Video-game publishers naturally want to define what is said about their games. Their definition of success as high average review scores or unit sales precludes any non-financial or non-commercial goods their games may offer humanity.
Video-games like Arnt Jensen’s Limbo uncovered the publishing engine’s inability to market a game without a prescribed story. Their solution was to invent one, to do the work of the critic for them. They seemed to assume that reviewers wouldn’t be able to comprehend such an indescribable game. This is a mistake.
While this made Limbo a cult classic amongst the ecosystem of online review sites it also curtailed any broader success. A newcomer encountering these online reviews is first bombarded by information and advertising, before being instructed on the game’s technical merits and achievements. Marry this with a stoic commitment to avoiding “spoilers” and any hope of sustained cultural, ethical or psychological conversation is depleted.
Imagine two men standing in front of a painting, talking about why it moved them so much. “Well,” one of them said after a long pause, “for me it’s a 7.5.” Visibly outraged his companion exclaims, “You have got to be kidding, it’s no more than a 6.” As if this is an appropriate way to talk about art, or about video-games — even in an age of numbers and aggregation.
The paralysis is no better on the high street where advice rarely extends beyond recommending the latest big game or pre-packaged experience. Game box information is improving, but this protectionist approach to advice needs to be combined with more in depth advice if it is to avoid encrypting as much as it engages.
Maybe retail cathedrals to video-games in the UK like Game and GameStation falter because they are absent of any talk of meaning or humanity. Instead of being the place you go to overhear emerging, experimental ways to make sense of life, they are where you go to buy technology.
Although games are often perceived as being created by huge faceless teams, hearing from the people behind a videogame is the first place I start to find my new priesthood, where video-game conversation starts to come to life.
