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PAX Prime 2010: Warren Spector on Game Culture in the Mainstream
by Mona Ibrahim [PC, Console/PC]
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September 3, 2010
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Deus Ex and Disney Epic Mickey creator Warren Spector opened PAX Prime in Seattle, an empowering Gamasutra-attended keynote today, with a call for gamers to look beyond the celebration of geekdom so that the industry as a whole can move toward the mainstream.
After years of facing insecurity and rejection while striving for mainstream acceptance, Spector suggested that game culture has finally reached a 'Golden Age', noting: "Every medium that has lasted has gone through this. It’s gone through what we’re going through today.”
Not long ago, he suggested, game culture was largely a collection of adolescent males with a decidedly geeky tilt. Now we see people of all ages and walks of life, male and female, participating in this form of entertainment.
According to the Junction Point creative director, “now we don’t have a culture of gaming, we have many cultures.”
Game culture is becoming a mainstream medium, and the resentment many core gamers feel about this growth is misplaced, Spector posited.
The belief that casual games and casual gamers destroy the game culture experience hurts the industry by limiting it; allowing the medium to grow has inspired developers to create new systems.
Specifically, he noted to a packed crowd of game aficionados in the Seattle Convention Center: "We have to embrace that the world is catching onto us. Once you open Pandora’s Box, you can’t close it again, and I’m fine with that. Now more than ever it’s a good thing that mainstream is happening."
Moving on, Spector made it clear that this isn’t simply important. This isn’t just the evolution of the industry. It is vital for gamers to embrace the belief that games are a mainstream medium if the industry is to survive with the same protections granted other art forms.
The veteran game designer also reminded us November 2nd marks the date when the Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of California’s 2005 violent video game bill. This bill, which is designed to prohibit minors from purchasing ‘violent video games’, is the first to be granted certiori by the Supreme Court.
The fact that the Supreme Court has elected to review the lower court’s ruling (which found the legislation unconstitutional) is unsettling to the industry at large. There is a certain amount of fear that the Supreme Court will overturn the lower court’s decision, Spector noted, and “November 2nd could be the start of a timeline where we’re the first entertainment medium denied first amendment protection.” This is a threat that the games industry needs to protect itself against, he argued.
Historically all entertainment mediums, from literature and print media to film and music, have faced similar censorship threats from legislative and cultural bodies. However, it is unusual for legislation that clearly impinges on a medium’s right to create non-obscene content to make it to the Supreme Court.
Perhaps it is because of this that Spector believes now is the time for gamers to embrace the mainstream. By becoming mainstream, games are able to achieve social acceptance and will cease being a source of creative contention. Like the film industry, it will eventually become “an art form worthy of study.”
The Epic Mickey developer finished his keynote with a set of challenges for gamers and the entertainment industry in general. Gamers are asked to demand more from games and more from the gaming experience.
In turn, Developers are asked to “honor what makes us unique.” Games do not need to hold to the conventions of pen and paper role-playing. And publishers are asked to take chances and trust the great creative minds at their disposal.
Along the way, Spector challenged all of us to get over our inferiority complex. While the industry may be young and immature, it is a great industry worthy of respect, he concluded, declaring one simple fact: “Games are important.”
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So mainstream means accessibility, which means shallow games for kids.
And creativity perishes forever because videogames will have to renounce innovation and be chilled mindless entertainment.
Videogames would still be visually emotional, adrenaline and full of typical movie drama garbage, but they will not be a challenge anymore, they will not make you think about puzzles and problems to overcome, they will not even be interactive. Mainstream means we have to abandon the most peculiar attribute of videogames.
Now I'd love Mr. Spector to answer.
It is a fallacy that mainstream implies easy and mindless. The vast majority of the best-selling games are very challenging. Just go and look at the data.
Really?
Tell that to all the people who bought Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus.
Avatar(dumb action film with pretty lights and 3d): $2,757,286,039 gross revenue
I don't think any of the games that you mention, Alan, could be considered great commercial successes. But even moreso, I find it hard to believe that anyone would consider them to be complex and intellectual. When I think of movies that I consider to be intelligent, like Michael Clayton or American Beauty or Before Sunset, I'm thinking about films that make intelligent observations about human beings and societies and which have characters say interesting things about those kinds of subjects. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a single video game that does that, let alone a game that's sold well."
