Game Spaces (up for a re-write)

Video games have a limited appeal and cultural relevance. These things are growing, certainly, but in their current form and with their current direction they will always be limited. By this I don't mean limited like books are limited to those who can read, I mean limited to a minority population that won't grow (mostly because gamers don't really breed well).

To track the train of thought: Read this article on DS Fanboy in my farting about today. Understood that of course people who are playing their DSes don't want to talk to their DSes: they don't want to talk to anyone. They're playing video games. They're absorbed into that little world and they don't want to share it. Into that little world. And therein lies the limiting factor: video game systems are considered a portal into the software's world, as opposed to a portal for the software to enter our world.

Why is this bad? It's not bad, it's just limiting.

I think of the most fun I've had playing games, the standout experiences. There was the time as kids when my older brother's friends were playing Monopoly with us and one of them offered the few remaining players actual, real money for the remainder of their properties and Monopoly money. There was another time when the side of my family that basically only gets together for weddings and funerals tried to play Cranium. My little brother was charged with humming "Brick House," which he did, thumping out the baseline and everything, but his teammates just didn't get it, as they'd never heard the song before, or never listened to it at any rate. Just the other night a friend was telling me about a new game he bought that charged him with building a snorkel and mask from household items and I'm totally sold on the game. I love the card game "Cheat."

So what makes a good game experience for me? The game entering into and commenting on, asking questions about or turning me around and getting me to look at MY world, not the game's world. And MY world is populated by friends and family, not by NPCs.

But my examples of game experiences are board games or family games. Are video games different? They are, but only because of a mistake on the part of designers and developers. Video games are now made by people who see them as a novelty that can make a few bucks, like Pong or as a curiosity to be tinkered with like Computer Space. They have created a market that wants newer and shinier, not better. They develop consoles and say that now they have 16 bits, 32 bits, 64 bits, etcetera, and that that makes them better or worthwhile. They go from disks to cartridges to disks to hard drives to the internet. They just keep making the box they want to jam their little worlds into bigger instead of opening the box and letting the world pour out. And, no, this hasn't changed with online gaming. And no, the Wii jumping-up-and-down games haven't changed this. And no, the DS yelling-at-your-console hasn't changed this. BUT, these Nintendo innovations are interesting directions, not castoff novelties.

Let me look at that statement. Nintendo did not invent these input schemes, but they put them into peoples hands and homes, and doing that is innovative. But why must I say that they are not castoff novelties? Because much of the gaming community has been tricked into thinking that a bigger box makes for a better game and that's all there is to it. Or, rather, that a bigger box with nicer paint on and in it makes a better game. No, if video games are to make an input, the bigger box paradigm will be the novelty. Or will rather be looked at with a laughter-filled nostalgia ("Remember when we had those games that had real-looking people in them instead of real people in them?"). No, experimenting with input schemes is a direction, not a novelty.

Will Wright is taking careful steps in the right direction with Spore, too. Again, "gamers" and their attendant commentators are quick to dismiss his innovation as novelty, but at least know well enough to wait and see the product. Spore is bringing pieces of the social networking and user-created-content worlds of the internet into gaming. I'll let him elaborate more fully in his own way. Mr. Wright knows better than to try to tell stories with video games. Interactivity is about building an experience WITH the player, not FOR the player. Mr. Wright knows this. He's holding back, though, I know it. He hasn't given us a fully-realized multi-player game here. Neither has he given us the true multi-platform game that he will soon.

And that is what I'm looking forward to: true multi-platform gaming. By this I don't mean being able to shoot my buddy on his XBox from my PC. I mean pulling the bits of the social-networking and user-created-content Web 2.0 that allow users to bring the internet into their lives. The cameraphone bits, the SMS bits, the Jott bits, the live streaming performance bits, the click-this-prim-in-Second-Life-to-interact-with-this-website bits. The bits that blow the boxes to bits.

The really disheartening thing is that WE ALREADY HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY! I can press a button on my earpiece and say a few words to update my Twitter and Facebook status. I can set up RSS feeds that stream that information into SL or onto my blog. And that's all with no technical

Okay, I'm going to skip ahead a few steps here and give my conclusion, then return to this thought and re-write it another time. I want a game that I can interact with any way I choose: through my phone, digital camera, pen and paper, phone conversations, through a video game console, through my computer, drumming on my desk, twirling my hair. I want a game that I can laugh about during and after play with my friends. I want a game I can play any time, anywhere, with anyone. This can happen tomorrow, we have the technology. We just need to forget about the big boxes.