Some thoughts on gaming
When I painted At its Dawn some months back (my does time fly!), it was an attempt to sort of reverse engineer a world from a game. Yet the guys at Tiberian Dawn, which claim the piece as their foremost inspiration, seem to have missed the point completely, and are just making another typical C&C1 to C&C3 mod.
The world is big, a game is small. It is this relationship which usually results in developers and designers summarizing a larger picture, especially so if the game is based on real-world events and subjects, into something much more compact, comprehensive and representative due to the limits imposed by human nature (attention span, information capacity, ability to micro-manage and multi-task etc) and general social, scientific and technological development (personal growth, pop culture shifts, geopolitical polarization, better graphics processors, smarter operating systems etc). When it was released in 1995, the original Command & Conquer reflected this very much - we could be talking about sound, graphics, gameplay, video, skill, depth, and they were all limited in their ways - yet there were aspects which proved to be endearing, be it the spirit of the game as influenced by its content material, a certain dark humour, or the storytelling methods employed. I believe that we have had enough advancement in benchmarks and boundaries which should have resulted in more liberty being taken by ways of not just nostalgic rehashing and reinterpreting of old concepts, but refreshing them in a manner that truly reflects the limits (or a lack thereof) which we now face in 2007.
Just as how a FPS game developer would not include every weapon to be found in the world in his game, neither would the RTS developer in his right mind include every military tactic or environmental dynamic in his game, even if he could, because it is simply too tedious and abundant with overlapping redundancy in light of the purpose of creating a game. In most cases he only puts in what he deems necessary for his game to be enjoyable and challenging when the player is presented with scenarios and objectives. Yet we can be sure that the Tiberium story is so much larger than what the games themselves presented, regardless of whether this belief had originated from our imagination or that of Westwood Studios, because obviously there are ideas which have survived far longer than the on-screen pixel. This was what I hoped to demonstrate with the painting - injecting little things that add richness and believability to a fictional world, building upon said game's setting as a platform for commentary and exposition. So I fail to see why are we, as fans, modders, and people, still harping on the same old game "icons" with childish furore, Medium Tanks, Recon Bikes and Flame Tanks, when instead with our intellect and maturity can be transpiring what fictional organisations like the Brotherhood of Nod and Global Defense Initiative stood for, and make a fresh and interesting game out of that? Just choose an adjective, any word, to describe a faction, and you can do a thousand things with that. I think we are ready in this day and age to make games which properly dissertate broader issues - morality, politics, religion, environment, education. This is why I'm really dissatisfied with Tiberium Wars, not because it's an ass-ugly, horribly unplayable game (which it isn't, by the way), but because it could've been so much more, it's as if EALA was oblivious to the insult of intelligence sent to itself and its fans. Electronic Arts used to have "challenge everything" as its corporate motto - despite it not being reflected in most of the games it developed or published - would it hurt for a studio which claims to want to do the best for the franchise, to even attempt challenging the limits, and be somewhat innovative outside of the by-now usual graphical overhauls or superficial "gameplay improvements"?
But back to the Tiberian Dawn mod, I don't blame them really, they are entitled to making a mod any way they like (isn't that the whole point of modding a game?) and I cannot expect them to think and see things the way I do. And of course, because they are making a mod, they're at liberty to alter and edit things when and where they need to as they go along. Neither am I suggesting that there is no room for games that do not take themselves seriously (because there are plenty of bad ones that take themselves too seriously). Perhaps it is just part of growth that has had me changing expectations, perhaps I have truly outgrown this community and medium, and maybe certain going-ons in my life have left me craving for more intelligent interaction in the games I play. But does not everyone grow? Are we to forever remain stagnant, stuck in the same perspective towards electronic gaming and game development as some misogynist, pubescent, violent pastime?
This past week, Derelict Studios went bust due to internal dispute - for a short time, and seems will be back soon - but somehow I didn't feel a thing; not distressed, not worried nor relieved, despite not being there to see it happen. I've been so desensitised and distanced from everything, in fact I don't even do any real modding these days save for making visualisation and conceptualisation work for a couple other mods elsewhere, that it grew into a place more stifling than motivating, especially with the slow forming hierarchy that made working especially stressful in a way it never should have been. I think when dealing with such work, environment is important, and so are the relationships one forms with the people in that structure, these two factors kind of fall on each other for a team to create something truly good. And that's something, I feel, the collective has lost over the past couple of years.
