Games Futures ICA - Why You Will Never Find a Hooker with...

Games Futures ICA - Why You Will Never Find a Hooker with...

Why You Will Never Find a Hooker with a Heart of Gold in Grand Theft Auto, and Why We Need To
The Maturity of the Games Industry, and Why It%u2019s Important
By Keith Evans

==Analysis of the Current Game Market==
With the imminent release of the next two seventh generation consoles and the quickening move to high-definition television, graphics in computer games are reaching a summit %u2013 no more can be done to improve the field of graphics under a business strategy that wishes to see a return on invested capital. With Dolby 7.1 HD-Technology, fully orchestrated sound and professional voice actors with crystal clear voices, sound too is at it%u2019s plateau.

But little has actually been done to change the underlying experience within games. Since Spacewar, the industry seems to have a fixation with games that involve shooting another thing on the screen as its driving force %u2013 and has been seeking ever more impressive ways of expressing this with new graphics (to better express the blood), %u201Cimmersive%u201D storylines (to give you a reason for the blood) and more %u201Crealistic%u201D sounds, physics and environments (so you can REALLY appreciate the blood).

From the outside, the industry looks dangerous and immature %u2013 a vast monolith of sports games, ultra-violent murder simulators, child exploiting fads involving innocent looking animals and, worryingly enough, %u201Cjust kids stuff%u201D. The association with video games and youth is something the industry capitalises on. Most games (and their supporting hardware) are directed at young male serious gamers, and deal with themes that young males are traditionally associated with %u2013competitive sports, fast cars, meaningless sex, technical subjects and bloody minded violence.

There seems to be a deep resentment for this with the veterans in the games industry. Chris Crawford in his book On Games Design has a great many outspoken words of wisdom concerning various problem areas of the industry:

%u201CThe games industry is an industry by, for, and of young males. This is great for young males, but if and when the industry decides to grow up and out, it will need a broader talent base%u201D

%u201CThe contrast between the gutless conservatism of games industry executives%u2019 and the considered risk taking of Hollywood executives is striking%u2026 The history of Hollywood glitters with long-shot projects that hit big%u2026 One way or another, Hollywood as an industry is able to generate a steady stream of unorthodox ideas that blossom into new product lines. The game industry has not%u201D

%u201CIndustry insiders protest that they are merely offering the players what they want%u2026 This is self-serving circumlocution%u2026 [The games industry] has selected its own audience, driving away most who do not revel in blood soaked killing. By offering such games, the industry has attracted the kind of audience that demands them %u2013 thereby reinforcing the cycle%u201D

Other renowned names within the field also have issues regarding the content within computer games. In A Theory of Fun, Raph Koster offers his thoughts on the state of the game industry%u2019s maturity:

%u201CThe danger is philistinism. If we continue to regard games as trivial entertainments, then we will regard games that transgress the social norms as obscene%u201D

%u201CWhile we%u2019re bemoaning the maturity of the field, we need not to miss the forest for the trees. Too much sex and violence isn%u2019t the problem. The problem is shallow sex and violence%u2026 We should fix the fact that the average cartoon does a better job at portraying the human condition than our games do%u201D

It isn%u2019t simply the content or %u201Ctrappings%u201D of the game%u2019s abstract mechanics that require revamping in order to salvage the industry. There is a great plea for innovation within the industry, according to Koster:

%u201C[Designers] are hypersensitive to patterns in games. They build up encyclopaedic recollections of games past and present, and they then theoretically use these to make new games. The result has been%u2026 a lot of derivative work. Game designers have instead operated under the more guild like model of apprenticeship. They do what they have seen work%u201D

%u201CThe most creative and fertile game designers working today tend to be the ones who make a point of not focussing too much on other games for inspiration%u201D

And according to Crawford, research into where the field is going is of paramount importance;

%u201CThe games biz seems to have a greater concentration of short-term thinkers than any other industry%u2026 I was unable to locate a single games publisher supporting any kind of long-term research effort%u2026 The get-rich-quick mentality has such a solid hold of the games industry that nobody is thinking of the long term%u201D

The games industry, reaching a zenith of technological marvel is required to enter its spring period, and spend time %u201Cgrowing up%u201D in the minds of many people, lest it reach a new low in terms of morality, or it%u2019s content begins to stagnate. Should either of these events become uncontrollable, all hope for games to be considered a medium on par with cinema and theatre is lost, and all the technological efforts to improve the field will be in vain. Change is called in on many areas, and it is these areas that will be analysed in this essay on the future of the game industry

==An Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences==
A general consensus in the industry is that it needs to do what Film, Theatre and Books did when they started up %u2013 and get organised. Film is most noticeable with the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which every year gets major coverage in the form of one of their award ceremonies %u2013 the Oscars. Even outside the Oscars ceremony, the Academy offers tutelage, grants, and support for up-and-coming directors to further its major goal of %u201Cfostering cooperation among the creative leaders of the motion picture industry for cultural, educational and technical progress%u201D. In this vein, the new Machinima movement (filming using computer game engines) has set up its own online %u201CAcademy%u201D, which remains a melting pot of ideas, support, promotion and tutelage for the fledgling medium.

