It's pretty rare I play a video game that's so good I'm inspired to write poetry about it, but God of War was just that game - (I mean, come on, it's Greek mythology; that's the stuff of poetry.) And since a lot of what we know about that subject comes from Homer and Virgil anyway, at least the stuff that I know, there was just some kind of a resonance there I couldn't explain. I played the game and felt this sense of blank verse just sort of, um, welling up inside of me.
So I sat down and churned out about fifty or so lines of unrhymed, iambic pentameter, with droning bits like "Kratos stood above the raging sea" and "the gods do not forget the song of Kratos," but I won't be punishing anyone with that stuff here. Oh, no, no. I'm only bringing it up because, to be honest, it's sort of rare that a video game inspires any sort of creativity in me at all; in fact it's so unusual that it gave me wicked pause and forced me to think a little more deeply about the game and just what it was that made it so deeply affecting - and so good.
Sure it could come down to the same old basics of gameplay, visual aspect and storyline. But lots of games have good gameplay: PC games Diablo II, Total War, and Civ 3 come to mind and that's just scratching the surface and good graphics aren't that hard to find either. Having said that though I have to say that of all the games I've ever played none of them had a storyline that stood out as well as God of War. The storyline in God of War was such a rarity that sometimes I forgot I was playing a game at all because I had become so deeply immersed. There was a point where the cinematic aspect of the game and the interactive aspect of the game merged and became - as trite as it sounds - one, and this was a new experience for me.
So while I'm tempted to say it was the storyline that did it for me, I don't think the storyline alone could have accomplished that; this was truly a case of the sum being greater than all the parts, and I think we may be witnessing the birth of a new art form here. Sure you can't really say that about 98.27% of all games out there yet (see I can make up statistics too), but that's true of movies too, and no one can seriously say that movies don't hit the high art mark from time to time. We don't dismiss them for simply being movies and at some point in the future we won't be doing that with video games either.
Currently (at the time of this writing) Wikipedia defines Art as "the process or product of deliberately and creatively arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." This is worth thinking about in the context of video games.
I'm tempted to replace the word "or" with "and" though. Lots of things, including plain old gameplay, can appeal to the senses. Hell, even Pac Man appealed to the senses but I would never call it art; it was just a game. So it's definitely possible - and mostly expected - to make a game that appeals to the senses only. But if a video game can appeal to the senses and to the emotions - the high emotions even, like magnanimity, stoic pride and divine awe for example, then why wouldn't we call it art? And while God of War had plenty of things that appealed to the senses, it also had an emotional effect and a strong one at that.
Of course it's also possible for games to have individual elements that meet this definition while the game as a whole still fails to deliver, but I don't think God of War falls in that category, although individual elements of the game could easily stand on their own (especially the cut scenes and one in particular, the one with Kratos' wife hissing "you did this for yourself," her horrific eyeless sockets crying blood.)
No, in the final analysis, it was the game's appeal to emotion that made it stand out, and I think that future games should follow David Jaffe's example. If you're going to bother with storylines at all then why not go ahead and do it right? Because a good storyline, one that draws the reader in and makes them feel something, is the difference between a good gaming experience and a truly memorable gaming experience, an experience that stays with the player and colors their perception of every single game they ever play. Games like that do more than entertain; games like that leave a mark.
And sometimes they even inspire bad poetry.
So I sat down and churned out about fifty or so lines of unrhymed, iambic pentameter, with droning bits like "Kratos stood above the raging sea" and "the gods do not forget the song of Kratos," but I won't be punishing anyone with that stuff here. Oh, no, no. I'm only bringing it up because, to be honest, it's sort of rare that a video game inspires any sort of creativity in me at all; in fact it's so unusual that it gave me wicked pause and forced me to think a little more deeply about the game and just what it was that made it so deeply affecting - and so good.
Sure it could come down to the same old basics of gameplay, visual aspect and storyline. But lots of games have good gameplay: PC games Diablo II, Total War, and Civ 3 come to mind and that's just scratching the surface and good graphics aren't that hard to find either. Having said that though I have to say that of all the games I've ever played none of them had a storyline that stood out as well as God of War. The storyline in God of War was such a rarity that sometimes I forgot I was playing a game at all because I had become so deeply immersed. There was a point where the cinematic aspect of the game and the interactive aspect of the game merged and became - as trite as it sounds - one, and this was a new experience for me.
So while I'm tempted to say it was the storyline that did it for me, I don't think the storyline alone could have accomplished that; this was truly a case of the sum being greater than all the parts, and I think we may be witnessing the birth of a new art form here. Sure you can't really say that about 98.27% of all games out there yet (see I can make up statistics too), but that's true of movies too, and no one can seriously say that movies don't hit the high art mark from time to time. We don't dismiss them for simply being movies and at some point in the future we won't be doing that with video games either.
Currently (at the time of this writing) Wikipedia defines Art as "the process or product of deliberately and creatively arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." This is worth thinking about in the context of video games.
I'm tempted to replace the word "or" with "and" though. Lots of things, including plain old gameplay, can appeal to the senses. Hell, even Pac Man appealed to the senses but I would never call it art; it was just a game. So it's definitely possible - and mostly expected - to make a game that appeals to the senses only. But if a video game can appeal to the senses and to the emotions - the high emotions even, like magnanimity, stoic pride and divine awe for example, then why wouldn't we call it art? And while God of War had plenty of things that appealed to the senses, it also had an emotional effect and a strong one at that.
Of course it's also possible for games to have individual elements that meet this definition while the game as a whole still fails to deliver, but I don't think God of War falls in that category, although individual elements of the game could easily stand on their own (especially the cut scenes and one in particular, the one with Kratos' wife hissing "you did this for yourself," her horrific eyeless sockets crying blood.)
No, in the final analysis, it was the game's appeal to emotion that made it stand out, and I think that future games should follow David Jaffe's example. If you're going to bother with storylines at all then why not go ahead and do it right? Because a good storyline, one that draws the reader in and makes them feel something, is the difference between a good gaming experience and a truly memorable gaming experience, an experience that stays with the player and colors their perception of every single game they ever play. Games like that do more than entertain; games like that leave a mark.
And sometimes they even inspire bad poetry.
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