Features
Gaming for grown-ups
Andy Robertson
Violent and addictive shoot-em-ups, or a new art form
with power to take us deeper into our life narrative? Self
confessed convert Andy Robertson fires up his
video games console and goes in search of grown-up answers.
I've been playing Bioshock Infinite all
night again. Booker DeWitt's instincts to shoot his way out of
trouble as he misguidedly tries to rescue Elizabeth have merged
with my own. That he is as lost as her is obvious from my sofa, but
in the game he is slow to realise.
But then everything is made clear. His powers and
marksmanship are suddenly impotent as Elizabeth's childhood
guardian drowns before our eyes. It's the abused girl rather than
the hero who responds here, whispering comfort and transforming the
empty ending into something meaningful.
Unable to push past the emotion of that moment I sit
silent for a few minutes before saving the game and heading to bed
with these images swimming through my head. The next morning I'm
still haunted, not by the violence and shooting of the night
before, but by Elizabeth's ability to be present in the face of
death. The kids come down for breakfast and in I realise the reason
for last night's tears: my desire, in spite of whatever might
transpire between us in years to come, to be as present as
Elizabeth was in their best and worst moments.
WHAT WAS IT?
We don't really know what video games are, beyond our
suspicions of them being an ill-advised love-child of popular
entertainment and technology. While many look to justify the video
game's presence in wider culture through educational, sociological,
or therapeutic qualities we are in fact better served by a long
hard look at how they function in the lives of the people who play
them.
Despite writing about games for many years, I only
recently succumbed to the wiles of big narrative-driven console
experiences. They used to scare me, although I'm not completely
sure why that was. Being infected by their violence and
questionable body image maybe, or having reoccurring nightmares of
their horrific scenarios perhaps?
Carefully and selectively at first I picked my way
through particular experiences, Alan Wake, Limbo
on the Xbox 360 and the Uncharted series on PlayStation 3.
The shooting-people-in-the-head was still a problem, but at the
same time I discovered other things were happening in these games,
and in me, as I played them. They became a place to discover new
perspectives on the world and ruminate on my old ways of seeing.
Although I'm not sure I should admit it, they became the place I
found God. Much more than on a Sunday morning, this unspoken inner
emotional journey with pixels and outward ritual of tapping plastic
buttons was my secret encounter with the divine.
ABOUT SOMETHING
My journey with games has been fed by my instinct to
interpret rather than just play them. This has transformed what
they mean to me, from entertainment to experiences that are about
something.
This may sound a little odd if video games bring to
mind violence, addiction, lethargy and obesity. Even if you have a
more positive view of games the idea that they mean something
beyond themselves and their entertaining quality is likely to be a
new one.
My video game reviews in Third Way have
aimed to describe this process as I've looked hard at recent games
for some greater (or lesser) purpose. Admittedly I'm cherry picking
console games with big stories here, but the more I look the more I
find meaning above and beyond excitement and adrenaline.
LEGITIMATE CONCERNS
Before we get to this though, there
are some legitimate concerns. The video game industry is worth
billions and with half our homes having a games console, children
aged 12-15 are averaging 11 hours game playing a week. Although not
clinically addictive many reports blame an increase in this screen
time for childhood obesity and obsessive behaviour.
Perhaps a bigger concern is video game violence and
how, in an era of attack drones, this rewires what we think of
killing, desensitising players to the realities of war. It's not
just seeing heads explode at the touch of your trigger finger, but
the choices we are invited to make. It's not just that we can
choose which particular sex act we want from a prostitute in
Grand Theft Auto, but that we then decide whether to pay
her or bludgeon her to death.
The big-story console genre that started with games
about survival through killing rarely finds the maturity to escape
these bounds. One way or another the shooting continues. So on the
surface, trying to find meaning in games like these seems like a
category mistake, looking for life lessons in a Big Mac.
DEPTH EXPERIENCE
Faced with what appears to be
nothing more than a celebration of violence, it is no surprise that
video games are rarely considered in depth, or interpreted in terms
of meaning. Imagine then my surprise as these same games
(Bioshock Infinite, Uncharted 3, Alan Wake and
Limbo to name a few) have become treasured experiences for
me with as much meaning as any book or film.
I've never been to the Pacific Northwest, but since
playing Alan Wake it's a place on the planet that gives me
chills just hearing the name. Running scared through the dark
wooded mountains of that game, pursued by the 'Taken' villagers,
created a deep connection with the landscape. The mountains became
a blanket to wrap round myself and spoke of hope and life amid the
night's temporary terrors.1
As I mentioned I usually steer clear of horror
stories, but Limbo's intriguing world and hypnotic
soundscape got me past my usual hang ups. It led me to a moment
unique in all my media consumption where darkness was transformed
into a hopeful place not by escaping to the night but through the
presence of another person like me.2
If, to quote Rob Bell's 2010 definition of good news,
'Every little bit of hope you stumble across is real'3, games have
become both very real and very hopeful for me.
