Video Games and Storytelling

We live in a time when there are very, very few people who do not play video games. While back in 1993 a person might be looked down upon by the mainstream for playing Doom, today the masses eagerly look forward to playing Call of Duty. Even those who don’t consider themselves gamers may be more of one than they believe. Have you ever played Angry Birds on your phone? Have you killed time with Solitaire on your computer? When you do so, you’re participating in a video game, albeit a simple one. Whether you’re male or female, young or old, in this day and age a person who avoids video games entirely is the exception, not the rule.

            In spite of this fact, though, video games cannot escape this negative stigma within the general public, even among those who regularly play them. There exists a belief that video games can never have any artistic merit, cursed to be simple entertainment and nothing more. Worst of all, some may even chide video games for being mere children’s toys, as they were often marketed as during their youth.

            To be fair, many video games don’t aspire to be anything more than simple entertainment (not that that’s an inherently bad thing. Doom may be devoid of plot and substance, but it’s still one of the most enjoyable games I’ve ever played), but that doesn’t mean they have to be stuck that way. In fact, as a writer, I find that the element of interactivity lends the medium of video games a tremendous untapped potential for storytelling.

            The simple fact is that video games, as a medium, are simply too new to be properly judged. Film has existed for a century, with its predecessor of theater existing since antiquity. Literature is as old as civilization itself. By contrast, video games have been around for only about forty years, and have only been particularly complex for around twenty. A critic may claim “A video game can’t have the same depth of storytelling as a book!”, and for the time being, they might be right. However, this is an unfair comparison as video games still carry the disadvantage of novelty. Imagine if written language had only just been invented. Imagine an author trying to bring a story to the page, only to struggle with using these strange, new symbols to form words as natural as those spoken. Would you quickly dismiss literature as a shallow language, never to match the beauty of oral storytelling?

            Imagine a story that you move. You decide the protagonist’s morals and actions. You decide who lives and dies, who thrives and suffers. Whichever one of the many myriad endings comes about, you are the one who brought it on. One day, as we understand the potential of video games more and more, we will have a story with this level of depth.

            That’s not to say attempts at such a thing haven’t been made yet. Plenty of games exist that try to let the player control the story, from Planescape: Torment to Deus Ex to Heavy Rain. I myself have been spending a lot of time experiencing Katawa Shoujo, a title so well-crafted it honestly makes me feel a little inadequate about my own writing. However, while all of these games are valiant efforts, we have still yet to tap the true power of the medium. We have yet to encounter a story that is not only beautiful, but so firmly attached to its medium that we can say “This could only have been done as a video game.”

            I think the current social reception of video games is an eerie parallel of how comic books were treated back in the 1950s. Like video games, comics had spent a long time being looked down on as children’s entertainment. In both cases, the industry retaliated by adding more adult content to their work. Back then, we had the wonderfully violent horror comics produced by EC’s William Gaines, and now we have the boom of first-person shooters, making it more and more difficult to find a big-name release without an M rating. In each case, however, it regrettably led to the medium being viewed as even less mature than before, with the added disadvantage of attracting the ire of moral guardians. While there were a few figures interested in the artistic potential of comics, such as Will Eisner and Osamu Tezuka, these men made up a minority.

            It wouldn’t be until the 1980s that comics finally had their day. The release of Watchmen and Maus caused critics to understand the true potential behind a medium that blended both text and visuals. As I see it, it won’t be too long before the Watchmen of video games makes its way. For all the issues with stagnation in the modern gaming industry, it’s nevertheless clear the potential behind the medium is growing. Whether I’m marveling at the aesthetics behind Aperture Science’s test chambers in Portal or the orchestral soundtrack of Super Mario Galaxy, games carry more and more elements these days that very few wouldn’t call art on its own. Why then, can we not call it art when attached to a game?

            As far as I am concerned, the day gaming’s potential is realized, the day we have a game even the harshest critic will call masterful storytelling, the day we embrace the medium as an art form, is not a matter of if, but a matter of when.

            Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll play some Team Fortress 2.

