Final Fantasy I: An Exercise in Character/Player Connection

I've written before about the idea that, in order for a game to tell its story well, it must do so in the most interactive way possible.  I don't agree with that.  If you want to know why, feel free to read the article.  Essentially, outside of the extreme danger of the idea that a medium must take advantage of its uniqueness in order to be good, there is an inherent connection between the player and their characters in a game that takes place regardless of any special interactive tricks or even story.  And the best example I've seen so far is the first Final Fantasy.

Yes, this Final Fantasy.

Yes, the one that started it all.  I doubt all that many of you have played it, since most of the franchise's attention these days seems to come from how great/overrated VII was or how amazing/boring XIII was (seriously, each game is so polarizing), but it really is an interesting game.  For one, as a big fan of the franchise, it's interesting to see the relatively simple roots of the series; the gameplay is basic, the story is about as simple as it could be while still moving forward regularly, and the four main characters don't have a single line of dialogue.  Yes, not a single line.

The reason for this is because the game lets you choose which classes you have and what they are all named.  You could have a party made of four black mages if you wanted, and name them Harry Potter, Gandalf, Luke Skywalker, and Twilight Sparkle to live out your magic crossover fanfiction fantasies.  That would be stupid and you would die a lot, but you could do it.  Point is, by allowing the player to choose the characters like this, Square gave up the ability to ascribe particular personalities to them, and as a result the characters themselves are simply a vessel for the player's interaction with the game world rather than the fully-realized and complex characters of later Final Fantasy games.

But you know what interested me most about Final Fantasy?  I loved the characters anyway. Those four warriors of light endeared themselves to me in a way that no other game has; perhaps not as intensely as the more fleshed-out characters of other games, but still in a way that none of those characters have.

Especially this one. Freaking Cait Sith.

I didn't care about their personal struggles, because they didn't have any.  I didn't relate to any of them, because there was nothing to relate to.  And to be honest, the story and world were far too cliche at this point for me to really care about them.  I know this game is responsible for most of those cliches, but the elves live in the city of Elfheim?  Really?  The overall narrative and world of the game was the only thing it had going for it outside of the basic gameplay, and thankfully it kept moving at a good pace and was interesting enough to be engaging, but it was still very simple and was obviously little more than a base on which RPGs have been building for decades since.  Really, the story, world, and characters did very little for me in terms of connecting me to a developed and interesting narrative.

And yet I cared about the characters.  Why?  Simply because they were mine.  These were four warriors that I had chosen and named, that I had essentially created.  I chose their identities, and I led them into battle.  My characters succeeded based on my direction and skill, and they failed when I did.  They grew and leveled up, becoming more and more powerful because I led them to.  When they were upgraded to their more powerful forms by Bahamut, my heart lept, and whenever they were killed in battle, it sank.  In other games I cared when the story put the characters in peril, but in this one I cared about my own actions and its effects on my characters in the context of basic gameplay.  It is far from my favorite Final Fantasy game, but to this day it is still the only one in which I level-ground all my characters up to level 99, because I simply cared to see them succeed.

And this guy?  Hardcore
in the higher levels.

So... where did that come from?  How could I care more about these blank slates on a battle-to-battle basis than the characters that captured my imagination in VII, tugged at my heartstrings in X, and enraptured me in VI?  In the absence of actual characters, the bond between me and those four warriors was solidified by my interaction with them.

You can get quite attached to your
family in Fable II, and this man sure
punches you in the gut for it.

This is one of the base unique things about video games; there is an inherent connection between player and protagonist.  It is the only medium in which one can use the word "I" to refer to the main character of a story.  I remember when I was playing Red Dead Redemption, my girlfriend had not yet played many games (which has been fixed since then, to wondrous results), and she got confused because I said something about how my family was in danger until I did what was required of me.  Now after playing Fable II, she understands; the main character of a video game is your character.  Their identity is defined as much by yours as it is by theirs.  And in the case of a game like the first Final Fantasy, the lack of proper character development just increases the extent to which this is true since almost the only defining element of their identity is yours.  The same concept has been used to large extents with the idea of the Silent Protagonist, but more on that later.

