[REDACTED] The Dominant Cultural Form of the 21st Century

Recently I was in an email discussion with some friends and colleagues (who will ironically go unnamed here) about the whole ‘game designers getting their name on the box’ debate. Putting the two related (but different) issues of credit standards and the absurdity of boxes themselves aside for another time, I want to talk about what I think having one’s name on the box means. Actually, to say that better, I'd rather not talk about it, because I think the debate is kind of meaningless and backwards looking, but because my perspective on it is so different from the folks with whom I would normally agree, in guess I should clarify my position.

First, I think there are some obvious, surface level debates about designers having their name on the box. There is the debate about whether or not, given the massively collaborative nature of game development, there ever really is a singular vision holder on a game project who deserves sole top billing. There is also the debate about IP ownership and how, since creatives effectively cannot own IP in the current Platform Holder / Publisher / Developer climate, getting the 'right' to have this kind of top billing is basically impossible anyway. There is also the debate about 'how it works in other industries' (ie: Hollywood), and the questions of whether it should work similarly in games. I think these debates are all fairly well trodden. I also happen to think they are all kind of missing the point.

I think the idea of a star developer having his or her name on the box is just subscribing to the same floundering cultural models that the Platform Holders and Publishers have necessarily bought into and staked their futures on. It’s about upholding and participating in the culture of brand, personality and celebrity that is the central driver of the author-centric broadcast culture we’re ultimately in the process of tearing down whether we realize it or not. In some ways, the very idea of the ‘name on the box’, or ‘getting top billing’ is emblematic of what I am calling broadcast culture. An Artist has something to say, He creates a work of Art with a Message, He puts His Name on it and we all consume it. That’s what a painting and a poem and a novel and a play and a film and an album are.

But that’s not what a game is. A game can be that, and that’s why that movie-critic dude was wrong; games can be broadcast culture High Art handed down to the masses by Artists. But as our cultural tastes and sensibilities evolve to appreciate how games mean, we will come to recognize that the stuff in games that speaks deeply to us, that resonates, that makes us weep and rejoice does not come from what the Artist Hath Wrought but comes leaping, unforged, naked and honest from the masterfully conducted runtime, often as much a delight to its coders as to its players. So while games can be Art, even High Art, I think subscribing to a games-as-art perspective is kind of relegating games to a pitiful, sorry existence.

These days, if you attend a game conference, or read a serious essay discussing game culture, or even engage in a moderately rigorous discussion about games, you would not be surprised to hear someone utter the phrase, 'the dominant cultural form of the 21st Century'. The notion that games are the English longbow to the warhorse of television and the armoured knight of cinema is increasingly seen as a real possibility. But while we say it, discuss it's inevitability, ponder it's timeline, and desperately try to monetize it, we don't actually very often talk about what it means. Film and television are in many ways a technological enhancement and hybridization of older broadcast media, such as the novel, the play, or the album, but they are still fundamentally part of the broadcast culture paradigm. Games, I believe, are not part of the same paradigm. Games belong to a different paradigm that includes the oral tradition of storytelling, improvisational music, sport, dance, philosophical debate, improv theatre, and parlour games (among many other cultural forms).

In many ways, the divide is between creative forms that have a means of encoding an authored message, or a notation, where the 'beautiful part' is crafted by an artist and then played back or read by or for the audience from the notation, and creative forms that do not have a notation, and where the 'beautiful part' is created at runtime by those acting within the space described by the form.

I'm sure to attract a legion of pedants with that one, and I'm sure not going to defend the notation/non-notation divide as a rigorously defining point of distinction, but it is a fast litmus test. The distinction is too simple for many reasons; chess and dance and baseball all have notations, for example, and in the case of film, the notation (the images and sounds recorded on the film strip) is hard to distinguish from the work (the projection of the information encoded on the strip as an audio-visual landscape), but the distinction between forms that record their beauty for playback and those that have it dynamically synthesized at runtime can broadly and roughly be delineated there. Let's move on.

Seeing games assume their role as the 'dominant cultural form of the 21st Century' is not merely about the replacement of film and television with 'better film and television that are controlled by a joystick'. It is the wholesale replacement of the author-centric broadcast culture paradigm of 'people who disseminate their beautiful notations for other people to follow' with the totally different cultural paradigm of 'people who beautifully figure out the following step while taking the current one'.

The way I see it, the 'name on the box' is a derivative of the former, broadcast cultural paradigm and does not have an (important) place in a culture driven by the latter paradigm. The reason we cling to the name on the box is because all of our economic, social and political concepts have been inextricably intertwined with broadcast culture for at least 500, and arguably 3500 years, ever since Socrates made the case against the written word and then went and drank a cup of hemlock. Disentangling the idea of the primacy of the author from the work is at least as complicated a cultural revolution as killing God - and look how complicated that's proving to be.

