Roar!

February 14th - March 5th 2012

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PLAYING FOR PLEASURE, PAYING FOR ART; IN DEFENCE OF GAMING Max Edwards

I have a confession to make: I play video games. I know that this sounds like such a typically male thing to do, but I really play video games. They are more than just a bit of fun to me – more than a quick game of FIFA here or Call of Duty there - they are a hobby, a major activity in my life. I know an awful lot about what’s come out and what’s coming out. I have a love of turn-based strategy. And if you don’t know what that is, welcome to 95% of the population.

For the longest time, for some reason I was embarrassed by this. Someone would ask me back in sixth what my evening was like, and I’d say I spent it watching TV, or a movie, or reading, when actually I was playing Europa Universalis III. Even now, there is a residual embarrassment there – look at the first line I wrote in this article: “I have a confession”. A confession.

An act of telling someone of an implicitly illicit act. There is no love lost between the “real” world and that of a gamer; they are judged, thought of as “sad” or “unsociable”, branded with the negative colloquialism “geek”, so recently taken up and celebrated by those to whom it applies. But what really is the problem?

I’ve come to the conclusion that my passion is something to be encouraged, expounded on, told to people as though I had a passion in modern art, or parkour, or vinyl records. What really is the problem with video games?

The common conception of the video game is that it is mindless, merely shooting others, or playing football; it is associated with violence and harm in the media, with the power to show that those who engage with it are somehow “less” than others. In recent weeks, the Democratic candidate for the State Senate in Maine’s District 25 has been called out for playing World of Warcraft, with her Republican opponents claiming that it raises questions about the “maturity and ability to make serious decisions” that Coleen Lachowicz can employ.

And yet she is not alone – nearly 50 million people have played World of Warcraft. Over 9 million play the

game steadily, a game which came out 8 years ago.

However, the popularity of a game, or of gaming itself, is by no means the only factor in why it should be taken seriously. Games can be an art form in and of themselves. With the emergence of simple methods of online sale such as Steam and GamersGate, the independent games market (“Indie Games”) is enjoying its biggest boom ever. Independent of publisher pressure, indie games are free to take whatever direction they choose, and can be overnight successes through word of mouth alone. This freedom from responsibility, from pressure, from a desperate need to feed a company’s bottom line results in games such as Limbo or Dear Esther, in which the game world itself is a work of art.

In Limbo, the user takes control of a silhouetted character faced with various challenges in a superbly stylised land situated on the liminal spaces of reality. With a background of forest, or the wasteground of industry, the user is faced with brutal and vis-

ceral deaths, portrayed in a startlingly beautiful way. By placing Limbo in this twilight world of silhouettes and startling contrast, the player is at once removed and yet at one with the game he is playing, able to appreciate the beauty of each death, while still feeling its brutality.

with detail, the user has no start point, no obvious end point, and is free to roam the Island at will. While he does so, and on discovery on various points of interest, the tale of the protagonist is told in voiceover as flashes of memory come back. It is an exercise in storytelling, in non-linearity, in beauty and perception, in how one

The bold stylings of Limbo create a visceral imaginary world Dear Esther, on the other hand, is a game without plot. Situated on a beautifully rendered island, littered

approaches an open space, a blank canvas. In short, it is art.

While Dear Esther and Limbo show that gaming can become art in the traditional sense of a visual perception of beauty, “bigger” games like Skyrim or Minecraft give a different sense of art; that of storytelling. The blank canvas of Dear Esther is given a literal meaning in Minecraft, where one can construct and destroy, create and kill with impunity in a curiously beautiful 1990s block world. Procedurally generated worlds (generated randomly, using various algorithms) produce a different experience wherever one is, and can create moments of unscripted beauty in and of themselves. I’ve seen some astonishing landscapes in Minecraft, things that have made me go “Oh, wow!” in a way that nature in the real world does as well. However, the real draw that this freedom brings is storytelling – the user creates their own story, brings it to life their own way. Skyrim allows this freedom as well, though in a more scripted way – with over a million words of text and a hundred hours of voice recording in the game, it is estimated to take up to 150 hours to complete in its entirety, all the while telling of the world it imagines in glorious detail, aided and abetted by the visual as well the aural.

This brief overview of the art of videogame creation only takes in two forms of art – those of presentation and storytelling. However, the real wonders of videogames are that they are infinite. As long as there is an audience to appreciate what hs been created, as long as there is an element of challenge and competition, anything can be created – these can be as diverse as an ultra-realistic fortress simulator (Dwarf Fortress) or a procedurally generated racer based on the music that you are currently listening to (Audiosurf), and millions more in between.

So next time you talk to someone you know who enjoys gaming, don’t dismiss it out of hand. Approach it as you would someone who enjoys fiction, or military history, of Celtic pottery – as a hobby every bit as engaging as one of yours, and with all the potential and ability to be and become a work of art.

“LIKE THE NME, BUT NOT SHITE”

Niel Jones Whisper it gently, but as of now King’s has its own version of the NME. It’s the KCLE. Only, as its editors say, “like the NME, but not shite”. The KCLE-XPRESS, named in such a way as to make this play on words possible, is to be published and distributed within King’s on a monthly basis from November, and as such is seeking an outrageous cast of dandies and drunks to write for it. There are also a few delectable editing positions available for the particularly feisty.

You might be able to spot a few copies of the first run (printed in September for Freshers’ Week) of the paper around the Strand being thrown as paper aeroplanes. But if

not, and you’d like to get your hands on one, you can email the editors at the addresses below. They’ll be happy to send you a PDF copy.

The KCLE has a flexible policy regarding content and actively encourages creativity and freedom in writing style from contributors.

No previous experience is necessary, and editorial guidance is given if requested.

The paper will publish articles on everything arts-orientated from classical music through indie to gypsyswing and burlesque.

Amongst other things, it will feature columns on culinary delights and the

latest art cinema, up-to-date news on the ongoing copyright wars from the darkest innards of the entertainment industry, cultural and political news, and a regular listings section that will draw attention to the most brilliant and diabolical of London events.

As with Roar!, the perks of writing for the KCLE are of course are the odd freeby, but it hopes its writers will still take a critical stance towards those who offer them bananas and blowjobs, so that puff pieces never surface.

Anyone whose interest is piqued enough to want to inquire further can email the editors at: neil.n.jones@ kcl.ac.uk or anna.siemiaczko@kcl. ac.uk.