The Medium.................................
So often, we in the game development community are envious of other media. In part,
this may be game designers wishing for the respect that other media command in soci-
ety, the “legitimacy” that I spoke of earlier. Others may secretly, subconsciously, or
even openly wish they were working on something other than games. A game designer
may say, “I want my game to have a similar effect on the audience as the movieThe
Godfather!” or “I want people to enjoy playing this game the same way they enjoy lis-
tening to The Jimi Hendrix Experience’sElectric Ladyland!” But this is the wrong
approach to take. The strength of our medium lies in what it does differently from other
media and the emotions it can evoke in the audience that no other art form can. If we
endlessly try to ape other media we will forever be stuck with second-class, derivative
works. Surely Jimi Hendrix did not try to emulate a movie he had seen when he
recordedElectric Ladyland. Similarly, Francis Ford Coppola knew he would have to rad-
ically alter Mario Puzo’s bookThe Godfatherin order to make a good movie out of it.
Indeed, Coppola’s mastery of film allowed him to create a movie significantly better
than the book upon which it is based. Both have nearly the same story, characters, and
even dialog, yet Coppola’s telling of the story cinematically outdid Puzo’s literary tell-
ing in nearly every way. Though the effect a game has on a player may be different than
a book has on a reader, a film has on a viewer, or a song has on a listener, it is not neces-
sarily a worse effect, merely a different one. Computer games have strengths of their
own that we must master if we are to produce the best work possible. Surely our
medium presents challenges for those who choose to work with it, challenges not to be
found in other art forms, challenges we have a duty to face if we hope to be more than
charlatans and conmen.
In his bookUnderstanding Media, Marshall McLuhan is famous for saying,“...the
medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social conse-
quences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ourselves — results from the new
scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new
technology.” McLuhan argues that while people concern themselves with the content
of television shows or plays or music, a medium’s true message comes not from the
content but from the medium itself. Now, I certainly do not claim to be a McLuhan
scholar, yet I cannot help postulating what the nature of our medium of computer games
is, a medium that did not exist when McLuhan wrote those words. The inherently inter-
active nature of computer games creates a mass medium that encourages players to be
active participants in art in ways other media cannot. I cannot help but conclude that the
fundamental message of our medium is one of participation and empowerment.
Game designers make a product that either facilitates the interaction between oth-
ers, in the case of multi-player games, or sets up an interaction between a single person
and the computer, for solo games. In the latter case, it is somewhat incorrect to say that
the true interaction takes place between the person and computer, since the computer
is nothing more than a medium for the interaction; the interaction actually takes place
between the player and the game’s creator. When I spent weeks of my early life alone in
the dark computer room in the back of my parents’ house playingThe Bard’s Taleand
The Bard’s Tale II, I never thought of myself as being alone. In a way I was there with
Michael Cranford, the games’ creator, playing in the world he had made, exploring the
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