It's not just the governments and the banks and the universities and the corporations and all of the beautiful rich and famous people who you should aspire to be like who have an interest in upholding the name on the box. We all have an interest in it, because even those who suffer under it, and those who are oppressed by it, and those who would fight to see it torn down are scared shitless of what it looks like to wake up in a world without it. The name on the box is comforting because it has been a part of what we are for centuries. What if changing it is a mistake? Without Steven Spielberg, without Stephen King, and without Steve Jobs, where will we find our heroes? Who will inspire us to strive to be better than we are?

I think the answer to that question though, is already well understood. His name is Steve Yzerman or Steve Smith or Steve Nash. People don't go watch the Phoenix Suns play basketball because it's a game designed by Dr. James Naismith. They don't watch it or play it to experience it's design. They go see basketball because it is beautiful to see talented people like Steve Nash play it beautifully, and they play it to perform declarations of self, such as 'I can outmanoeuvre that guy', or 'I can do a lay-up'. And just as we recognize the great authors in the broadcast culture paradigm, we also recognize the great actors in the interactive culture paradigm.

But is it fair that you can't sell a recording of the song 'Happy Birthday to You' without paying some absurd amount of money to license the song from the great great great grandchildren of the dude who wrote it decades ago, but that Steve Nash makes more money every time he bounces a basketball than Naismith made in his entire life? In a sad way, and in a way that I suspect most people will disagree with, and most importantly in a way that makes me scared as hell to try to build the future that I'm talking about when I utter the words 'dominant cultural form of the 21st Century', I think the answer has to be 'yes, that's fair'.

I think it's fair for three reasons.

First, I think it's fair because when I take stock of the most beautiful things in the games I have worked on; a cold-blooded execution of an Andre Hippolyte; an amateur guard blasted down an elevator shaft; a wounded mercenary immolated in grassy field, I have to admit that I am not the person who created those things. They are beautiful, arresting, heartfelt and profound statements about what we are and what we can be, and being witness to them has enriched my life. I am immeasurably proud to have chalked the lines on the fields where those beautiful events unfolded, but I didn't make them.

Second, I think it's fair because the argument of who should be paid for what in all this mess would (I believe) become a moot point if games were to truly become the dominant cultural form of the 21st Century in the way I am talking about. The impact of the cultural transformation that would be required for that to actually happen would reverberate through all of our institutions in such a profound way that they would become unrecognizable. The replacement of author-centric broadcast culture with actor-centric dynamic culture throws the persistence of our current concepts of finance and business and even government into question. As with any revolution, you kind of unfortunately have to accept that you need to figure out how to feed people after the King's head is in the basket, not before.

Finally, I think it's fair because out there, somewhere, there is some kid in elementary school who really wants to grow up and be a game developer like me. He doesn't know who I am, of course, because my name is not on the box, but even despite that, he sees me, or someone like me, as his hero.

My message to that kid is this: I don't want to be your hero. I want you to be your hero.

Comments

[Greg Sanders]

As a political scientist by trade and a gamer by hobby, I think your analogy about feeding the people and the king's head is wrong in an informative manner.

Revolutions aren't really blank slate, the forces that led the revolution and the mechanism by which it was accomplished will both have profound implications for the distribution of power and resources after the revolution is successful. This is not to say that they will be easy or even possible to predict. However, the battles that are fought as part of the emergence will shape the future.

Most of the forces shaping the future will be matters of economic or technological fundamentals. However, if you look at international variation in various medium, there's often a surprising diversity. For example, the economic model for Indian films has often emphasized soundtrack sales rather than ticket sales with obvious implications for the content itself. Those aspects of the dominant cultural form of the 21st century that are not shaped by fundamentals may well be decided by seemingly petty fights over whose names are on boxes.

[Brian Hackbarth]

The Sony commercial 'Michael' hit one of your points very well: how games mean. Every character was championing Michael, from the empty shell military men to archetypical heroes like Drake. Without him, they exist solely as characters in a narrative. With him, they came alive before our eyes.

Even though the characters were chanting his name at the end, all I could think about were the stories the player me created when during my times with these, and many other, games. I was almost a bit disappointed when I started reminiscing, because I realized I couldn't ever truly experience Michael's or any other player's stories, nor could I truly share my own. Then I realized my stories were my own, and I was no longer disappointed, because this is where the art of games lives.

[Bice Dibley]

My interest in names on boxes is selfish; I just want to be able to tell whether a new game from the same studio is actually created by the same people or whether everybody cleared out at the end of the previous game. To stretch the basketball analogy, if the rules of basketball had been handed over to the NHL for a 'reboot' but the name basketball had been kept to keep fans coming back, I'd like to know about it before a puck hit me in the face at the gym.

No matter what the future of gaming, the systems in which players act will always be designed, and certain individuals or groups will be better at creating those designs than others. As a player, the ability to discriminate new games based on previous experience with a designer/design group is crucial simply because of the volume of new content being created. Recognition, praise, and money for the author is of secondary concern.

