Game Over
Posted on November 17, 2004 @ 11:54 in Games
Every once in a while the discussion of games returns to the question whether games are or can be art. For example, the last issue of Edge (143) ran an editorial about this issue. I don't find the question itself very interesting, although it points to the much more interesting issue that games/gamers/gaming are still looking for a positive identity vis-a-vis themselves/itself, but also vis-a-vis society as a whole. An identity film, literature, painting, etc. already have and hence they function as reference material for the discussion of games.
In art in the 1960s there was a movement called "concept art". The idea for/behind a piece of art was considered more important than the actual work of art itself, which was only the embodiment, the manifestation of the idea. The extreme form of this was the artist forgoing making an actual piece of art and instead writing down his/her idea for a piece of art on a card and sticking it on a museum wall, leaving the actual, physical form and function of the artefact to the visitors' imagination.
Here's a concept art videogame that you can play before your mind's eye to your heart's content.
Imagine a lavishly produced game, providing many hours of running-around-and-shooting-stuff gameplay and an epic story. If you're thinking Halo or Half-Life, that's okay, but your own private game universe is fine too. The game has been in development for a couple of years, you've seen the screenshots, you've seen the trailer, you've read the games press's hype and you've started thinking that this game could be the best thing since sliced bread.
Now imagine that you can buy this game for the price of an average game, say 50 euros. You buy the game, you read the booklet on the way home, skipping the epileptic seizure warning and sucking up the dime-a-dozen background story. At home you pop the disc in the drive and you start playing. The game looks just lovely, control is a breeze. You get some target practice on unarmed critters trying to attack you and after seeing the first reassuring "Checkpoint" message, you move into a new area that looks a bit harder with more serious enemies moving about.
You move in, blow a couple of dumb critters away, but you overlook one enemy circling around and attacking you from behind. You get shot and die in a shower of videogame blood. The screen fades to black and says "game over". You press every imaginable button, but the screen stays black with the "game over" message on it. You remove the disc and pop it back in, the game loads, and displays a black screen with the "game over" message. You try many other things to get the game to restart until you realize that if the game's character gets shot, s/he dies, and it's game over for good. You won't be able to restart at the last checkpoint, you won't be able to restart the level, you won't even be able to restart the game. The game is simply over and can not be played again. You got the character killed for good.
It's only a concept and at the moment it's only a virtual card on the wall of the internet, but I would actually love to see someone make this game.
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