DARK STORIES
It is a hope unlocked by
interpreting the things that scare me in video games rather than
running from them. I know that some will protest that this kind of
engagement is misguided and not worth the risk, particularly when
focused on experiences as outwardly violent as these. But this is
unfamiliarity and fear talking rather than the resources of faith.
We are better served by leaning on this long practice of dealing
wisely with dark problematic stories.
The violence in the Bible may seem far removed from a
graphic video game, but intimately shares the need to be discarded
or interpreted. This is where my gaming and faith collide. I find
myself equipped to discern and interpret games not least from a
history of dealing (and failing to deal) with difficult books of
scripture. We merrily use the flood and conquest narratives in
Sunday school, surely these skills also mean we can decipher and
differentiate Call of Duty from Bioshock?
As well as keeping children safe from inappropriate
games, perhaps we should be connecting them with experiences that
have real ongoing value. Games like Flower, Let's Catch
and Journey create a context in which to learn how to
process these experiences while also raising questions about life.
Like difficult passages of the Bible, games can help us avoid
inoculating our families from any talk of loss or danger or
fear.
ENGAGING KIDS
I tried this with a group of
12-year-olds at Greenbelt a few years ago. We played Flower
together, and as we played we talked about who was the hero and the
villain, what was wrong and what we needed to do to fix it. By the
end of the session they had not only gained some skills in how to
understand a video game but had also instinctively taken ownership
of the narrative, interpreting for themselves what it might mean.
Although for some the instinct to still make the answer 'Jesus'
lingered on, they were now doing this in a much more imaginative
way.
Engaging with games in this way reveals, much like a
close reading of the Hebrew scriptures, that there is more going on
than death and destruction, genocide and regime change. Some games
may simply be gratuitous in their use of killing, but others employ
it intelligently.
This can mean that the shooting is used to
emotionally underline the story in a way that non-violence
wouldn't. Like in films like No Country for Old Men, game
violence can be intertwined with meaning. Or it can be used to
shock or repulse in an intentional way that has consequences in the
game world and player's experience. We serve our communities and
young people best by being able to direct them towards the
meaningful experiences rather tarring all with the same brush.
GUNS & RELATIONSHIPS
While video game financing and
publishing still seem reluctant to escape the lucrative bounds of
the shooting genre, that doesn't eclipse the intentional humanity
here. Ken Levine, talking about his recent and super-violent game
Bioshock Infinite4 at a BAFTA Q&A session pinned his
success on the relationships in the game rather than the shooting.
'How I'm going to judge my personal success is: Will you feel any
sense of a relationship? We are really good at interacting with
guns, but can you get to a place where you are interacting with
people?'5
Hollywood also hasn't been slow in recognising the
potential for storytelling. Many serious writers are now looking at
video games as a legitimate art form. Even a cursory browse through
IMDB throws up video game writing, acting and directing duties for
names usually associated with movies. Alex Garland, first known for
his best-selling novel The Beach, subsequently became a
screenwriter (Sunshine, Never Let me Go) and more recently
co-wrote the video game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe both star in Beyond
Two Souls and these actors are involved as intimately in the
game creation process as they would be in a film. Game directors
are looking for that same emotional delivery from them, and are
willing to pay and push to get the best performances they can.6
Game developers too (like Ubisoft's narrative team,
codenamed Alice) are investing not just in faster technology,
better graphics or cleverer programmers but in the narrative arts.
Talent scouts, motion capture masters, research and development
engineers, sound mixers and narrative guides are now an integral
and closely guarded resource of the video game industry.
SHARING STORIES
The double-realisation that video
games are not interactive films but an entirely new way to share
stories in the broadest sense of that word - and that many games
intentionally aim to be meaningful experiences - paints them in a
new light.
Unfortunately you can't tell beforehand (with any
certainty) which games escape being purely gratuitous. So while I
used to avoid any disturbing experiences for the sake of my sanity,
recently I've taken more risks and played more games, violent or
not.
Sometimes this leaves me feeling like I've wasted my
evening on something juvenile and frustrating. Sometimes, I'm
simply disgusted by the violence and have to put the controller
down and walk away. Sometimes, however, I encounter a moment of
quiet revelation that paints life in a new light, or I come away
feeling challenged about my priorities, or I discover something
about myself that I once knew but that had faded over the
years.
Having been encouraged into this questionable
territory by my faith, I have also benefited from my gaming peers'
insights into how to make sense of the experiences I find. In
particular, Tadhg Kelly on what games are and Tom Bissell on why
games matter.