[Thomas Grové]

Excellent. You've crystalize a framework for me! A few years ago at GDC, when everyone was talking about games as art, I had many conversations in my head. One of the things I thought was "Games turn players into performers, and those performers are artists" but I was missing the whole two paradigm thing. Thanks!

[Zaratustra]

Author-centric? If anything, modern culture is presenter-centric - it's all about the people that deliver culture to you, not the ones that made it.

Count how many actor names you can remember in one minute.

Now directors.

Now writers.

[Dlydj]

Games-as-art has already shifted in the social consciousness. The reference of the "Michael" clip is tantamount in the discussion (even though they should have put Sephiroth in there for badass purposes). Neil Burger directing "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune," Ubisoft going into the movie business to bring us "Assassin's Creed" and "Splinter Cell," means that those talented teams that brought us these adventures can stand up knowing that their spark has caught fire.

We already salute their efforts and the plenty others that follow which continue to make us play the game.

Really dope post, Mr. Hocking!

- HF

[Travis Williams]

Games are a collaborative creative process. It is not an individual but a collective skill set that creates a exceptional product. The best products come from teams that share a common vision, not from an individual who dictates said vision. You can almost credit a development environment more than an individual. I think this is why I always appreciated Blizzard games that credit the entire company for design. I liken this to a sports organization. You can credit a system or environment just as much as the individuals.

Design comes from every discipline on the team and is ratified by other disciplines. Code, UI, Design, Scripting.. etc I can go on. I have never worked on a project where all design ideas came from design (or any other discipline) alone. It’s impractical. An idea or concept needs to be presented to the collective and ratified through the collective efforts of the entire team for it to truly be awesome.

I have an exercise I do when I manage a team. You split the disciplines up and ask them what the product is about. If you get different answers you got a lot of work to do. If you get the same answer then chances are you are on your way to a great product.

Development teams are TEAMS. Anyone who wants to put his/her name above the team clearly doesn’t “get it” in my opinion. I think being part of that collective should be enough. Within that team people know who the larger contributors are. If that isn’t enough for that individual then he /she clearly isn’t a team player period.

[Will]

Actor-centric games are not true full simulations. They are representative simulations of experiences for the player. What aspects of the simulated experience the design chooses to simplify or leave out all together are the choice of the designers behind the product. Different designers color the games they make based on these choices even when their focus is not on delivering and authored narrative.

If Will Wright, Sid Meier and Clint Hocking all made a game about providing a player with the experience of being a police officer each game would turn out very differently. With several games released from each of these designers we have enough of an appreciation for the differences in style to being able to picture how these games would differ.

The 'name on the box' debate is somewhat tangential to this discussion. Because the inherent coloring of the simulation by authors I'm not sure if it benefits the player to be kept in the dark about who created the game, even if the focus is on a non-narrative experience.

Additionally there is the issue of the Publisher/Developer power dynamic and how the hiding of names of the creative team behind a project continues to consolidate power in publisher hands. Consumers have no way to publicly demand additional games from people they cannot identify.

[Travis Williams]

I would submit that it's hard the hide the identity of a good TEAM for more than one iteration of a product. The market doesn't allow for it. It's rare when a good/great team isn't aware of its "street value" Companies are too hungry for sure fire products to not bow down to a good development team's demands.

Will, Clint or Sid are known for making specific types of products... but they have to have the right team around them. I don't want Dan Marino on my volleyball team. I also don't want Will Wright making my Mortal Kombat sequel.

[Abestein]

It is nice to read a voicing of the seemingly obvious but often ignored relationship between sports and videogames. Given your appreciation of hockey (albeit unfortunately for the Habs), I'm not surprised to see it articulated by you. Thanks!

[Mark N.]

The rhetoric of newness here doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Cultural player-value-creation and artistic author-creation are both really, really, old. I'm not sure whether painting or sports is older, but neither one is particularly new. I'm not sure why we have to pick one, either. Why can't the 21st-century be about exploring videogames in various ways? To me it's not obvious why one kind of exploration is more or less 20th-century; "videogames as a new site for folk games" and "videogames as a new artistic medium" seem to be on pretty similar footing as far as newness/oldness goes, as they're both about asking what (if anything) videogames bring to very old forms of culture.

[Emil Danielsen]

I think you are on the right track - but that there is still some discussion and work to be done. It seems that in envisioning a paradigm change centered on culture and economics, you are starting with the wrong variables. Seems the current trent of work (or functional) differentiation is going to continue, due to our enhanced capabilities in sorting through information. In other words - I believe that our culture will be centered even more around invididuals being formed into groups based on common interest, doing their thing and then disbanding. In a culture as fluid and dynamic as this, people need markers to identify continuity - so that their dislikes and likes will continue. In a world without boxes, this could be a website - or some other hub; but the result is the sam. The need for knowing peoples names, and the wish for doing so, will continue to be important.

On a smaller time scale - I don't really think there is much of a need for names on boxes - because most of us now know that creating a tripple AAA title is not a one- man- job; but I'd love to see more in- house documentaries that feature the talent working on the game. Named talent.