting about the coolness of the first game, and hence
were compelled to buy the "new and improved" sequel. I'd further
argue that non-fanboys are even less likely to purchase sequels to computer
games than they are to buy original ones, fearing a sequel would leave
them in the dark, just as someone who never saw The Godfather Part I would
really be confused by the goings-on in Part II.
But this is all so much 3D shooter calling the fighting game violent (or pot calling the kettle black, for any non-fanboys who may be reading): my most recent game, Damage Incorporated, is pretty much the extreme of a fanboy product. Despite my attempts to put a somewhat compelling, non-SF storyline in the game, and even though I made a level where you're not supposed to kill the enemies you encounter, still the game ends up being, for all intents and purposes, a death-permeated, blood-soaked, kill-em-all. The sad thing is that if I'd told the right marketing people that, at its core, D.I. was a "Death-Permeated, Blood-Soaked, Kill-Em-All!!!" they'd have been more than happy to use that fact to promote the game, a sure fire way to get fanboys to buy it. D.I. is further guilty of featuring a huge set of keys to remember, bigger than Quake's by at least 15, further making the game obtuse and all but unplayable by non-fanboys. In Damage Incorporated I made a game that I, as a fanboy, enjoy very much, and the fan letters I've received show that a lot of other people seem to like it a whole bunch as well. But now, in retrospect, I realize that someone who hasn't played many computer games would really be somewhat lost trying Damage Incorporated, between the ridiculously violent (and in turn somewhat mindless) content, and the virtual assumption that the user has played one of the Marathon games already. That's the only way players have a chance of understanding that not only does every weapon have multiple triggers, but it also has multiple ammunition types. Indeed, I have gotten nary a fan letter saying "Damage Incorporated is the first game I ever got and I just love it to pieces!" Nay, instead, nearly every letter I get says "This is the best Death Permeated, Blood-Soaked, Kill-Em-All since Let God Sort 'Em Out Part VIII!" Again the fault here is in my game, not in the audience it appeals to; it falls squarely on my shoulders to, in the future, create something with a wider potential appeal. In my defense, however, a small developer just starting out in the world, such as myself, can't fiscally afford to take chances on games which may appeal to a wider audience, or, due to their uniqueness and experimental nature, may flop hideously. More established developers, however, with strong selling titles to their credit already, really owe it to the long term health of the gaming community to try something new and different out, games which have at least a chance of appealing to someone other that the already established fanboy market. And I don't just mean an experimental technology. I mean an experimental idiom, to make an experimental game. Again, there's nothing wrong with making games fanboys like, but the problem with our industry right now is that's all that's being made. I would certainly be the last to argue that "good" art (whatever that means) must necessarily appeal to a large number of people. But on the other hand, to draw another analogy to the film world, without a world marketplace that enjoys films as a storytelling medium, would deeply personal films such as Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue, White, and Red ever get made at all? Such films certainly won't appeal to everyone but can prove slightly profitable if the right people, who are open to the idea that a film can be just as good as a book, are made aware of its existence. Sadly, I certainly don't see Red's artistic or spiritual equivalent being created in our current, constricted, fanboy-driven computer game world. But I certainly haven't given up hope for the future.
This column was originally printed in Inside
Mac Games.
|