"Communion"

The colorful gasses and dust carried on with their tireless dance through the void of space. One day, the nebula would be forced to settle down, but until then it happily twisted and expanded, providing a happy light in the midst of an infinite sea of darkness. Centuries from now, the nebula's light would reach the good Earth and its colonies, finally able to witness its beauty. For the time being, however, the nebula had only one observer.

            The incorporeal audience remained by the nebula, trapped in awe at the sight. It had witnessed the death of countless billions of stars before this event, and would witness countless others afterwards, yet it never tired of the spectacle. The being shifted its attention to a passing cloud of helium within the nebula. With all its power, the being struggled to feel that cloud's essence. It sensed the presence of every single atom in the cloud, empathizing with them until it felt that it was each one of those atoms itself. Euphoria crossed over the entity, and it knew once more that all that existed in the universe was beautiful. It had done a good job, it thought to itself.

            Jacob Bear stared out the window, a nebula of no concern to him visible off in the distance. His heart raced anxiously, his wrinkled forehead covered in sweat. He had waited a long time for this day. He still remembered all those decades ago, when they'd figured out faster-than-light travel. It was strictly intended for unmanned missions, of course. Nobody dared throw their life away, floating through the dismal expanse of space. Jacob Bear, however, had a purpose, one single goal pushing him throughout his adult life. After all he had gone through, it began to consume his other, less realistic desires. Jacob Bear was going to find God. And if the bastard was out there, he was going to speak with him.

            "Are you sure he's here?" asked a technician, sitting from the comfort of an office parsecs away from the man he was assigned to supervise. Nobody, even the ones in charge, was quite sure of just how Jacob earned the permission to pilot a faster-than-light spacecraft all those years ago. They should have known better, many an employee of the space program thought to themselves. You don't trust a vehicle in the hands of a lunatic, especially not a vehicle of this kind of sophistication. Maybe someone up top was touched by his story. Jacob wasn't the first person to go looking for God, but he was the first one to promise he'd go straight up into Heaven itself and bring him.

            "He's here, all right," Jacob said confidently, poring over a screen densely packed with equations only he could quite make sense of. "There's a...thing here."

            "A thing?" asked the technician.

            "A thing," Jacob repeated confidently, as he began to ready his spacesuit. "It's...it's a thing, it's something that shouldn't be here. Something we're not quite sure what it is." Jacob grimaced to himself, realizing how foolish he sounded to the technician. He had gone his whole life ruing the fact that he had so much trouble with words. Then again, he was on the hunt for a creature nobody quite had the words for.

            "With all due respect, Mr. Bear..." the technician replied, struggling to remain as formal as his job required. "We must remind you that you're in possession of an extremely valuable spacecraft, and the last thing either of us need is for someone to bring about a second Cervantes incident. Are you confident that you're in a suitable emotional state to continue this mission?"

            "I'm not going to continue this mission," Jacob answered gruffly. "I'm going to finish it. God is out there. I'm going to find him, and I'm going to get my answers." Jacob put on his helmet, his uniform having completely replaced his own weathered visage with the heroic figure of an astronaut. With bated breath, Jacob prepared the exit to his ship, and stepped out into the abyss.

            “Another?” thought the bodiless entity, sensing the presence of a new mind. In all the eons it had been, not once had it encountered a thought that was not its own, a being that wasn’t itself. It was disappointed to look away from the nebula, but it decided study of the curious object was in order. It shifted its attention towards the strange visitor, and as it did so Jacob Bear knew the beast was approaching him. Without a form, the nebula’s observer was beyond sensory perception, yet there was something about its presence that could be felt, a stirring in the gut that occurred only when one had the attention of the Almighty. Jacob Bear smiled, knowing that he had earned his audience.

            “Are you God?” asked Jacob. He wasn’t sure if his words would be heard, or if his unusual discovery even could hear, but he had to speak. He had come too far not to. Sensing another thought from the visitor, the intangible being allowed its thoughts to be sensed as well.

            “What is God?” it asked in turn. Jacob was stupefied, barely able to comprehend such a response.

            “Did…did you create the universe?” Jacob asked hesitantly.

