On the Shoulders of Giants

Before diving into game criticism, it’s useful to look back at where this all began and how we got here.  Trying to find meaning in fiction isn’t anything new; we simple develop new methods for telling our stories.  The discussion of “literature” reaches back to the classical Greek philosophers: Plato and Aristotle, and perhaps further.  Since then, a foundation of knowledge has been built up that gives us a great deal to draw on in order to understand and learn from what we read, watch, and play.  So let me begin a crash course in the history of literary criticism!  I learned much of this stuff in a class on literary theory, but the basic order I confirmed with the Wikipedia page.¹

The origin of studying fiction begins with Aristotle.  During that period, all literature was referred to as “poetry,” which in ancient Greece meant plays or epic poems like the Odyssey.  Aristotle approached poetry as something to study, and in Poetics, he treats it as he would any natural science.²  His focus was on what makes a good poem, rather modern ideas about interpretation, and his ideas became the foundation of western thought on the matter, so most of what he wrote seems clear to us today.

By medieval times, the ideas of the Greeks had been lost and new literary traditions grew out of the Christian interpretation of scripture.  During these times, we see the beginning of two key ideas that persist today.  First, the idea of a literary “canon,” or the books everyone is supposed to know, grew from ideas about the Biblical canon.  Second is the idea of interpretation, which is finding meaning in texts, rather than exploring how good literature works (which was Aristotle’s approach).  However, interpretation back then was meant to discover the author’s intent, just as interpreting scripture was meant to unveil divine intention.  The renaissance brought little new thought to interpretation, though it did revive Aristotle’s work and that’s how his ideas reached us today.

Just after World War II, a new form of interpretation came about which was called “New Criticism,” which, oddly enough, is an idea about 80 years old (makes me think of a more recent trend dubbing itself “New X”).  This school of thought arose as a response to interpretation based on authorial intention.  Instead, new critics advocated a form of interpretation more familiar to the modern day English class, which we now call “close reading.”  This is trying to derive meaning from the text based on the words themselves and requires little esoteric knowledge of the authors and classical texts necessary for earlier interpretation.  This is the method of interpretation used today in most English classes, and the time in history it grew out of is taught in any literature theory class.³ There is a great deal of writing and discussion from this time that formed what we now see as interpretation and this is the era of history most pertinent to what we do today.

Once movies had been rolling for some time, people applied similar methodologies to films, and film criticism was born.  In addition to looking at analysis of the content, film criticism looked at “cinematic form,” as magazines like Film Criticism state.⁴  This cinematic form is the first time meaningful analysis was done with more than the story’s content.  There’s not much you can say about the font, size, and so on in a book, but there’s a lot to say about the delivery of a story in a movie.  This added new dynamics to the analysis done, adding to the methods of new critics.

And finally, we arrive at video games, hopefully with you somewhere short of bored out of your mind.  History has yet to be written in video game criticism.  There have been books written, online videos made, and more, but even only a few years ago, real game criticism had yet to begin, and there are good reasons for that, as several people agree.⁵  Yet now the dawn of a new type of criticism is just beginning, and it’s foolish to ignore the history that brought us here.  We who choose to do game criticism have the chance to stand on the shoulders of giants, and we should take that chance.  Game scholars, designers, gamers, and observers can benefit from this history, and we all should.  This history gives us the result of a lot of hard, theoretical work in criticism.  This history tells us how people have thought about literature and film.  The only work left is to adapt it to our own use.

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1. “Literary Criticism,” Wikipedia, accessed September 20, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_criticism.
2. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher (Procyon Publishing, 1995), accessed September 20, 2011, http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Aristotle/Poetics.html.
3. Michael Delahoyde, “New Criticism,” accessed September 20, 2011, http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/new.crit.html.
4. Lloyd Michaels, “Editor’s Note,” Film Criticism, accessed September 20, 2011, http://filmcriticism.allegheny.edu/News.html.
5. Why There Are No Great Video Game Critics (Yet),” Whatever (blog), June 23, 2006, http://scalzi.com/whatever/004301.html.

