Cultural Artifacts

"More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold"
Genette, Paratext: Thresholds of Interpretation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratext

In an earlier post I had explored ways in which cultures, consciously or subconsciously, expressed themselves in video games. Now, as we are continuously touching upon this term "paratext," I wonder if it does not cover these cultural phenomena that become largely apparent to the gamer.

Let me express the thought process that lead me to this journal entry.
I was catching up on the world news, and I came upon the headlines that North Korea is in the process of discontinuing their nuclear programs, talking with representatives from the U.S., Russia, and Japan. This sparked a thought about nuclear reactors and the great degree modern society finds itself immersed in this technology.

I thought back to one of my all-time favortite games: Final Fantasy VII. You start out in the highly industrialized, smog and dirt filled city of Midgar. Here's a picture from the opening FMV:

From this city surrounded by "Mako Reactors," I got the feel that maybe the authors of the game were trying to tell me something about the world in which we live. The Midgar culture is entirely dependent on these reactors for energy, which, the gamer later find out, literally "suck" the life force from the planet. Many could compare this to the social concerns people have today about nuclear power and our growing dependency on resources that are harmful to the planet (i.e., that lead to global warmings).

"Para" is the Ancient Greek preposition meaning "near to." Genette aptly constructs a word that leaves much room for interpretation. Paratext can include all which is associated with the main text. So these cultural inspirations for the authors, interpretations for the reader, become part of that paratext, usually manifest in critical reviews.

These sorts of cultural artifacts do preserve the culture and, as in the example above, point to cultural concerns.

Giving Audiences More Respect

Perhaps this comes our generation's ever-shortening attention span, a motif that seems to come up in my blogs, but does anyone else think that some games deliberately aim at those lower standards? This goes beyond my previous entry on graphics and narrative.

I think this reflects a bit on the discussion we had in class Thursday, 2/15, about paratext and canon: what should be included in each category. This blog brings that idea to a more overarching sense of games and, for that matter, novels and movies: do authors deliberately dumb down their work to make their stuff more palatable to a wide audience?

I read a few online sites that often mention the declining state of movies. Movies are not made with the same quality that they were even in the previous decade. This may sound like grandpaw's argument about the good ol' days, when the world was full of heroes, but it seems to have some substance to it. Take the most recent attempt at romantic drama, and compare it to Casablanca. Does any of it stack up?

In almost every English class I've had, the professor will, directly or indirectly, refer to the declining state of the novel. Who is the great American novelist of our day and age? Stephen King?

Now I've been a gamer for a long while now, and games today seem to have less of a quality approach than they did a decade ago. I'll be the first one to say I'm wrong and I'm just acting like one of those nostalgic grandpaws. But could it have truth to it?

It's an inner debate I'm having with no clear-cut answer. If you guys have any comments, hopefully it will expand this sketch of ideas (which probably has one of those "art vs pop culture" lead ins written somewhere, which I did not necessarily intend) and lead to...well, something.

Graphic Architecture versus Game Narrative: Survival of the Fittest?

Comparing Myst's graphics to its narrative, it might be easy to argue that graphics prevail. The story is so convoluted (and, for the most part, hardly accessible to any but the most industrious gamer) that it seems to fall short. Yet Myst proves to be special, in that the gamer creates his or her own narrative, choosing which puzzles to solve and which Ages to go through first. The non-linear basis of Myst allows the gamer to write his or her own story.

However, that could be a thing of the past. Games developers (as taken from various interviews) seem focused on always marketing the game on its graphical strengths. Indeed, the majority of pre-release videos out there show off FMV (full motion video) cutscenes as opposed to actual game play. Notice the Okami clip our group showed in class. Though it did not make it to the final cut, the basis for that marketing plan, and many others like it, was to show off the games graphics.

Now, I could speculate on and generalize about various reasons why this happens. This generation's group of gamers has a notoriously short attention span (something I can be guilty of), a primary reason why they leave the books on the shelves in the first place. Also, much of the graphical work out there is gorgeous, and certainly deserves praise for its accomplishment and the labor ivolved in its making. It's just that much easier to market.

But take the Mario series: doesn't Mario still have a narrative, albeit a simple one? Save the princess from Bowser. That's the underlying objective, but there's more to it than that. Each Mario game puts out a new twist on how you, as the gamer, accomplish this goal. The first NES game has you going on, above, and under the earth to get to Bowser's fortress, encountering different enemies and different situations. The Nintendo 64 version, the first 3-D one, has you jumping through paintings (an interesting study right there) to go through different types of worlds. While the plot is the same, the story is not.

So, back to Myst, the narrative is more than the plot. Myst does not have much of an ostensible plot (unless you really dig into it). But what it does have is a narrative, one which the gamer helps create. That's part of its allure. This idea remains in games today -- RPGs like Final Fantasy, Adventure games like Zelda, and even Grand Theft Auto. While its not the most marketable aspect, it rests as a firm part of gaming.

Self-Referencing in Games

In my Modern Novel class today, the professor mentioned on an aside that postmodern novels tend to self-refernce themselves, making the reader aware that he or she is reading a book. I thought about it, and I have determined with fair certainty that all games have self-referential qualities.

I came up with this list of different instances of self-referencing:

Spelling out the game's controls, usually at the beginning -- Notable in pretty much every game I have played, games' beginnings lay out specific ground rules for how to manipulate the games' universe. This might be to press X to speak to an NPC (non-playable character) in an RPG or even the ever-present guide to the popular simulation/sports game, Wii Sports.

Characters noticing they are in game -- This is a much rarer instance, but I have noticed a few times in my gaming experience characters that seem aware they are part of a game. Sometimes characters spell out the controls to the gamer. Other times a silent character might look into the "camera" to express a state of unknowing. The classic example: "It's up to you to [insert epic goal here]!"

Humor -- Sometimes games will reference things that do not exist in that game's world. After creative a massively complex fantasy world, making a reference to something non-existent in that world (but existent in ours) would reveal that the game has self-awarenes.

Other examples probably exist, but these are the ones that come to my mind. This is another way how text in general is almost a living, breathing creature, adapting to and absorbing the world around it.