The thing to take from this is that, if games like the first Final Fantasy have anything to say about the storytelling power of video games, it's that interactivity doesn't have to be utilized in full to be effective.  The very existence of interactivity in the context of a story connects the player to the characters in a way non-interactive mediums never could.  As much as it is necessary and encouraged for this medium to find new and exciting ways to use this incredible storytelling tool, we must keep in mind that the very presence of it is enough to tell stories in ways we've never even dreamed.

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Roger Ebert

This last Counterpoint (and the next one, whenever that gets posted) was, again, not about Roger Ebert.  It was about the arguments that he put forth and popularized, as I think the responses to his remarks are too often either raging at him or ignoring him entirely, neither of which gives any real thought to why his comments were incorrect.  However, I figured I'd briefly comment on Ebert himself throughout that process and how I felt about it.

I admit when he first made these comments I was very angry.  I wasn't one of the idiots telling him to die in a fire and making death threats; those people just make gamers look bad.  But I was definitely very upset.  I was upset that someone so respected was making these comments.  I was upset that he admitted his lack of experience with games, yet still asserted strongly that they not only were not, but were entirely incapable of ever being art.  But what upset me the most was the "high and mighty" tone with which he did it and the intense hypocrisy that resulted.

To illustrate a bit of the tone with which he presented his arguments, here's a quote from the end of his textual face-off with Clive Barker, entitled "Games vs. Art," in case the "video games can never ever be art" message wasn't clear enough:

I mentioned that a Campbell's soup could be art. I was imprecise. Actually, it is Andy Warhol's painting of the label that is art. Would Warhol have considered Clive Barker's video game "Undying" as art? Certainly. He would have kept it in its shrink-wrapped box, placed it inside a Plexiglas display case, mounted it on a pedestal, and labeled it "Video Game."

 Yes, Roger Ebert, an expert in film with little to no experience with video games, just said that the only artistic value video games have is as an artifact on display, while comparing the actual artistic content of a game to canned soup.  The amount of pompous arrogance in that paragraph is off the friggin' charts.

So you can understand why the initial reaction by so many gamers was hate and rage, often to the point of immense fandumb.  But the most infuriating aspect of it, for me at least, was this man was doing exactly what had been done to his own beloved medium during its rise to artistic legitimacy.  Just do a bit of reading into early adaptation theory, especially regarding Shakespeare if you want to find it really fast, and you'll see a lot of early critics explaining why a filmic representation of something can never be as good as the theatrical production.  Because, obviously, the theater is home to the best literary works created by man, whereas film is simpleton's entertainment.  If you said that in a room of art students nowdays you'd be immediately beaten to a... well, at least debated into exhaustion.  But then, when film was just developing, it was very common for the entire medium to be devalued because it was too new to fit within the definitions of "art" that had prevailed up until then.  And here Ebert was doing the exact same thing.  Talk about a former slave becoming the captain of a slave ship.

However, that is no excuse for treating him so poorly or hating him for what he said.  He rightfully earned a lot of respect as a movie critic in the days of his classic television show, though I admit I haven't retained much of that respect over the years.  I am not going to cry about how awful he is, because he is not.  But it did disappoint me that someone could be such a strong and influential figure in an artistic medium, then turn around and give a new medium the same treatment his was still getting only a few decades ago.  However, similarly disappointing was that most people's reactions seemed to be hating him or writing off his arguments as the ramblings of an ignorant fool.  Ebert is not an evil moron, and his arguments are not worthless.  They're misinformed and arrogant, but hardly worthless, and I think it's important that we not make the same mistake with Ebert as we have with his arguments.

