2012: the year that gaming (sort of) grew up

Instead of another dreaded year-end "best of" list that most folk love to hate, I decided to take some time to go over some of the important trends and news stories from the game industry. Gaming turned 40 last year -- and with this progression the claims that it has "grown up." In my opinion, the growing pains have just begun.

Geoff Keighley being dead inside is a pretty good way to sum up how weird last year was.

2012 was a wild year for gaming as a global community. As a whole, the entire business of thinking about video games has been in the process of upheaval from all corners, regardless of how slow actual progress may seem to be. There were also a lot of painful, awkward incidents that (hopefully) helped teach universal lessons to developers, writers, PR execs and gamers alike.

In my own opinion, one of the biggest things that happened to the gaming community in 2012 was the corrosion of the powerful hold that shitty, racist, sexist and sophomoric people have on our electronic entertainment. Part of this beautiful corrosion was a result of the continued blossoming of games writing sites that encourage thoughtful discourse about the tenets of game design and the issues surrounding it. For example: BrainyGamer, Gamasutra, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and even Kotaku all had some wonderful posts.

Growing up

Another part of that "beautiful corrosion" this year was Twitter, or rather, social media in general. A network of amazing games journalists and writers has steadily formed throughout the past few years, bonded through breaking stories, lively discussion and real-ass talk about how societal norms are reinforced through our electronic media. In no context is this more visible than the issues brought up by the #1reasonwhy trending topic on Twitter, which involved games writers and designers talking about the prevalence of sexism in the games industry.

These problems are still just as prevalent, but the first step toward solving the diseased influence of the worse parts of society in any medium is to talk about it, goddamnit. Because of how the internet, social media and blogging has evolved, the hold that anonymous bigots and moronic teenagers have over the kind of entertainment we consume is slowly being eroded. But ONLY if open discourse is encouraged like it has been. 

People are slowly being held more accountable for their actions online, from the (righteous, IMO) twitter shaming of racist teens on Jezebel to the absolute SHIT SHOWS that resulted from the Ocean Market(t?)ing and WarZ scandals. The Jezebel story isn't really related to gaming, but it's meant to further illustrate the way in which personal accountability had been pushed to the forefront in 2012.

On the flip side of that coin, these huge outpourings of internet hate and venomous protest also show that we need to grow up WITH our electronic media. We need to move beyond expressing our disgust to actually expressing what we feel needs to be done to change the root causes of these kinds of malaise.

(Sort of)

Which is why the title of this article is "2012: the year that gaming (sort of) grew up." Some great progress has been made toward the upheaval of unnecessary status quos, and there are thousands of great examples of this from gaming headlines in this year alone. However, at the same time we, as games writers, developers and fans of intelligent content in video games, must come to grips with the immense amount of issues that still plague our favored medium.

To name a few?

-The preponderance of violence as basically the sole medium for progressing in AAA games.

-The preponderance of sexism and the lack of strong female characters in many games.

-The preponderance of racist caricatures. 

-Honestly, the general lack of diversity in most games.

-The divide between physical gaming platforms and online content delivery systems.
-Responsibility to both deadlines and consumers (mostly through Kickstarter).
-The delineation between what is "hardcore" and what is "casual."

-Linear, cardboard story progression in some games.

-"Classic" genre boundaries that no longer can be used to define certain gaming experiences.

Video games are a part of the youngest medium yet out of television, movies, books, movies, art and music -- and as such are faced with the monolithic task of synthesizing hundreds of years of art and entertainment into a distilled form that will please a modern audience. By that same token, the gaming industry must also walk the same path that every medium has gone before it even as it is a pursuit born out of those previous works.

Violence vs. society vs. art vs. video games vs. everything

This means that an immense pressure is placed upon those that create content -- the writers, developers and designers of games. Do you want your game to be considered truly transcendent "art?" Fine, then. Make a masterpiece. You can not, however, just rely on past tropes of linear design that many modern games seem to be fine with.

This is why Far Cry 3 and Dishonored and Assassins Creed 3, three of the biggest and most popular games of the year, are not art in my own opinion. Did they try new things? Yes. Did they have a lot going for them in terms of overall entertainment value and mass appeal? Absolutely.

But at the same time, from a cross-medium critical perspective, those games still may only be taken at their face value -- a male figure with incredible power killing and blowing up lots of things.

