What Is the Classical Perspective on Videogames? Part 2
With apologies to the OMCS Rhetoric Dept
I’ll just say upfront, if you don’t read the first part of this then nothing here will make sense.
When I was a junior in high school, I had to write my first thesis project for rhetoric class. This was 2005, an inflection point in the history of videogames, or so I thought at the time. The medium was under fire from politicians and opportunistic flim-flammers like Florida lawyer Jack Thompson, who eagerly sought to censor and regulate games like they were alcohol and cigarettes. This was the end of the scapegoat era, when things like Mortal Kombat and DOOM were blamed for the ills of the youth instead of lax parenting and want of discernment.
For a young game enthusiast such as myself, this represented an existential threat that had to be opposed, and I chose my thesis as my opening salvo. I argued that videogames were, because of their interactivity, an important, even superior, emerging form of art that needed to be protected and allowed to flourish before they were strangled in the crib. My advisor, to say the least, was not buying my premise. At the time, I regarded his opinions as the ignorant, knee-jerk responses of the establishment, who had no familiarity with games or their potential; what it meant to be a participant in a story, how games blended the audiovisual innovations of cinema with the long-form storytelling of books to produce something unique, and plenty of other high-minded bromides that served as backdoor justifications for my preferred hobby.
Amidst our many arguments on the subject, one thing my advisor pointed out that has stuck with me ever since was asking me straight-up how God chose to reveal Himself to us. Where does our chief understanding of Him come from? A privileged few were granted the honor of speaking with Him personally, or seeing Him walk the earth incarnate, but for the rest of the human race across the scope of history, what we have is His word. Scripture. The Logos. Videogames, my advisor argued, could not rise to the same level of artistic import as their creative (or one might say, “muse-ical”) forebears because they are not the vehicle for God’s Word.
At the time, I considered this a cheap and desperate attempt to dismiss their relevance without engaging with what I was saying. Press Bible button, win argument, that sort of thing. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve seen the wisdom in it, for all the reasons outlined in the previous post. It’s not so much that games need to be able to present the truth of Scripture in order to be validated, but that they just naturally don’t. Not can’t or won’t or haven’t yet. Don’t. Bear with me, this will take time to unpack.
Principally, the debate over whether or not games are art has raged for decades, and it misses the real problem with them: that the art- the artifice, the artifact -is often all there is to appreciate, and it can only inspire other art analytically; that is, by being torn apart. Art that can only inspire this way is divorced from its quiddity. Hence the “don’t.” In order for a videogame to be what it is, it can only point back to man as its source. Pointing back to God requires breaking it down into its constituent pieces.
Videogames exist on a number of paradoxical and contradictory continuums. They can do things that no other form of art can, but they can’t be created solely by artists and they can’t be imitated by their audience. They can captivate our attention and engage parts of our brain that other creative artifacts can’t, but they consistently innovate themselves into obsolescence. They are not an art form so much as an apex luxury, one that is only made possible by sufficiently advanced economies and specialized training, and a form of creativity that is pure, distilled novelty, sustaining itself industrially by forever asking the question “what’s next?” and offering as many answers as possible while there is still track to lay down in front of the train.
Most frustratingly, videogames can be transcendent. There are moments and experiences to be found in them that are utterly unlike anything you can read or watch or study, but the beauty they present is ephemeral and sui generis. It is constantly bedeviled by that question “What’s next?” It is solipsistic, forever referring back to itself and its own medium, and to the extent that this beauty influences any other creative endeavor, it is often only through one of the discrete elements it synthesizes- sound, camera techniques, art design, performance -rather than the whole that makes it what it is. Why is this?
Recall what capital-B Beauty is in our world: what we want to imitate, what we want there to be more of, what we are inspired to create and thereby imitate our Creator. A videogame is a synthesis of beauties, a symbol of artistic disciplines- of muses -thrown together to function on its own aesthetic terms. We can consume them, we can patronize them, we can discern what makes them captivating and effective or ineffective, but we cannot truly imitate them.
Writing, making art, playing music- even photography and filmmaking to a certain degree -these things can all be done ad hoc for their own sake. What makes the muses the muses is that they inspire the people, they transform us into artists and teachers. Making videogames… you can certainly train yourself to pursue a shadow of that, to be a developer who wears every hat, and I know a few people who have (hi Eric!) but in the main, not so much. Games require lifetimes of capital and expertise. They demand teams of engineers, programmers, artists, sound designers, musicians, and any other number of specialists who can integrate their particular skillset into whatever the vision of the studio is (I hear you, people who think AI will one day replace all this and allow people to make their own games just by typing into a search bar. My question is: how would that make any of this even the slightest bit more human?).
The synthesis of these skillsets both gives games their beauty and entombs it in the artifact. These artifacts shine in their own right and call to each other through their similarities and their innovations, but they are withheld from the birthright of the other muses: the notebook that’s filled with stories, the magic marker stains on the wall, the callouses over the fingers, the sticks that are whittled into swords, staves, and figurines, the songs that are sung endlessly.
Why does this matter? Certainly, videogames inspire plenty of art. I’ve seen my share of sketchbooks filled with drawings of Sonic the Hedgehog and Minecraft characters, and I’ve heard plenty of students humming music or playing piano pieces taken from games, but here’s the key: because a game can’t be imitated in its fullness, with its space and its interactivity and its other aesthetics, the child’s mind is always called back to the game, and would rather engage with it than whatever drawings or art it inspired. Consequently, the art stops being the point. My students are always asking me, “Can we have a device day, Mr. Condra?” Read: can we be doing the thing we’d rather be doing instead of focusing on these “pale imitations?”