Support for an %u201CAcademy of Interactive Art and Sciences%u201D, an organisational body to represent the future goals of the games industry, or at least a high-spectacle awards ceremony, has a lot of supporters.

%u201CTo be recognised as an art form, our awards must change to value the artistic merit of computer games, not merely their technological prowess or craft%u201D (Adams and Rollings)

%u201CTo put it bluntly geeks don%u2019t got no glamour. But Hollywood %u2013 now there%u2019s glamour for you! Could you imagine yourself at the %u201CGames Oscars%u201D, emerging from the limousine to the popping of flashbulbs%u2026?%u201D (Crawford)

%u201CThe contrast [between the Games Industry] and the book publishing industry is striking%u2026 Untoward behaviour is quickly reported through the community grapevine; jerks and rogues are shut out. Competition is certainly not lacking%u2026 but they [compete] with a sense of decency and honour that is entirely missing from the Games Industry%u201D (Crawford)

What makes this Academy and unified award concept interesting is that the basis of a formal organisation is not too far a step of the imagination. Two of the most important annual conventions in the Computer Gaming calendar %u2013 %u201CE3%u201D and the %u201CGame Developers Conference%u201D are revered throughout the Industry as hallmark events of the Industry. In addition, the games industry has shown signs of being able to work as a single body before - one of the most stunning examples of this was Europe%u2019s voluntary acceptation of a rating system (PEGI) to appear on games to better advise consumers of their content %u2013 seen on practically all games released after 2003.

Would it be too much of a stretch of the imagination to create an umbrella institution where major games publishers (who bear striking behavioural patterns to the book publishers with their lack of tolerance for rogues) and developers united to push the agenda of gaming in a positive direction? Wouldn%u2019t they be able to use E3 to exhibit their technological and future developments and award technical excellence, while using the GDC as a springboard for ideas and artistic expression, showcasing the games industry%u2019s equivalent of the Oscars? Would it be too much to ask for if a simple membership fee to this guild of Interactive Artists allowed grant allocations to support fledgling studios, or research programs to better investigate unorthodox, new avenues of player enjoyment and new markets to exploit? And wouldn%u2019t this institution, collecting some of the greatest minds, professionals, spin-doctors and people persons in the industry allow the whole of gaming to put on a media friendly face, and express games as the art form they claim to wish to be?

==The Fall and Rise of Independent Games==
Barriers to entry are expected in all industries. Creating and Marketing a better operating system than Microsoft Windows, for instance, is practically impossible thanks to the market%u2019s acceptance of Windows as the dominant platform.

The Games Industry has numerous barriers to entry for new content, but for the creative developer, none is so feared as the All-Seeing-Eye that controls their salary, their reputation, and at various points throughout the game production process their very lives %u2013 The Publisher.

Crawford has a great deal of anecdotes related to publishers and the glass ceiling between those making the game (the developers) and those in charge of making sure that it is a success (the publishers, and the upper management of the development studio in some cases). In On Games Design he discusses the four %u201Cdinosaurs%u201D that can rip a game apart %u2013 the developer%u2019s Inner Tyrannosaurus (who should take every opportunity to tear his own creation apart until only a pure creative concept remains) is the only one that the developer has any control over. The three others are comically named Executivasaurus Marketensis (which demands that games be just like last year%u2019s but different while ripping it apart), Executivasaurus Financialis (which goes for the jugular, demanding top of the line technology for bargain basement prices) and the Executivasaurus Presidentens which simply tries to take the fledgling idea, implants another idea underneath it, and sucks all the energy out of it until it can take over completely. Adding to the already common stereotype of %u201CIt%u2019s Publishers Who Ruin Games%u201D, Crawford advises that a creative person teams up with someone versed in the arts of accountancy and law to shepherd great ideas between these three terrifying beasts that have spawned in the game industry within the past twenty years.

