The Secret Lair

I’ll admit it, I loves me some video games. I was one of those kids who, around age 11, was plastered to our Curtis Mathes cabinet television,¹ playing Atari Pac-Man on our Sears game system so many times that I adjusted the contrast and brightness, making the ghosts invisible just to make the game harder. I still have the carts for it, as well as many more collected from my days working at Goodwill², and I still have my Sega Genesis (with CD), SNES and Commodore 64c in my basement– though I haven’t cracked them open in a long time, thanks to emulators.³

I was never, though, much of a first-adopter. The SNES and Sega I bought at second-hand shops, and the fact that I have a Commodore 64c⁴ tells you something as well. I’m the same way with games. I have a hard time letting myself spend more than twenty dollars on a video game. There’s nothing out there that makes me scream, “I MUST HAVE THIS NOW!” If I end up in a department store, I usually eye past the discount and clearance shelves in the electronics department to see what’s been cast aside for bigger and better things. Found myself a combo pack of Ovlivion & Bioshock for $20 that way.⁵  Better, in my opinion, than the $100 I would have spent on the two when they first came out. They’re still fun to play you know, even when they’re a year or two old.

As a matter of fact, I just finished, about six months ago, Half Life 2, which I got as a Steam gift almost a year previously. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and since I’m a late-goer, had plenty of resources on hand for the few sticky spots⁶ I ran into. I’m currently in the process of replaying it, and right now I’m in the middle of earning the ‘grav gun only’ achievement in Ravenholm, which I’m learning is a pain in the ass, but reunites me with my favourite weapon in the game – and maybe of all time – grav gun + circular saw blade. I had one single blade for so long, I thought about naming it.

Which brings me to a question: What’s the quality mark of replayability in a game? Barring short-term, arcade-style twitch games that demand multiple plays, of course. I have no idea, but I know what I like. Sometimes it’s just availability, or lack thereof of other games. Sometimes it’s just the thrill of the aspect, like in Descent and its ilk, which I’d played through many times⁷. Others… I dunno. For some reason, I’ve played Super Metroid for the SNES a good 10 times. Other games I’ve played and never thought twice about after. Chrono Trigger is the only RPG-style game I’ve ever repeated.

What games have you played the heck out of? What’s worth repeating? And, out of curiosity, what retro consoles do you have that are still in working order?

1. with fancy push-button channel-changing technology! [↩]
2. though I don’t have a working system– anyone have a spare they’re not using? [↩]
3. the 13-year-old in the house is eyeing them closely, though, looking for some retro gaming experience [↩]
4. stay a while… stay FOREVER! [↩]
5. not that I’ve had the time to play much of either, as yet [↩]
6. mainly the second swarm of Combines, where it’s you and three auto guns. Spent two hours on that one. [↩]
7. and will again, once I get the revamped version up and running [↩]

Last week, renowned film critic Roger Ebert posted an article titled “Video games can never be art,” in which he posited that video games are not art and will not become art during the lifetime of any gamer drawing breath today. As one might imagine—especially if one is an avid video game player—the chorus of responses to Mr. Ebert’s article are not exactly singing in harmony with him. As of April 16th, there were more than 2,600 comments on the article, the bulk of them disagreeing with Mr. Ebert’s claim.

Let me go on record as being very much on the fence with respect to the question of whether video games are (or can ever be) art. I’m firmly in the “I don’t know art, but I know what I like” camp. Personally, I feel if I’m enjoying something created by someone else, then that something is probably art.¹ I will cop to that being a very unsophisticated definition, but as a great nautical strongman once said, “I yam what I yam,” and what I yam ain’t very sophisticated.

I don’t take umbrage with Mr. Ebert or his opinion,² nor do I take issue with the gamers who offer their rational, reasonable arguments in defense of video games; I’ve seen some responses that are thoughtful, considered and present compelling comparisons between video games and more “traditional” art forms such as jazz and classical music.

Unfortunately, I’ve also seen a commenter named Lujo insult Ebert at length, in terms most would consider obscene (not to mention coprophiliac), without offering anything even faintly resembling a cogent argument supporting video games as an art form. It’s childish, puerile name-calling for the sake of name-calling during which the commenter asserts that Mr. Ebert “cannot take a real criticism or argue his case”, while spectacularly failing to even attempt an argument of his own. To which Ebert responds, “this comment approaches art, but doesn’t…quite…make it.”

Lujo’s comment may represent an extreme, but the insults and disrespect aren’t limited to anonymous commenters on Mr. Ebert’s blog. Jerry “Tycho” Holkins, writer of the immensely popular webcomic, Penny Arcade, referred to the article as “reeking ejaculate,” and then proceeded to call Mr. Ebert to the mat on his approach to the fine art of arguing.³ Rather than following with an intelligent, coherent response that encourages discourse, Holkins dismisses Mr. Ebert’s opinion as “generational bullshit”, which is both ironic and telling, as it demonstrates perfectly that the generation Holkins calls his own lacks respect and class.

When did a simple difference of opinion about something so trivial become grounds for a personal attack? At what point did “I don’t agree with you, thus you are pond scum” become a standard tool of debate? Are polite disagreement and rational discourse fated to be extinguished by the meteor that will ultimately mean the extinction of “dinosaurs” like Roger Ebert?⁴

1. Thus, I have no issue with Subway employing “Sandwich Artists”. [↩]
2. I will say that I’m not certain he selected the best point to his counterpoint in Kellee Santiago, whose TED talk provided the framework upon which the argument against video games as art was built; Ms. Santiago admits as much in  her response to Mr. Ebert’s article. [↩]
3. Nowhere does Holkins mention that proper form demands the flinging of personal insults as an opening gambit. [↩]
4. So-called by no less than seven people in the comments on “Video games will never be art”. [↩]