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Video games comprise the only medium which serves as its own caveat. It's rare that critics explicitly qualify their praise with “...for a video game,” but they imply it whenever they let games off the hook for failures that would be inexcusable in other media. We have to stop doing this if we want games to get better. Video games don't exist in a vacuum. When we act as if they do, we perpetuate the myth that they're intrinsically inferior to other art forms. By refusing to raise our standards, we reinforce the worst stereotypes about video games and the people who play them.
As technology makes it possible to do more and more with games, their artistic deficiencies become increasingly evident. It's kind of like the uncanny valley effect, only for aesthetics. Back in the days when it was amazing that a programmer could get two little guys to run around a screen and shoot at each other, nobody was too concerned about the moral dilemmas those characters might be facing. In the rush to make the guys look more and more realistic, very few designers stopped to think about whether it might be more interesting if, for example, they looked like something out of a Paul Klee drawing. These days, programmers prove to us that they can render people shooting each other in amazing, lifelike detail. From a technological standpoint, that's truly impressive. However, if games can achieve that level of visual realism, there's no reason they can't push themselves in other directions.
I really started thinking about this last year, while playing Uncharted 2. That game's story may not be any deeper than the typical popcorn movie, but it was told fairly well except for the fact that the gameplay segments seem to tell a completely different story from the cut-scenes. In Uncharted 2's cinematics, Nathan Drake is greedy, but basically ethical. The Nathan Drake players control, on the other hand, is a cold-blooded killer, cracking wise as he snuffs out hundreds of human lives. Granted, they're generally the lives of humans who are trying to murder him, but cut-scene Nathan doesn't seem like a guy who could kill, even in self-defense, without feeling some remorse. Within the medium of video games, there's no denying that Uncharted 2 is one of the more competently-told stories, but compared to films and books — even comic books — the game's narrative doesn't hold up. That realization should inspire us to demand more from games.
The problem isn't unique to writing, though. To see how it affects other aspects of game design, we can look to reviews of recent Xbox Live Arcade title, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. IGN's review encapsulates the kind of unqualified praise the game is receiving when it says, “These Misadventures don't look or sound like anything else out there.” That statement may not be defensible even if we limit the discussion to video games; expanded to the wider world of art, it's laughable. P.B. Winterbottom's visual style is cribbed wholesale from illustrator Edward Gorey and silent filmmaker Georges Méliès. Its music is an upbeat take on Danny Elfman and early film scores. These may not be sources that game designers have milked dry, but they're well known to artists outside the medium. It may be unreasonable to demand that all game critics be competent art critics as well, but I do think it's fair to call them out when they make unjustified artistic pronouncements.
All too often, mockery assails people who advocate more artistic literacy in games. What makes this so frustrating is that the people behind this mockery, who label games that look for inspiration outside of a very narrow sci-fi/adventure milieu as “up their own ass,” are often the same people complaining about a lack of new ideas in games. The only way developers will implement these new ideas is if they acknowledge and understand media besides video games, summer blockbusters, and fantasy novels. Even if some of those new inspirations come from the world of fine art, that doesn't necessarily mean that the resulting games will be pretentious or self-important. Having high standards means not being easily impressed, not being a joyless elitist.
Raising our standards isn't easy. It requires us to be open to new concepts and new voices, and to be more educated consumers. But in the long run, it's more rewarding than having the same experience over and over. If we really want to be rid of bald space marines and indie games that think they're revolutionary because they plagiarize high-brow sources instead of low-brow ones, higher standards are the only way forward.