Of course, it may simply be a matter of cutting out the middleman entirely. Whilst removing a source of income and financing for a game is an exceptionally risky strategy in the multimillion dollar industry that games became after the Crash of %u201983, there are many Independent companies out there, hanging by a shoestring on the breadline, releasing the games that they want to release, waiting to make it big without being slaves to publisher whim

Champions of this ideology are Introversion Software. A then soon-to-be graduating Chris Delay showed a game he was working on the side to his friends, Mark Morris and Thomas Arundel, who convinced him to sell the game, Uplink, a game based on the theme of computer hacking. Returning on their capital invested (which was mainly blank CDs and printer ink) within a month, the fledgling company reached out to the industry by starting accounts on web forums advertising this game, and contacted various game journalists (such as Kieran Gillen, who was then the section editor at PC Gamer who convinced other magazines to review the game), and it eventually made it to 9th Place in PC Gamer%u2019s best games of 2001

After receiving critical acclaim for a project he worked on in his spare time at University, Chris Delay looked at the 10,000 polygon characters the industry was creating, and wondered if he could flip it on its head and create 10,000 single polygon sprites and use it as the core concept of a game. Despite their track record, Introversion still fails to convince any publisher to take them on board, and so using the revenue they stored up from the sales of Uplink, they start out developing an Independent game all over again. Four years after Uplink, in 2005 they release Darwinia %u2013 a merging of Cannon Fodder, retro gaming, real time strategy games and a slew of other titles that eventually went on to earn huge accolades - including the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the 2006 Independent Games Festival, and scores of 90% in both PC Gamer and PC Format, the two leading PC Games magazines.

Introversion are still making independent games %u2013 their next game, Defcon, is set to be released in the fourth quarter of 2006. It also seems they are very comfortable about their track record of having no publisher (their tagline of %u201CThe Last of the Bedroom Programmers%u201D is quite distinguishable on their website). During a presentation at Animex 2006 demonstrating Darwinia and Introversion%u2019s capabilities, Mark Morris made his opinions known to the audience by giving his speeches to the backdrop of two slides %u2013 both black with white text stating %u2018Blame the publishers%u2019 and %u2018There is no creativity left in the games industry%u2019. Morris was also more than happy to point out during the Darwinia acceptance speech for the grand prize of the Independent Games Festival that Introversion %u201Cdidn%u2019t take any money from publishers because we didn%u2019t want any publishers fucking up our game%u201D, which was met with rapturous applause from the crowd, all of whom were Independent Game developers, who too seemed fed up with the current state of the industry.

With it%u2019s own conference and festival supporting web games, small games and games without publishers, the Independent Game industry parallels that of Independent Films (The IGF was inspired by the Sundance Film Festival) %u2013 so one must wonder why the %u201Creal%u201D games industry has failed to also move in this direction, paralleling the modern movie industry.

In actuality, the games industry as it stands DOES closely parallel the movie industry. Albeit, what it was like in the 1910%u2019s %u2013 when everything was controlled by the Edison Trust, whereas it should be closer to what Hollywood has been since the 1970%u2019s %u2013 producing blockbusters that aren%u2019t slaves to the studio model. Maybe San Jose can be for Independent Games what Los Angeles was to Independent Film? Will the games industry create its own Hollywood?

Should enough innovative games like Darwinia and Uplink break through the surface without being controlled by publishing companies or distributors, the industry may well be on its way to a Renaissance period, spurred on by the advances made by bedroom coders. And if the day comes where the Independent Game model DOES take over from the Publisher / Developer model, the world may yet see the Gamer Walk of Fame.

==Hamlet%u2019s on the Holodeck? Without a BFG? N00b%u2026==
It can be worrying how primal the behaviour of some gamers can be. At their core, all games are abstract simulations of real life problems. Raph Koster, in his book A Theory of Fun, states that a game (any game, be it Tic-Tac-Toe, Chess or Duke Nukem) exercises the pattern seeking part of our brains, actively encouraging us to learn new information through repetition under the guise of entertainment. Psychologists have known the value of games for a while now, and can point towards a great many examples; Cats play fighting with each other are really learning the skills they need to take down prey for food, while war games played by future military officers reinforce and apply the principles they learn for tactical warfare in a simulated environment where no one is at risk.