            “I did,” answered the being. “All of this is my work.”

            “Then you’re God,” explained Jacob.

            “I see,” said God, its thoughts betraying no emotion. “And what are you?”

            “Me? Really? You don’t know what I am? I’m a human.”

            “What is a human?” it asked. Jacob’s eyes widened. He clutched his chest to make sure his heart hadn’t stopped.

            “How do you not know what a human is? You created us, didn’t you?”

            “Do humans come from stars?” God asked. “The stars are what I notice the most of my creation.”

            “Er…well, sort of,” Jacob said, in disbelief he would need to explain such a concept to God. “We live on a planet, which orbits a star, I guess.”

            “You’re on top of a planet?” thought God. “You are very small, then. Smaller than a planet. Much smaller than a star.”

            “Yeah, yeah, that’s right,” answered Jacob. “We are smaller than a star. You want to know something else interesting about us?”

            “Yes, please,” said God eagerly, its words laced with emotion for the first time. “This is all very fascinating.”

            “Quite a few of us are very unhappy,” Jacob scoffed. He waited for a response, but God stayed silent, lost in its own thoughts.

            Unhappy. God understood what Jacob meant by the word. It could tell the feelings Jacob experienced as he thought it, but God was unfamiliar with the emotion itself. Happy, it knew. Happy was what it felt when it gazed upon its work, when it observed all the incomprehensible vastness of a galaxy at once. Unhappy was the opposite of that, it deduced.

            “What could make one unhappy?” God asked, breaking the long silence. “Can you not see the stars?”

            “We can see the stars just fine, thanks,” replied Jacob. “We’ve also got crime, poverty, hunger, loneliness. There are a million different ways the world can screw you over. I’ve gone through quite a few of them myself. For a long time I’ve wanted to know who I’m supposed to talk to about all the shit going on back on the good Earth, and as far as I can tell the buck stops here.”

            “That is unfortunate,” God answered, pondering the thoughts behind Jacob’s words.

            “You’re right, it is,” replied Jacob just as bluntly. “Now why does it happen?”

            “I don’t know,” God replied, sounding just as serene as ever. Jacob’s eye began to twitch involuntarily, his hands briefly balling up into fists.

            “What the hell do you mean you don’t know?” he asked, poorly attempting to remain calm. “Didn’t you create the universe? Didn’t you create us? All of this is yours, isn’t it? You’re supposed to know!”

            “Are there things smaller than you?” God asked.

            “What?!” Jacob screamed. Quickly regaining his composure, he cleared his throat and tried his best to answer the question. “I mean, uh…yeah, sure. There are things smaller than us back home. Like bugs and stuff.”

            “I see,” God answered. “Do these bugs ever suffer?”

            “I’m not sure if they’re smart enough to, but…I mean, I guess so.”

            “Do you care that the bugs suffer?”

            “Of course not. They’re just bugs. Sometimes we even kill them oursel…” Jacob stopped himself, realizing the gravity behind his own words. “Wait a minute…you don’t mean…”

            “How unusual,” God said, its thoughts laced more with curiosity than anything else. “I would never kill something smaller than me. Death is common enough when it comes naturally.” God’s attention gradually shifted slightly away from Jacob, and back towards the shifting gasses of the nearby nebula.

            “I love the stars,” God said. “I think they’re my greatest creation. When their time arrives, some of them leave behind a nova, expelling all their gas into beautiful clouds, like these. Eventually, the gas will settle back down into a single mass. More matter will be attracted by its gravity, and soon a new star appears in its place. The stars die, and then they are born again.”

            “Not all of us are born again,” retorted Jacob. “I had a friend once. He worked his ass off every day in exchange for just barely enough money to stay off the streets. He had no love, no future…nothing worth living for, he thought. One day the…the world just got to him. Why did that happen, huh? Why wasn’t he allowed to be happy?”

            “I don’t know,” God answered tonelessly. Jacob tossed his hands into the air in frustration. How could something with the intelligence to create worlds be so idiotic? How could this thing dare to call itself the one behind all that exists yet be so ignorant of even the most basic facts of how people work?

