How to Play a Video Game by Pippin Barr

How to Play a Video Game by Pippin Barr

Author:Pippin Barr [Barr, Pippin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Netculture
ISBN: 9781877551314
Google: UHmuXwAACAAJ
Amazon: 1877551317
Publisher: Awa Press
Published: 2011-04-14T22:00:00+00:00


LIKE TEARS IN RAIN

Holding Yorda's hand, you pull her into a faltering run and the two of you rush over a bridge towards freedom. Suddenly the nightmarish castle in which you’ve both been trapped emits a bolt of lightning. It hits Yorda, stopping her in her tracks, and throws you to the ground. Unable to resist the mysterious force Yorda collapses, and as you scramble to your feet the bridge splits in half, moving the two of you steadily away from one another. You have only a moment to decide between running for freedom and trying to rescue Yorda. The gap widens. Eyes fixed on Yorda’s receding form, you sprint towards the edge and leap …

Although it is popular to characterise video games as desensitising and the people who play them as robotic, games such as ICO, described above, and many others are intensely emotional experiences. A video game, rather than transforming a player into a machine-like extension of itself, tends to have the opposite result: the game becomes an extension of us. If players are robots, then rather than the single-minded Daleks of Doctor Who chanting, ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’ we are more like the Nexus6 model in Blade Runner, talking of tears in rain.

Even the more ‘trivial’ games that are often cited when games are criticised contain real emotional experiences that should not be discounted. When Pong and Space Invaders arrived to obsess the world they were quite basic games, yet they created a powerful experience that people couldn’t seem to get enough of. Partly this is due to the highly charged states such games induce – the thrill of victory, the panic of impending defeat, the constant pleasure of progress. These are not subtle emotions but they tap into what it means to be human. Life isn’t always a Jane Austen novel, with still waters running deep. Sometimes we need a little Lee Child or Tom Clancy.

Video games present us with emotional situations in a way no other medium can because we are the ones who make the decisions and live with the consequences. Whether it’s the fist-pumping roar of victory over aliens in Space Invaders or the poignancy of running back to save a dear friend in ICO, you, as the player of the game, are in the driver’s seat. When the boy in ICO stands looking at Yorda recede from him on the other side of the bridge, that’s you. You feel the emotions associated with your choice. You choose whether or not to leap.

It would be a mistake, though, to think that channelling such extreme emotional scenarios is all games do. Shadow of the Colossus, another game by the same development studio, serves as a good introduction to the idea that video games can also be highly subtle, not only triggering feelings but leading us to question our actions. Shadow of the Colossus is, at heart, just another story about a boy trying to save a girl. In this case the girl has died and the boy, Wander, has taken her to a mystical land in order to bring her back to life.



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