Computer games, Koster observes, currently highlight key survival instincts such as obedience to those in charge (for example, taking orders from your general as part of the storyline), binary thinking (simple lock and trap puzzles, or the celebrated physics problems of Half Life 2), xenophobia and the use of force to resolve problems (both expressed by shooting a great deal of enemies). During our ancestor%u2019s Neanderthal days, these traits often saved their lives, preventing an enemy tribe gaining superiority, and managing to bring back food from the hunt. But these days, these traits are suppressed and are no longer the hallmarks of a %u201Ccivilised%u201D society. Is it any wonder why video games have such a reputation for violence and being a %u201Clower%u201D form of expression? Do these violent traits, almost uniformly associated with the young male, explain why women tend to avoid computer games in general?

And more importantly, why are there not any games that deal with the %u201Chigher%u201D forms of the human condition? If games are, at heart, exercises of learning, would it not make sense to enforce beliefs that are acceptable in modern society? Just why is it that when it comes to expressing conflict in games do we suddenly think of resorting to violent conflict? What about political intrigue, or social one-up-man-ship, or the hundreds of other ways of coming into conflict without entering fisticuffs or a shootout? In a world where co-operation, equality, self sacrifice and other noble virtues are prized, is Soldier of Fortune the closest substitute?

There are some loose threads existing within the interactive media sector that doesn%u2019t immediately boil down to a pattern recognition exercise that reinforces violence. Crawford has been working hard on his Erasmatron for the past fifteen years. Interactive Storytelling is a field developed primarily by Crawford, and various academics world wide, and focuses on the act of dynamically generating a story experience using a computer, as opposed to using a story to justify an interactive experience. By allocating each major actor in the experience a set of values and flags, simple behaviours can be constructed and a story can be generated around them dynamically, with the player interacting towards a goal.

Bold enough to claim this as the first fruits of an entirely new medium, Interactive Storytelling is starting to make bold strides within academia, as well as showing early successes in the form of Façade, a single act %u201Csoap opera%u201D of sorts, where the player interacts with Trip and Grace %u2013 a couple who are at the end of their tether with each other.

Going back further still, Crawford%u2019s early work shows this bias towards interaction with actors higher than shooting them or using them in a rigid manner. Trust and Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot is cited as a unique game, where the player discreetly trades information with other characters in an attempt to gain the bit of information they require to best the other characters in psychic combat and be elected leader of the nation. The game focuses on forming alliances with characters, betraying others, and double crossing those who have come to love you. Player testimonies vary from becoming attached to the game to the point where players themselves felt betrayed for character actions against them, to the almost predictable %u201Call you do is talk to stuff, lame%u201D remarks from the gamer camp. What makes Siboot stand out is that none of this is pre-scripted %u2013 the characters algorithms determine their agenda, and how likely they are to betray you. Other games Crawford worked on that utilise this kind of character driven game existence include Excalibur, where the player controls King Arthur, and must keep his knights in order to stop feuds breaking out, and Gossip where the player spreads rumours between other characters.

Taking these concepts for his Erasmatron, the Interactive Storytelling movement may yet be able to offer something for games, despite his assertion that games and interactive storytelling are two different mediums. Role-Playing games, long dominated by storylines that the player is %u201Cforce fed%u201D and can not change, stand to benefit the most from this %u2013 with characters having their moods and feelings for the player and other cast dynamically generated. This variety of options would allow players to fully explore a range of options not normally available to them within these games %u2013 all that is required is a world deep enough to accommodate as many player options as possible. Crawford believes that %u201Cinteractivity is the essence of what you are selling%u201D when it comes to games development, and that a more interactive product is far more appealing than a less interactive one (For example, a computer word processor, with instantaneous correction features is far more popular nowadays than a typewriter).

Raph Koster does issue a warning though. Because all games are pattern recognition exercises at their core, Players learn how to %u201Cwin%u201D very quickly. In fact, most gamers tend to pick up the %u201Coptimal solution%u201D especially quickly, the one that offers the better %u201Creturn on capital invested%u201D.

%u201CMost gamers are so bottom line that if an activity doesn%u2019t give a quantifiable reward, they%u2019ll consider it irrelevant%u201D

Perhaps then, the problem isn%u2019t providing the user with more choice, but making the available choices more appealing for an audience who mentally deconstructs games down to abstract levels subconsciously. If a game of Romeo and Juliet was made, would any self-respecting player of Juliet commit suicide upon seeing Romeo dead if there was NOT an incentive behind it?

