Today I'm gonna talk about something particularly close to my heart; video games, or more specifically, old video games. The idea for this blog was sparked when fellow editor Eric Strege took me out to hang out with a Cal Poly English dept Alumni for a rousing game of video game playing. What the night ended up being was a series of frustrating turn changes followed by a four hour conversation about "the good old days" of video gaming and an unconscious Eric.
Unlike my peers here at A Few Lines, I actually did not read much as a kid. In fact, I didn't really read for pleasure until college. What I did do, however, was play a very wide variety of text heavy games. Much of what I learned about narrative structure, themes, and subtle dialogue conventions was actually picked up through playing RPGs (Role Playing Games) like the Final Fantasy series. Before the advent of such visually rich games computer game developers offered us the genre of "text adventures" where the player was met with a black screen with a few lines of text on it that read something like "You are standing in a room" to which you would respond "look around" and the game would enlighten you by saying something like "you see a door and a dresser." Needless to say, the door is always locked. This style of gaming was actually incredibly difficult because the object of the game was not always clear and often times the actions that you wanted to take would not compute and sometimes just required an awkward rephrase. I offered this little bit of information mostly for a laugh but also to point out that text heavy video games don't always help with literacy, in fact, in this case the the player often got lost in a maze of vague and confusing five word statements.
My beloved RPGs, however, played more like an interactive novel. The main character of the story is guided along by narrative prompts and plot motivations. Of course, like books, some games really don't develop any sort of literary knowledge because the object of the game is simply kill, kill, kill and the story is only the end to justify that means. I'm simply trying to argue that video games are a medium of literacy when put in the right hands. I noticed when I first started playing these games that reading the massive amount of dialogue was a bit of an arduous task; however, after a bit of experience with the genre, I realized that I was reading the dialogue faster than the game would present it to me (prompting me to mash the "next" button). Onlookers would often ask me to "stop skipping the talking" to which I would have to reply "I'm not." So playing such games greatly increased my reading speed and gave me the ability to retain information relevant to story telling for a prolonged period of time (the average play time of these games is around 50 hours). Many literary themes can also be found within these narratives (because, well, it's still a narrative) but because I don't feel like dissecting a game as if it was a book right now I'll just offer you with a video link in a bit.
Multimodal literacy is a hot topic right now but the focus has really been comic books. I say peeshaw to them because they have already gained a fair amount of credit in the literary community. Allen Moore, along with many of my other favorite comic book writers, have won many prestigious awards because of their work. Alan Moore's The Watchmen was marked as one of the greatest literary achievements in the last hundred years (Literary, not comic book). The only critically acclaimed video game writer I could refer you to would be Hideo Kojima, who was recognized as one of the most important people of the last century (in some list I read somewhere on his wiki page) for his work on the Metal Gear Solid series. The strange thing is that it was his name on a list of people rather than his work on a list of other works.
But I'm rambling. It seems some people have taken minor notice in video games as a medium of literacy but I'm not so sure they should anymore. Confused? Well, I'm gonna sound like an old man again this week because I think the good ol' days are gone. You see, back in the day game developers relied on such conventions as narrative because they didn't have the technology to do much else. Most of the time a great story was used to keep the gamer invested. These days, however, game developers have fallen pray to the Micheal Bayisms that have ruined the movie industry. Most games now rely on big explosions, "epic" fight scenes, short attention spans, and a lack of a critical eye to get by. Even my beloved Final Fantasy series has fallen to this level. Narratives too have been hindered by the creation of voice acting in games. Voice actors were the obvious choice in order to make games more like movies and to get rid of the "hindrance" of reading, in this way, the player would be "totally immersed" in the game. The problem with this is that the dialogue was heavily watered down because voice actors could not read the amount of text that was offered in previous games. Even if voice actors were able to read that much, who would really want them to? Imagine a novel that only let you read ten words every 15 seconds. Thoroughly unenjoyable, and that's what listening to cheesy voice acting is like.
So yeah, that was a rant. The fact is that I'm worried. Video games really can be a great means of literacy, and I want future generations to experience the rich world of gaming the way I was able to but it seems that may not be possible. There is hope I suppose but it seems that technology has moved a bit to fast for me this time and created the lost generation of literacy.
So I'll offer you now with a video game critique that offers insight into a certain kind of literacy that can't be found anywhere other than video games. This critique is done by a guy who goes by Egoraptor, his videos are incredibly wacky and random but he also offers the most in depth and insightful critiques into video games I've ever seen. He balances education with comedy, so Chaucer would approve.
So what do you guys think, is gaming irrelevant to literacy now? Has it always been? Is there hope for literacy in video games in the future? Do I need to force my kids to plug in a playstation circa 1998 in order to tear them away from whatever mindless dribble they are playing in the future? Let me know.
Till next time,
Rainamoinen
If you're p'shaw-ing the fact that comic book artists are more respected than they used to be, I'll point out that it's "Alan," not "Allen," Moore.
ReplyDelete;)
Noted and fixed.
ReplyDeleteYou win this time!