Counterpoint: Games Are About Winning, Art is About Experience

I apologize for the lateness; this is what I get for trying to mess with Blogger's HTML to get pullquotes when I've only a basic familiarity with coding.  I know what I'm doing now, so hopefully in the future I can insert pullquotes without severely delaying the articles.

Back in 2006, deservedly revered film critic Roger Ebert spoke out saying that video games were not, and indeed never could be, art (it's a few questions down).  This claim was followed up twice in the following years, once further stating his argument in 2007 then again in 2010, followed soon after by an interesting assertion that he was still right, but never should have brought it up.  If you were a gamer during these times, you no doubt remember the uproar.

Unfortunately, all the responses to this focused on Ebert himself rather than his arguments.  It seemed there were only two responses: seething hatred for the man who dared to make such ignorant statements about something so clearly out of his experience and understanding, and completely writing him off as an old man ranting against a new art form that isn't his.  While the basis for both of these reactions is valid (his statements obviously came from a perspective with very little actual knowledge of video games, and they did seem an awful lot like what theater critics said about film back in the day), the mistake was to focus so much on Ebert himself.  His arguments, though still incorrect, are have some interesting concepts that can help us further understand not only those who object to this medium's artistic legitimacy, but the present and historical development of interactive art.
Ebert's arguments can help us further understand not only those who object to this medium's artistic legitimacy, but the present and historical development of interactive art.
There were two main arguments that Ebert put forth in his arguments.  Both fall into another broader argument; that is, games cannot be art because the nature of a "game" inherently involves certain elements that art must inherently be without.  The two arguments he specifically focuses on within this are 1) video games cannot be art because the game-like nature involves completely different objectives from art, and 2) video games cannot be art because the player has control of the outcome rather than the author. This Counterpoint article will deal with the first argument, and the second will come later. But I would like to strongly specify, this article is not about Roger Ebert.  He is simply a framing device as the man who popularized two of the very few arguments against games as art that actually have legitimate and worthwhile artistic thought behind them. Let's focus on the arguments and the theory behind them, not the man and his motivations and qualifications.

Let's try to grasp this particular argument first.  The best way to do this would be to take a quote from the article itself, in which Ebert is specifically supplying counter-arguments to various quotes given by Kellee Santiago in a TED talk given at USC.

One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.

This is a decent summation of Ebert's argument on the matter (if you want more detail, read the full article).  Essentially, games are about using skill and coordination to prevail over the competition, whereas stories are not about "winning" or getting to the end, they are about the experience and the effect it has on you as the reader, viewer, or indeed, player.

Not much winning going on here, but if you didn't cry in
The Land Before Time as a child, you had no soul.  

Admittedly, this is a compelling argument.  After all, I've discussed the difficulties of combining gameplay and narrative in a previous article.  It is not easy; the two do in fact, to some extent, contradict each other in their basic nature.  Games are about performance and competition, not an emotional and intellectual experience designed by an artist.  So when one attempts to combine a game with a narrative, does it legitimately create a work of narrative art, or just a game with a story attached?

In general, the argument fails when it considers video games to be a game with a story tacked on.  Though this does often happen with unfortunate results, it is far from an inherent trait of the medium.  This argument seems to be viewing video games as a checkers board with the cover of Casablanca unceremoniously taped onto the back, when in reality the effect we're going for is more like chemical bonding, where the two elements fuse to become a new thing entirely.

This is a hamster with a knife taped to its back. Not how
videogames combine their elements, though it would
make for an awesome game.

Taking specifically from the quoted paragraph, there are two issues here on which the argument fails.  The first is the term "win."  Ebert is referring to the traditional idea that a game is something where the end goal, the entire purpose of the game, is to overcome the challenges it presents.  The completion of this goal is the entire reason the game was played, and the actions along the way have little value to the game outside of the progress they made toward that goal. And of course, if that goal is not accomplished, the actual events of the game are meaningless, as their value exists only in the context of victory.  Art, on the other hand, is about everything, each and every moment of the experience and everything about it that made it what it is. Stories have an ending, sure, but without experiencing the rest of the story in the way it was specifically designed to be experienced, said ending has absolutely no satisfaction, meaning, or impact.

