This Thread Is A Lie

[pauljeremiah]

On a night out in Edinburgh with the lads there started an argument about the next pub to visit. One suggestion was to head to a particularly unsavoury bar, leading me to gesture down the street where it was and say in a worried voice "We Don't Go To Ravenholm".

What surprised me - aside from the fact I have geeky enough friends who I'd expect to find this sort of comment amusing - was that the reference was completely lost on a large section of the group. Even people I considered to be hardcore gamers. After a round of the people finding the comment amusing explaining the reference to those who didn't it became clear that one of the top rated games of all time had only been played by a small minority of a crowd of people, and even then, some of those who had played it hadn't reached the section I was referencing.

Roll forward, and watching the reaction to Portal across the internet, and the ubiquity of images of The Weighted Companion Cube and "The Cake Is A Lie" in sigs and avatars and I'm struck by just how difficult it is for games to achieve a cultural critical mass. That Portal has provided a number of memes to keep the Internet ticking over is admirable, and is probably down to the brevity of the game, the quality of the writing, and the popularity of the Orange Box - but even then, I can't imagine exchanging a cake-is-a-lie joke with my work canteen staff.

The problem games face is there are simply so many of them, with such a high price of entry (the hardware and software costs) and with such demands on time that a fractured group of fans is inevitable. You only have to see the granularity of a typical gaming Internet forum to see how many different groups and sub-groups of gamers exist. This is a real barrier to gaming progressing to a state where AAA titles are more than just blockbusters for the small clique of gamers who purchase and play them, but are wider discussion tools across the general media. At the moment, the cultural significance of many games is simply proportional to their schlock content (e.g. the amount of violence or sex), and until more games like Portal come along, that provide intelligent meme laden narratives that a majority of gamers can play that is how the general representation of gaming will stay. It is difficult for gamers to unite behind the worthiest games to push our hobby forwards if half of us haven't played the same games.

Whether we need shorter games, better games, cheaper games or all three I think Portal is telling us something important about gaming.

Thoughts?

[dropK1CK_ninJA]

I agree cheaper price, higher quality and shorter. Perhaps higher replay value would help too! Portal is highly replayable.

[Jes-ka]

I will simply comment about my experience as a gamer.

My family was poor, so when I was about 6 or 7 the opportunity arose to win an NES by selling the most raffle tickets in my grade tier (K-4th), my parents worked their asses off to help me sell sell sell! And so I won.

But after that point, I never owned a modern console/pc until I was 15 years old. It wasn't until much later did I learn that I had missed out on the more popular games like Half Life and Doom. I tried to catch up as time went on but with a limited budget and almost no time (I blame college) I still have a huge list of games to play that I should have played a long time ago.

The sad thing is that this list is so long I fear I will never catch up. The funny thing is that I keep thinking I will play them all over summer break... but I'm not in school anymore!

So what would have made everything different? Money was the biggest factor preventing me from having a large library of games. Not just because my parents would not spend any on them, but I just didn't earn enough even when I had a job. Time was not a factor back then but it is now... but that still would not discourage me from buying a game that required a large amount of time invested into it.

I play til I am done playing, regardless of the length of the game.

[Ed Kirchgessner]

I too missed out on a number of "classics", I'm afraid -- like Jes-ka, I went through much of adolescence without a console (or a particularly capable computer) to call my own. When I began playing video games again during my freshman year of college, I started with decades-old console games (Micro Machines, Super Mario 3 and Nintendo Ice Hockey became fast favorites). I found a Sega Genesis at the used record store for $10 in 1999, and I've been a diehard console fanatic ever since.

My focus on console games has meant that I've missed a number of important experiences in the PC realm -- I only know HalfLife through its barely serviceable port to the PlayStation 2, and I've been waiting two weeks now for my copy of Myst to arrive from a particularly slow e-bay seller.

The recent casual games craze seems to be opening up the pastime to a wider audience -- there's a lot to be said for heading to a bar on the weekend and striking up a conversation with a total stranger about Guitar Hero or Wii Sports. Although gamers will always have their own inside jokes and treasured game references, there's no denying that more and more "big kids" are actively participating in the wonderful world of videogames.

[dropK1CK_ninJA]

I really missed out in general on PC gaming. I have only played the real popular classics like Diablo, Starcraft, a little bit of Myst, and various little computer games my dad could snag for free from his work when I was growing up, like Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure and Duke Nukem.

For consoles, generally I have stayed on top of things but last generation I really felt out of the loop. I didn't really play much of the PS2 games or Gamecube or Xbox games.

[the Brayn]

I typically don't jump from one game to another quickly and I really don't have the free time to try and play all the titles (or even just the AAA titles) that come out for any given console. I focus on just finding games that I enjoy playing when it is convenient for me. I do have friends who tend to think that the real way to have fun is to own as many games as possible and play every single one of them but I don't know how they have time for anything else.

I think it is unrealistic to expect everyone that plays games to get every reference simply due to the diversity of personal preference and the quantity of games that come out in a given year. Even big titles like Half-life, Unreal Tournament, Mario Bros., Halo, etc. will have their fans and their haters.


Ed, Myst is a lot of fun and I was thinking of picking it up for the DS when it comes out at the end of the month. I've played through it once and really have fond memories of it. There is something to be said about a game where there is no fear of die, spawn, repeat cycles.