They all made enough money to justify sequels did't they? Yes they did. :D
And if you don't think as game like, say, Ico that examined the human condition then you did not really play it. It did so. It was a pretty deeply intellectual game. It was also an emotional one at that as well.
So was Heavy Rain. Sure it's story had some holes. But I can also point out so many supposedly great movies that have huge holes in their story lines as well.
You're falling into the trap of judging games through the lens of film. No film can achieve the same level of "intelligence" as games in certain aspects. There is a fundamental reason for this. Games are about action. And I don't just mean action in terms of "action games". Every conceivable game is about player action.
However most complex and intellectual movies don't make much money, and neither do most complex and intellectual games.
the question for industry conferences is, will the children of spector be able to offer a speech like the one he gave in another 2 decades when they are the " keepers of the mainstream"?
and will people even be the "main" of that "stream" of revenue in 20 years time?:)
I won't bother explaining.
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Your comment is overrated
With each iteration that brings in more of the casual types into the fold and makes the idea of sitting in front of a computer or TV and playing a game as common (or more so) than going to the movies or watching a sitcom/tv show, the game industry has broadened in scope and potential market reach. Each step along the way has contributed. Look at the Wii...it's brought in a lot of people who had no clue what a console was.
A lot of hard core gamers groan when Farmville or something like Wii Fit is mentioned but think about it. How do you vilify an industry when you're playing a game created by it? We may not approve of the games but when you see the industry expanding because of Facebook and mobile phones, how can you really say much against that? And especially for game developers...the same ones who likely had to deal with parents shaking their heads about their decision to create games when they could be sitting in cubicles creating office productivity software for a major corporation. Oh wait, those same office productivity software developers likely had to deal with THEIR parents shaking their heads when they went off to work for a company creating software for this strange and largely useless device called a computer...
We have to figure out how to do that. Can we transfer that knowledge over to the Video Games industry? Will it work? I don't know. But our industry is growing and there is nothing we can do to stop it. It is a fact of life.
The Video Games industry is like a 1000 ton freight train flying down the tracks. We all just have to figure out how to steer this huge beast. If we don't so soon we could all have some sort of disaster on out hands I would imagine.
Oh and another point, we had better not "globalize" ourselves out of our own jobs.... ;)
Film auters don't necessarily go around making films for themselves. The audience guides them. Even art has an audience and good art involves knowing the audience, rather than making stuff just to please yourself that few others can relate to. In this respect, the art of games is very much linked to the business. No matter what creative control you earn, the best way you can use it is to engage your audience, not yourself. That's how a job works.
I think this is the most important phrase of all the article. In one hand game are becoming mainstream and in the other hand games are trying to revel the language behind them. Taking about the ages is a bit ambiguous. But if I have to locate this moments of videogames in history, I would locate them at the beginning of 20 century, where "isms" start to explore the language around the visual art, music art, cinema, etc.
Game industry is slowly coping the Movie Industry model, which is something very positive. after 100 years Movie Indus. learns how to give space for all type of movies: mainstream, indy, etc.etc. They understand that if they don't do that, movies as an art form become stuck in a loop. Game Industry have to learn it too.
There is still Transformers and Avatar films, which have great commercial success - and there are film festivals for all the independent and art films which do not gross as much. Just like there are COD and Halo games that gross much, there are smaller independent games that do not gross as much. Perhaps we need some Art Game Festivals :)
Commercial success is overrated. It is a measure of popularity, but just because it is not as popular does not mean it is any less good.
And back to the Golden Age, popular culture is taking up, and has already taken up, video games. And surely that is a good thing!
As an aside, I'm mostly impressed that the subject matter of the article came from maybe 15-20 minutes of the keynote. Spector certainly has a knack for storytelling and, eventually, driving home to the point of the matter.
What other forms of collectives would you suggest Tim?