No Longer a Toy

When video games first began they were little more than toys.  However, as they grew to be more complex, longer, and deeper, they became much more.  Video games grew to become a new medium for delivering a story, or more broadly, information.  They’ve become monumental developments, many requiring hard work and cooperation from many different disciplines.  Teams that number from a dozen to well over a hundred work to create the final product.  Musicians, visual artists, writers, level designers, voice actors, programmers, sound designers, and more come together to create.  The development usually takes at least a year, often several.  The result represents thousands upon thousands of man-hours of creation, much of it taken as artistic when looked at on its own.

And some claim this result is not art?  Wrong!  To approach a modern video game as a toy is to approach a Tyrannosaurus Rex a kitten.

Modern video games, even smaller “indie” games, are a far cry from Pong, the first successful commercial video game.  And this new medium has more potential than the wildest dreams at Atari when it was founded back in 1972.  Even now, what we’ve done has barely scratched the surface of the potential video games have for art, literature, or education.

Unfortunately, the study and thought needed to explore this potential is only now just beginning.  People have studied art and literature since the times of the ancient Greeks, perhaps since before.  Film has gone a similar route in recent times, with film schools not just teaching people how to make films, but truly studying what they are and what they can do as an artistic medium.  This needs to happen for video games, too.  In fact, this study needs to go beyond looking at video games as art.  Books and now even movies have been thoroughly explored for education and passing on information.  But video games’ potential for education and more is explored even less than they’re explored as art.

This potential is what I want to study.  At the moment, I’m working on a degree in Computer Science with a focus on Entertainment Arts and Engineering.  Basically, that’s a long-winded way of saying “degree in video game development.”  I hope this will give me a solid background in game development, which will be useful in my ultimate goal to study games from an academic perspective.  I’m only just now getting my feet wet in this realm of game scholarship, but I think that there is potential here, and if it’s discovered and fulfilled, we could use games to inspire, to educate, and to make the world a better place.

So what do I intend to do here?  Start thinking about video games, of course.  And hopefully, inspire thought about video games, as well.  At this point, the only thing I can explore is the artistic side of video games, as the educational side of study requires more resources than a blog and some thought.  And since I have much more experience with literature than with visual art, music, or other aspects of video games, that’s the part of the artistic side I’ll be focusing on.

The result: game criticism.  No, not criticizing games and saying what’s good and bad about them; that’d be reviewing games.  When I say criticism here, I mean the same thing as when we say “literary criticism.”  Game criticism is just a very new branch of literary criticism, as I’m going to be treating games as literature.  For those hearing of “literary criticism” for the first time, “game criticism” simply means thinking about games (and, of course, writing down and sharing those thoughts).  The details of what this thought should entail has been the subject of debate for thousands of years and this, too, is part of what game criticism as the theory behind it.

Now there’s two groups of people who should be interested in engaging in game criticism who may be skeptical of this: first, people who play games, but aren’t interested in giving them such thought, and second, people who are interested in literary criticism who don’t think video games are worthy of the thought.

To all the gamers out there, let me say this: a video game is work.  Even on easier difficulties, you have to make an effort to continue and claim victory.  And it’s through this effort and work that we enjoy a game.  Putting in extra work in order to enjoy something more is nothing new to us.  Think of the times when you’ve pushed yourself to get that one extra achievement, or even to get all of them or all the times you replayed a game at a higher difficulty to get more challenge.  Game criticism pushes you to think and understand the hidden aspects and nuances of a game to enjoy it more or to understand why you enjoy it or even to find meaning beyond entertainment.  And these extra things you get out of thinking about games will enhance the enjoyment, too.

To all the literature majors out there, I’ve already explained how video games aren’t just toys.  The only way to demonstrate the literary nature of a game is by simply doing literary criticism about games.  This will be something I do in the future, but let me point out some brief examples.  Entire side quests in Mass Effect 2 are Biblical allusions.  Many laud specific horror games for setting up the tone and atmosphere, and this is fertile ground for analysis, just as texts’ tones are analyzed.  Bioshock is an exploration of a dystopia based on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism.  There is much, much more out there and I’ll be doing analysis about video games just as I would analyze a book.  You might just find that many games are worth taking a second look at.

The game criticism I do will fall into one of three different approaches.  First, I’ll do direct analysis of a game and how it works as literature.  Second, I’ll explain how already established theories about literary criticism interact with video games.  Third, I’ll explore new ideas about how to approach video games as literature based on how video games diverge from classical literature.  I also may just occasionally rant about something related to all this.

I hope anyone reading will be inspired to join me in giving games the thought they deserve.