'Games are an art form' Kelly explains 'but that art
may not be what you think it is.' Being used to interpreting books
and films hinders as much as it helps here. '[Video games] convey
the feeling of a story, glimpses of key moments,
develop a theme and a metaphor. Like impressionism compared to
formal painting, they hint rather than show or tell.' (Emphasis
mine.)7
Playing a game is to experience a world in motion
rather than the snapshot of a book or journey of a film. Although a
novel may also create the sense of overhearing a story, the whole
novel is doing story work. A game gives you this sense of
overhearing because it spends time working at other (interactive)
elements. The story is experienced in a haphazard way with a real
potential to miss things or linger on minor inconsequential matters
- not dissimilar to how we experience life.
DOUBLE VISION
In fact, as Bissell describes, there are often two
stories at work in a game, the overarching narrative driven forward
in scripted dialogue and the interactive story driven forward by
the choices of the player. Although a game's overarching narrative
can make it seem like a book or film, its experienced whole needs
very different interpretation. The game's meaning is a combination
of the world in motion, my actions in it and the response of other
characters.
Our instincts are right; killing in a video game is
very different to killing in a book or film. 'When I read a novel'
writes Bissell, 'I am allowing my mind to be occupied by a
colonizer of uncertain intent.' We give ourselves over in an almost
trance-like state to films and books that perform their stories
on us without asking or waiting for consent.
For Bissell playing a video game is not like this
because 'the surrender is always partial'.8 Games, by their nature,
are more easygoing and gentler on their subjects than books or
films, which dominate and direct our thoughts. Their
interactive quality means that ideas and themes are interrupted by
moments that break the 'suspense of disbelief'. They offer space
for our own response and opinion, they invite us to interpret. This
means games, as much if not more than books and films, help us see
ourselves more clearly, particularly around subjects we don't face
elsewhere.
OPEN & PLAYFUL
This is how religious texts function in healthy
traditions, offering safe spaces where cultural taboos and
dangerous or frightening topics can be interpreted (often
differently) by each subsequent generation. Games have an advantage
in that their interactive nature foregrounds the link between the
player's interpretation and any particular meaning gained. Unlike
books that are prone to proof texting, burying interpretation under
a weight of what the majority say about a passage, games keep the
conversation open and playful.
However, unlike other media, big-story console games
are singularly lacking in any ongoing or sustained critique that
looks to interpret and discuss what they mean or might be about.
It's no great surprise when you consider the violent first
impression of many of these experiences, something else they share
with how religious texts are perceived in popular culture.
Let me be clear, I don't want these games to stay as
they are. I still look away during certain head-grinding moments of
Bioshock Infinite, or wish I had looked away when I
shot-gunned the contents of an enemy's head all over the screen in
The Last of Us.
The day one of these games lays down arms mid-stream
in a sustained and thoughtful way will be a very good day not only
for video games but for mankind. But until that day, I want to be
knee deep in this growing tradition of story making that is
becoming an ever bigger part of the air we breathe.
EMERGING MEANING
As Tom Bissell says in his author's notes to
Extra Lives: Why Videogames Matter, 'It may be years
before anyone arrives at a true understanding of what games are,
what they have done to popular entertainment, and how they have
shaped the expectations of their many and increasingly divergent
audiences.'9 I want to be part of the grass roots interpretive work
that starts putting these pieces together, to understand how they
function in our lives sooner rather than later.
Like any tradition in the making, there are no
certainties about where it will lead, to health and hope or anger
and violence. Equally though, traditions develop in positive
directions through individuals and communities willing to honestly
engage with the realities of their texts and interpret, rather than
discard, them.
Without this process and these people, there is no
Bible and no tradition. Without this we run the risk of letting
games become as synonymous with violence as graphic novels are with
superheroes. Of course, that doesn't sound like a huge loss because
we haven't been confronted with what we're missing out on.
Even just peeling back a few corners we can see there
is plenty to lose. Video games have the potential to be a
completely new way to share hope and commiserate loss. They offer
cutting-edge, ground-breaking experiences that intimately connect
meaning with actions. Playing a video game gives us privileged
access to new imaginative ways to tell our human story. They create
new possibilities, introduce undreamed-of constructions and equip
us to cope with the challenge of a complex, contested and
provisional existence.
Yes they are violent, but as with the Bible and God
there is clear justified hope that they will one day escape these
questionable tendencies. It's time to start getting ready for when
they do.
NOTES
1 Alan Wake (Xbox 360) Reviewed in Third Way
Dec 2012
2 Limbo (Xbox 360, PS3, PC/Mac) Reviewed in
Third Way June 2012
3 http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/media/talks/14467-rob-bell/
4 Bioshock Infinite (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
Reviewed in Third Way June 2013
5 Ken Levine filmed at a BAFTA Q&A www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Efv9Mgwk8SU
6 Ken Levine directs Courtnee Draper's
emotional moment in Bioshock Infinte https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efv9Mgwk8SU#t=29m11s
7 Storytsense defined by Tadgh Kelly http://www.whatgamesare.com/storysense.html
8 Bissell, T: Extra Lives: Why Video Games
Matter (Vintage Books, 2011)
9 ibid.