However, video games are not all like this anymore; some exist, of course, and hopefully always will, but it simply cannot be denied that the medium has largely moved past the idea of "beating the game" to an emphasis on the experience of the game.  The player must prevail over challenges, yes, but this is not toward the purpose of getting to the end as much as it is to progress through the story.  Beyond that, the fact that many games allow the player to make choices affecting nothing but the story seems to imply goals outside of the completion of the game's challenges.  The game may be about overcoming its challenges, but the motivation for prevailing is not the completion of the game, but to see what happens next in the story and bring said story, not just the challenge, to its eventual conclusion.  So really, to claim that the goal of a video game is to get to the end and win is a severe misunderstanding of what the medium is actually about.

The second way in which the argument fails is in the word "representation."  If you remember, he said that a game without rules would cease to be a game and instead be "a representation of a story," implying that the goal that games must attain but can inherently never reach is to be a representation of a story.  Which is something with which I imagine most artists and scholars would agree is the goal of art, in the field of narrative art at least.

Victory is not the entire end goal of a video game, but more of a prerequisite to experience more of the story.
But then the question arises; why can't a game represent a story?  Even in basic game theory there are ideas about sports such as football and games such as chess having a narrative; the only thing keeping them from being "art" is the fact that the end result is created by competition rather than specific artistic intent.  But unlike those games, video games allow the player to try again until victory is accomplished.  This means that victory is not the entire end goal of a video game, but more of a prerequisite to experience more of the story, or even if story is not a focus, more of the game.  Victory is not an end in and of itself, but rather a goal that must be completed for both game and story to move forward.

On a simpler note, can it really be argued that a video game is not a "representation" of a story if it has a story in it?  Regardless of the game-like aspects of a video game, if it has a story that progresses as the player does, is the game not representing a story?  One could say this is just arguing semantics, but it does get to the core of this argument; if a game and story exist within a single work, designed and created by an artist or team of artists, how can it be said the final product is not a representation of a story and, as a result, a work of narrative art?

In the end, this argument is based on a lack of understanding about how games work, and seems to have been made under the impression that modern video games are just more realistic-looking versions of Galaga.  It simply doesn't hold up to informed scrutiny.  However, that is not to say it has no value.  Even to a small degree in this article, it has driven us to consider the nature of a game and the nature of a narrative, how the two naturally both compliment and contradict each other, and what it really means for a game and a story to be combined into a single work.  Many of the present and future articles on this blog explore just such topics.  This is why it is so important to not shrug off these arguments because of their fallacious nature, but instead to consider them and explore why they are wrong and what they can teach us.

See you next week!  Don't forget to "Like" Binary Narrative on Facebook!

Fun Stuff

Now for a more traditional Wednesday post (I know it's almost Friday; sorry again for this last bit of time): these were meant to just be some random thoughts on games and experiences I've had lately, so here's that.

I was browsing those racks of $5 or less PS2 games at Gamestop and stumbled upon a game I've heard a lot about but never got to play: Killer 7.  I'm kind of excited about this; having not played No More Heroes or its sequel, this will be the first game I play by Suda 51.  Depending on whether it's too weird or delightfully weird for me (my personal preferences tend to vary on that issue), No More Heroes might be bumped up on my priority list a bit.  I've heard plenty about this game and its unique... everything, so I'm very excited to be playing it.  Somewhere in the mix of all the other games I have to play.

With World of Warcraft being free to play until level 20 now, I've decided to give it a go.  I've never been too incredibly interested in the MMO scene, I must admit; as much as I'm sure I would enjoy the genre, I would also be putting a lot of time into it that I could be putting into single-player experiences that have more of the narrative and aesthetic things I appreciate most in games.  But my complete lack of familiarity with the genre is hardly something befitting of one who studies and designs games, so I decided that had to change.  I'm sure I'll have some stuff to say about it on here once I get going on it.