Will Wright%u2019s The Sims is an interesting case study. Whilst the moods and desires of the Sims are visible and accessible by the user, the characters do not %u201Ctell as story%u201D, rather, the player themselves reverse engineers a story that makes sense to them %u2013 it lacks the subtle story world generation algorithms of Crawford%u2019s immense project, and because of it%u2019s goal-less play, the player is left to their own devices to come up with their own goal. This leads to some interesting game anecdotes where players become %u201Cprofessional widows%u201D %u2013 killing off brides and husbands for their money, and renewing the cycle over again. Despite this, The Sims is a shining example of a game that focuses on character interaction as the primary medium, and its phenomenal sales figures have secured it in the gaming hall of fame.

==Gender Bias==
Despite its progress in this field, the game industry is still dominated by shallow sex and shallower violence %u2013 one of the clear signs of an industry controlled by young males. Zimmerman and Salen in Rules of Play note that the first highly identifiable female character in video games, Lara Croft, may have been designed to be %u201Can empowered woman%u2026 not a smutty sex object%u201D, but the actual implementation process had emphasis purely on two areas %u2013 and this made her %u201Ca kind of action slut, an adolescent boy%u2019s idea of a woman, a digital pin up girl%u201D.

This is one of the areas of the games industry that is doing its best to clean up its act on the portrayal as women as sex objects. The introduction of gender neutral games, such as The Sims shows real progress, but the industry is still weighted down by releases such as Dead or Alive (and its Extreme Volleyball spin off), BMXXX, and even the catastrophic piece of marketing that was Ms. Pac Man. The hallmark of a successful industry does not include alienating potentially half the population of the world by treating them in this fashion, as well as offending their literary tastes and brain wiring (as described in the above section, the current abstract themes most seen in computer games tend to be wired into the average young male, but not everyone else)

==Conclusion==
The list goes on and on and on. But the games industry does face an impending crisis. The public interest in games is at an all time high, but it is mainly thanks to negative stigma attached from the press at large. Mortal Kombat was one of the first major games to feature in the media at large thanks to its graphic content. Grand Theft Auto is currently in the line of fire (once again), thanks to recent copycat murders claimed to be influenced by the game. Lara Croft is still renowned for her breasts more than anything else. Next to nothing is heard in the popular media about the triumphs of independent games, or the progress in the field of interactive storytelling, or the seminars at GDC (although E3 does sometimes feature, adding weight to the argument that shiny new effects and shiny new hardware IS the industry%u2019s focus, and has been for years).

It is my personal opinion that the industry has a lot of maturing to do, and fortunately the future isn%u2019t as bleak as it could be. While publishers, deeply rooted in knowing what works and what keeps them successful keep a stranglehold on the industry, and while a great number of gamers simply can%u2019t get enough of the %u201Csame old game, with an added twist%u201D that is released in bucket loads, there are those within the industry and the audience that see this for the farce it really is. With visionaries in the independent games market, or in other fields, or even within the industry itself, slowly redeeming it from within, the industry may just one day be considered an art form. And then maybe meeting a prostitute in GTA could be an enlightening experience, and not a slightly dubious method of renewing your HP%u2026

==Appendix %u2013 References==
%u2022 ADAMS, E., ROLLINGS, A. (2003) Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams On Games Design, Indiana USA, New Riders, ISBN: 1-5927-3001-9
%u2022 CRAWFORD, C. (2003). Chris Crawford On Games Design, Indiana USA, New Riders, ISBN: 0-13-146099-4
%u2022 CRAWFORD, C. (2005). Chris Crawford On Interactive Storytelling, Indiana USA, New Riders, ISBN: 0-321-27890-9
%u2022 KOSTER, R. (2005). A Theory of Fun, Arizona USA, Paraglyph Press, ISBN: 1-932111-97-2
%u2022 SALEN, K., ZIMMERMAN, E. (2004). Rules of Play; Game Design Fundamentals, Massachusetts USA, MIT Press, ISBN: 0-262-24045-9

%u2022 GILLEN, K. (2005), How To Use And Abuse The Gaming Press And How The Gaming Press Wants To Use and Abuse You. [online], Available from http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693 [Accessed 18 May 2006]
%u2022 GILLEN, K. (2005), (2006), Notes from the %u201CAnimex Game%u201D Conference, 2006
%u2022 MORRIS, M. (2006), IGF 2006 Part 1 [online], Introversion Software, Available from http://www.introversion.co.uk/articles/igf06/part1.html [Accessed 18 May 2006]
%u2022 MORRIS, M., DELAY, C. (2006), Notes from the %u201CAnimex Game%u201D Conference, 2006

The footer image is a silhouette, taken from Grand Theft Auto III %u2013 with the protagonist holding a baseball bat near blood splattered pavement. © Rockstar Games 2000.