Violence is the main selling point for many modern AAA games -- just as it is the modus operandi with many blockbuster movies and books. I'm not saying that's a horrible thing. In fact, it's probably a natural part of the progression of such a young interactive medium. There are thousands of perfectly natural reasons that violence would be the main way of getting things done in most of our media, from basic human psychology to sociological constructions.

However, I will say this. We have a lot of very wary, hateful, psychotically nervous eyes upon us. One only has to look at the NRA's reactionary press conference after the Sandy Hook shootings to realize how out of touch people are with the video game industry, even as they like to assort loads of blame onto it.

As ridiculous as these accusations are and as almost unilaterally condemned as they are by intelligent people, they still sting. ESPECIALLY after the state of this year's E3 expo, where the game industry's love of blood and violence was made painfully aware to all spectators. For reference, check out Kirk Hamilton's charming piece about the many throat-stabbings of E3.

I'm not against violence in games -- far from it, in fact. I think it's almost a necessity in some genres (shooters, hack n' slash, beat em ups, etc). However, the important thing to recognize with violence is that it must have a REASON behind it, be it a design choice, a thematic overture or a way of progressing emotionally.

EDIT: 1/25/2013 so as to flesh my argument out slightly. Michael Abbott wrote a great piece on the sensitive  spot videogames find themselves in. Here's a quote:

"In the current political climate, we who care about games can make a difference, but we must acknowledge and address genuine public concern about games that make killing feel like fun. It’s a moment for us to bring forward our best stories about games - not as a collective “God, I love this game,” or “This game made me cry,” but as careful observers of the deep and vivid experiences games can provide. We must put our faces and reputations behind the games we admire and explain to a skeptical public why violent games like Bioshock, Metro 2033, and The Walking Dead really are about more than plugging baddies with bullets and ray-guns."

Without that reason I mentioned before, excessive violence in games has very little artistic merit to protect itself with. The biggest defense of violence in games must come from people who advocate the creative unique merits of games as both an art and entertainment form.

We can no longer waste time, effort and face defending the preponderance of violence in our medium just out of principle. We need to be smart about it as we move through such delicate times.

Hotline Miami is a great example of violence as a part of a thematic whole. Yes, it may be gruesome at times but the bloodshed is a part of its own crazy unique style.

Spreading to the winds

So it's clear in the year 2013 that we've got a laundry list of obsessions with meaningless violence, stereotypical portrayals of characters, power fantasies and a lot of other wonky shit. As a society. As a people. As an industry. It's up to the writers, designers and players to decide what that means for our medium.

The greatest (or most unsettling, depending on who you talk to) thing about the explosion of the Kickstarter indie gaming funding model is the spread of a kind of infrastructure for smaller game companies. For what may seem like the first time in forever, gamers have a way to fund the things they care about before they even know the proper name of a project. This kind of divergent experience allows for gamers and designers alike create the kinds of change they want to see in a focused, controlled way.

That's a really cutsey way of looking at Kickstarter, but hell -- I'm an optimist. What remains unchanged is what Kickstarter itself calls "the year of the game" -- where gaming became the most-funded category in the site.

When you see incredible gains like these, it's apparent that people are very willing to accept rapid change in funding and distribution models. Steam's success and transformation into a monolithic entity is also a good indicator of this.

Aside: However, whether it's new service, Greenlight, will be good for indie game distribution is yet to be seen.

Consoles, while representative of some of the status quo of the gaming community this year, are also representative of these splitting paths of design. Digital distribution is rapidly becoming a necessary need in the 21st century, as well as integration between electronic devices; something that Nintendo has homed in on with the WiiU.

2012 was definitely a year of change. Real change that I want to be optimistic about. There are tons of problems we still need to face -- many of which we've created ourselves. As well, the industry is pulling in so many different directions that it may very well be impossible to predict the face of gaming in, say, 10 years.

I must say this, however. Even in the midst of all of this beautiful far-reaching progress into the depths of art, design and (regrettably) consumerism, we must remember the cost of progress.

We must advance in our perceptions along with our technology. We must not forget to intelligently integrate all sections of society into this rapidly expanding medium.

We have all of the means to help gaming transcend shitty societal boundaries. We have all of the technology and the creative power to show the world what interactive art truly is.

Let's get to work. Let's grow up together.

(Into fantastic half-human-half-cyborg-half-digital-cloud-beast-half-art-half-videogame-loving superbeings)