Busy Busy Busy

I apologize to whatever few regular readers I may have; this last week has been quite the whirlwind.  I will be back on schedule by this next Saturday with what will hopefully prove to be a very interesting article.

The Other Possible Outcome

There was one thing I thought of while trying to look on the bright side during the months when the supreme court debated the artistic worthiness of video games.  It almost makes me wish I could see what the medium would have been like had censorship prevailed.  Of course it wouldn't be worth it, and you will never, ever catch me saying the Supreme Court made the wrong decision.  The choice they made was absolutely, without question, the only correct one they could have made.  But I do wonder how video game development would have adjusted to a culture that hostile to its most common subject matter: violence.  And I think, if the medium managed to adjust rather than die, perhaps it would not have been all bad.

This is what happens when there's sex and violence
in our movies, kids.  

I liken the avoided video game censorship to the effect McCarthyism had on the film industry in the ate 1940s.  For those unfamiliar with film history, the simple version is that the McCarthy Era involved the blacklisting of many actors, directors, and writers who were suspected to be communists.  Unfortunately, all they really needed to be suspected was to do anything that seemed "Un-American," which included certain very strict moral boundaries.  It was a pretty messed up time, with promising and talented filmmakers losing their careers suddenly when they lost funding and venues.  As a result, movies had to tread carefully.  Mature themes had to be handled without mature content for fear of the blacklist.  Really, it wasn't all that different from the world we imagined were this law to be passed, just with film rather than video games.

The interesting thing about this was that it forced film makers to come up with creative ways to portray things that they couldn't get past the censors.  One of the most notable examples is the use of cigarettes to imply sexual content.  Especially in noir films, two lovers blowing cigarette smoke into each other so the smoke lingers together, or two cigarette butts smoldering in an ash tray, was used as a symbol for sex.  Or consider Hitchcock's Gory Discretion Shots, used before film was allowed to show dismemberment and mutilation.  Though these things are now allowed in film, thus occurring as a result of budget constraints or purposeful filmmaking, they were first developed during a time when more graphic depictions would have fallen under the judgement hammer of censorship.

Even silly games like Castle
Crashers might have problems.

Consider what a similar effect would do for video games. Of course games like Mario and other similarly innocent games would survive this process, but they're generally not what we're talking about when discussing either violence or storytelling.  Gameplay could survive this law, sure, but storytelling as we have developed it within this medium would take a huge hit.  This medium is still almost entirely comprised of stories centered around violence, for various reasons discussed in one of my previous articles.  But what if we couldn't depict that violence anymore?  What if we were forced to do things differently by an unjust                                                                   violation of the first amendment against the medium?

The most obvious effect would likely take place in the horror genre, which has, in the last decade or so, become less "survival horror" and more "gory and occasionally startling action game," much to the ire of many gamers, designers, and critics.  The need to show all the violence would turn into an aversion, and horror games would have to turn to their roots and focus more on psychological horror and playing on the unknown, like classics such as Fatal Frame and Silent Hill 2 or the lesser-known but masterfully terrifying indie game Penumbra.

Sure, this thing is creepy, but what scares you most is
always what you can't see.

But for the industry as a whole, it would mean spreading to genres it has barely touched before. If games cannot explicitly portray violence,  they would have to either portray it implicitly or avoid the subject altogether.  With the vast majority of games, this simply cannot be done.  We would have to start telling stories in different, less violent genres, such as drama and all its sub-genres (romance, courtroom drama, domestic drama, etc.).  This would not be easy, but it is something that must happen eventually, and I think it's fairly clear that progress is slow when it's easy to make money off Shoot Teh Bad Guyz VI: Less Talky Moar Shooty.  But take away the ability to make that, and what are we left with?  No choice but to innovate.