This is why I said in my previous post that videogames are “for the home,” and why, in my home specifically, games will be very tightly controlled for my children. I want them to have two things: taste and restraint. I want their microcosmos to be constructed from logoi and music and things they can draw and paint that were inspired by other things painted and drawn. I want all of their creativity to be “in house” and ad hoc, so to speak. I want the things they make to be in line with things they have read and seen and thought about, not played. Obviously, that will not last forever, but so long as that’s their creative foundation, I’ll call it a win.
So, restraint will be imposed by my wife and I, but what about taste? This, to me, is the most important thing for parents to consider, even moreso than whether or not they will allow games in the house, because there is only so much you can do, and unless you live in an Ordnung (by the way, how are you reading this?), you won’t shield your child from games or their influence forever. Better they know what’s good and bad and how to tell the difference, I say.
So how do I do this? These days, all games fall into one of three categories for me: Trash, Curios, and Adventures. Note: these distinctions have nothing to do with content. What’s appropriate or inappropriate is a separate issue. Certainly, many games that I would not put in the Trash category end up being “trash” anyway based on their aesthetics or worldview. Likewise, the degree to which a game incorporates the internet into its design largely pushes it toward the Trash category (there’s a reason “users interact” is considered a rating criterion), but there are plenty of exceptions to this. No, these categories have more to do with the spirit of a game and its intentions than its quality.
Trash games are those that exist purely for commercial gain. They are typically free-to-play, typically online multiplayer, typically available on phones, typically prioritize mechanical immersion over artistic immersion (read: have no real story), and their primary goal is to hook players into their game’s setting so they can sell cosmetic items and cheats that make playing the game easier. These are your Fortnites, your Robloxes, your Brawl Stars. These are the games that are currently the most damaging and time-consuming for the youth, because they deceive children into thinking they’re interesting and then demand money in exchange for keeping that interest level topped off. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are fun. Fortnite is very silly and certainly has its moments, but these games exist for the bottom line and, in Roblox’s case, have no qualms sacrificing childhoods to fund it. Seriously, get your kids off Roblox.
Honestly, I despair when I talk about games with my students these days, because 90% of what they play is in the Trash category. They don’t care if something is immersive or engrossing, beautifully staged or ingeniously designed. They want to chat with their friends without leaving the house, and everything else is just window dressing. Alas, I digress.
Curios are games that also prioritize mechanics over artistry, but they are good in the sense that they emphasize the ‘game’ aspect of videogames and make an effort to give players logical things to think about and challenges to overcome. Or, they might do the opposite and present the player with a setting and a set of tools and let them figure out what they want to do from there. They are games that exist for the sake of fun itself. These are your roguelikes, your puzzle games, your sims, your Animal Crossings, your deck-builders- games in genres that lend themselves to short play sessions and challenge you to figure out their rules, giving you a form to submit to and a mandate to master it. Personal favorites include Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, and even Minecraft, as obnoxious and unhinged as its extra-curricular media empire is, remains a brilliantly conceived Curio.
Adventures are the final type, and for me, an Adventure refers to any game with a specific setting, story, or experience that the game wants to immerse you in. They are the broadest type of game being made today, and their quality is more bound to personal taste and the skills of the developers than external factors like cost, “fun,” and genre. An Adventure is anything that captures my attention outside of its nature as a game. So, Elder Scrolls? An adventure. Call of Duty? An adventure. Madden NFL? You would think Curio, but its barebones career mode counter-intuitively gives your imagination a blank canvas to dream up lore about your pro-football career, so it’s an Adventure for me.
I must note that these categories are often overlapping with each other within the same games. Call of Duty Warzone is a Trash game inside an Adventure. And lots of games, RPGs in particular, have Curios inside their Adventures. How many of us have started The Witcher 3 only to get sidetracked for hours while playing Gwent? Not me, I can’t wrap my head around Gwent, but apparently that happened to a lot of you. Point is, pay attention so you can tell what’s what.
Having said all this, my stance (which I will cheekily call “the classical stance” until someone else writes about this), is pretty simple: Videogames are wonderfully captivating, and I enjoy them greatly, but they are vestigial to a child’s education and should take a backseat to everything else in childhood. Further, parents should be actively involved in their children’s relationships with them. Keep your kids away from the Trash, use your discernment to judge which Curios and Adventures are appropriate for them, and don’t give them the same amount of time with games that they should have to read, to draw, and to play outside, etc. Consider this my recommendation, both as a parent and a classical school administrator.
Denouement:
The debate over whether games are art has always dominated a broader underlying question: are videogames worth the time we spend with them? Honestly, I think the answer for most people is no. And that’s fine! If you’re the type of person who feels guilty for playing games, then don’t play them. I get it. As for myself, I’ve seen too much and, frankly, I’ve loved too much to let them go. I’ve survived the suicide mission through the Omega 4 relay, I’ve kept my camp fed on whitetail hunted in West Elizabeth, I defeated Malekith the Black Blade on my first attempt, I’ve heard the last words of the crew of the USS Retribution, I know what happened on the Obra Dinn. These memories may or may not make sense to you, but for me, they waft among the same branches as the battle of Helm’s Deep, Priam’s reconciliation with Achilles, David versus Goliath, Esther’s plea, Prospero breaking his staff, and Ahab’s final stand.
So let me be blunt: videogames… Well, they’re not necessary. As I said above, they are a luxury more than anything else. They don’t build the microcosmos the same way that the primal, timeless forms of art can. But if you hold them in proper esteem, and if you’re discerning about what you play, then you can play with these curios and embark on these adventures and receive a gift of pure, quixotic, creativity; a harmonized instance in which many people band together to present a creation that can only be admired and known by people who didn’t create it.
Granted, that may not be Scripture, but none of us can mistake Who is behind that pattern.
May our Lord illuminate the righteous path He has laid before each of us and compel us to walk it dutifully and with joy.