            “What…what the fuck is the matter with you?” Jacob roared. “I’ve gone my whole life thinking that God was trying to screw me over, but finding out you don’t care…that’s even worse! If I died…if all of us died, would you even know it happened?” God remained silent.

            “That’s what I thought,” continued Jacob with a grimace. “And now that I’ve found you, I’ve got to go back home. I’ve got to go all the way back to Earth and tell everyone this whole trip was a bust. And after that…I don’t know, I guess I’m supposed to spend the rest of my days as the world’s laughingstock. There’s fucking nothing for me now, is there?” Jacob began to hyperventilate, tears forming around his eyes. “I thought after I found you, after I got my answers…I thought I’d be happy. And now it turns out my life dream was a complete waste. I mean…just what the fuck am I supposed to do?” God pondered Jacob’s thoughts, making sure it understood each word as deeply as Jacob himself did.

            “You could try looking at the stars,” God suggested. Without a further word, Jacob turned around, preparing for the long journey back home. As its curious visitor left, the being returned its attention to the nebula. Already it could sense the dance of the clouds beginning to slow. Soon it would become a star, its role in the universe beginning anew.

            Euphoria crossed over the entity, and it knew once more that all that existed in the universe was beautiful.

The Religious Atheist

I wouldn't call myself an atheist, personally. Some people would, but I suppose that depends on how you define God. I consider myself an agnostic.

I'm positive that the Abrahamic God (or any other established deities supposedly vested in human affairs) doesn't exist. However, the idea of the universe being created by an abstract intelligent prime mover is something I don't think could ever be fully proven or disproven. Even if such a being did exist, mind you, I doubt an entity with the power to craft galaxies would have much need for the satisfaction of worship.

There is an idea prevalent with quite a few people that, to be non-religious, you must also be anti-religious. Theists aren't the only ones guilty of this ludicrous belief. Quite a large number of atheists out there seem determined to patronize anyone (even agnostics!) whose beliefs fail to fall in line with their own. For added irony, these same people often criticize religion for promoting intolerance! I myself went through a particularly unpleasant bout of this back in high school.

Discovering atheism wasn't hard for me. As a child, I adored books of mythology. I was familiar with Greco-Roman myths, Egyptian myths, and Norse myths. When I read the Bible, it was no great stretch to realize I was reading Hebrew myths. The Bible even shares elements with many of the myths of other cultures. Samson and Hercules both killed a lion with their bare hands, for example.

However, the fact that I bring up mythology is important. I know that the Olympian pantheon does not exist. I know that Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes, and all these other gods are no more than inventions of man. And while some may criticize the Bible as a poor source of morality, I can verify that the tales of the Greek gods are much worse. And yet, in spite of all these facts, I loved these old stories, and I still do today. I've written a whole novel filled with Greco-Roman mythological symbolism, and my next novel will contain even more. Why, then, should I be forbidden to extend this same appreciation towards the stories of less forgotten gods?

Although I am not a Christian in any sense, I must carry at least some respect for it as an artist. A world without Christianity would be a world without the sculptures of Michelangelo, without the cantatas of Bach, without Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, to say nothing of the literary merits of The Bible itself. I'm not sure if I would want to live in a world like that. And while it's true that many people use religion to justify all sorts of unpleasant behavior, that is simply human nature at work. I can promise that in a world without religion, the people in the Westboro Baptist Church would still be assholes. They'd just be assholes in a different way.

As "Per Astra Ad Aspera" nears its release (or at least I hope), my mind is already beginning to look towards my third novel. Although I'm not at liberty to go into too many details regarding it, it will contain religious themes. And as the idea was first formed during my aforementioned high school phase, its original conception was somewhat...biased. I've grown since then, and yet I still want to make this novel. Is it possible to do the idea justice? How do I discuss religion without seeming unfair about it? How do I attack it without being prejudiced? How do I praise it without crossing the line into belief myself? Religion's a tricky subject, there's no questioning that. But I think I managed to be pretty fair writing a blog post on religion, which leaves me a little more confident when it comes to tackling a whole novel on the subject.

But I'm not touching politics with a ten-foot pole.