TRACY KING / SCEPTICAL ANALYSIS
OPINION
Gamer and science enthusiast Tracy King dissects the evidence and statistics behind popular media stories surrounding tech and gaming @tkingdot
I
was recently asked to chair a panel at Manchester
International Festival discussing gaming as a force
for good. My panellists were Paloma Dawkins, a
game designer in the USA; Hardeep Pandhar, an artist who
had created an extraordinary installation exploring
gamergate; and Dan Hett, a games writer and developer.
Dan’s brother Martyn died in the Manchester Arena
bombing in May 2017. Losing someone in a terrorist attack
is an unimaginable pain, but Dan has tried to create at least
a small bit of good in response. He channels his grief into
making games. As I played Dan’s interactive fiction game ‘C
ya laterrr’ – named after the final text his brother sent – in
preparation for the panel, I experienced his loss, and the panic
of that final evening, along with him. It was heartbreaking.
This is unusual for a gaming experience. Games are meant
to be fun, right? Even the scary, abstract or overtly political
games – from Silent Hill to Flower to Papers, Please – give
you a fun mechanic with the message. But Dan’s games defy
being called fun.
Likewise, Paloma Dawkins’ game Songs of the Lost isn’t
exactly a pleasant experience. I watched a playthrough video
in which the guy playing exclaimed, ‘Hey I thought this was
meant to be fun!’ But it isn’t a horror game, it’s just weird, new
and unsettling. Despite the not-fun-ness, he played through
to the end. He had a satisfying gaming experience, maybe
even a good one, but not one he necessarily considered fun.
As indie platforms such as itch.io have gained popularity,
so has the concept of experiential gaming. The availability
of open source software such as Twine has opened up the
writing and developing of games to non-developers, and
helped to push the boundary away from just ‘profitable and
fun!’ and into ‘artistic expression’. Plus, like all art forms, the
end result can vary across different people. As someone who
has personal experience of grief, I had a different response to
Dan Hett’s work than someone who hasn’t. Both responses
are valid, but it was interesting to suddenly notice that I’d
brought some emotional baggage into a game.
I can’t call that fun, and yet I can’t bring myself to dislike
it either. There was a sort of catharsis in letting my own
experiences, emotions and personal politics inform my
response to a game, when normally I’d just be button-mashing
or clicking impatiently to get to the enjoyable bit. Dan’s next
game is about extremism, which again doesn’t sound fun, but
I’m looking forward to being challenged by it.
If you’d asked me last month what makes a game, I’d
have said that fun is an essential component (or at least the
intention to be fun – side-eye to games that are meant to
be fun but aren’t even close). What would be the point of a
game if it isn’t fun? Even when games deal with themes of
loss and death (such as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and
Firewatch), it’s just subtext via a fun experience.
But I no longer think games have to be fun, any more than
I think novels or films have to be fun. I’ll still use games for
escapism and relaxation, but I’ll also be seeking out games
that challenge me in other ways. It’s a brave, new, un-fun
world. And that’s a good thing.DO GAMES HAVE
TO BE FUN?
After chairing a panel on gaming as a force for good,
Tracy King challenges the notion that games have to be fun