Make sure to thank these guys next
time you play a game.  

So in short, I think it would have been cool to see where the pressure from this law could have taken the industry.  I do not wish the Supreme Court had made a different choice, as the censorship of interactive art (an immensely important and exciting artistic development) could be one of the biggest artistic atrocities in history.  But gaming needs to evolve, and part of me wonders if this could have been the best way to stimulate that evolution.  But thankfully, we can now develop this medium as we like, without threat of censorship.  I hope we'll use it to develop this medium into a truly diverse and effective one.

And no, of course there's no such game as Shoot Teh Bad Guyz VI: Less Talky Moar Shooty. If there was, I would be too busy weeping in the fetal position to be writing this article.

What Can We Do?

This Saturday, I said that the Supreme Court's ruling is our chance to step up and show the world what interactive art is truly capable of.  This is our opportunity to prove its worth and show everyone that the Court made the right choice.  I did not, however, say how.  Unfortunately, that is far too big a topic for any one person to cover, but I'll present some ideas here for any gamers and/or developers that may be reading.

1. Support Artistically Excellent Games
We, as consumers, tell the developers what we want by paying for it.  I don't want to spout the "vote with your wallets" line, but there is some truth to it.  To clarify, this doesn't mean you have to cancel your Modern Warfare 3 pre-order and live a life devoid of any game made for more than $100.  The AAA industry is pumping out some amazing games (especially this holiday season), and there is nothing wrong with supporting them.  But also try to support the games that maybe won't be getting as much mainstream attention.  Try to bring them into the spotlight, not only so the industry can make more, but so those outside it can see more than deadly guns and bloody deaths.  Get Beyond Good and Evil HD on XBLA or the PSN.  Pre-order the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD pack coming out later this year (I can say confidently you will never experience a game quite so uniquely beautiful as these two).  Check out some indie games; there are some great ones.  The goal isn't the bankrupt the AAA industry, but to show both it and the culture around us that video games are more than guns and violence.

2. Don't Just Play Games, Study Them
It's fine to just enjoy a work of entertainment art, but it doesn't lend any understanding.  If you go into a new game looking to study it, looking to understand it on a deeper level than simple enjoyment, you will be able to speak more intelligently about it.  When talking to someone who doesn't understand the artistic viability of the medium, it's much better to be able to discuss the philosophical implications of Bioshock or the analogous nature of Final Fantasy X than to just talk about why Castle Crashers is fun to play (nothing against Castle Crashers, I freaking love that colorful bundle of endless fun). Understand not just how gameplay works, but also how it, story, music, aesthetics, and everything else combine into a single, cohesive experience.  It will greatly enhance your understanding of the medium, your ability to discuss it, and your own personal experience with it.

3. Familiarize Yourself with the Mindset of the Non-and-Anti-Gamers
This is why I do my Counterpoint series (I know, there's another one on its way).  While I believe we should focus more on the medium's art and theory than arguing for its validity, that argument is still very important.  There are reasons that people don't understand video games, or refuse to acknowledge their artistic viability.  Whether these reasons come down to ignorance, misunderstanding, or a genuinely complex line of thinking, you should understand what they are.  Why?  Two reasons.  First of all, it allows you to talk intelligently with someone about what makes games artistic.  After I first had my epiphany of, "Holy crap, these things are telling awesome stories," I stumbled over myself to explain to other people how that worked.  Because I had experienced it.  They had not even given it thought.  And it's worth discussing this topic with people that don't agree or understand, for both the benefit of their understanding and your own.  Secondly, we are just developing interactive art theory.  And when something like this is developing, the objections are just as important as the concurrences, because they show us the faults in our thinking and reasoning.  Roger Ebert's argument, for instance, that video games are goal-based rather than experience-driven and thus cannot be art was an interesting one that caused a lot of introspection and study as to what this medium was about artistically.  It was also founded in his obvious lack of experience and interest in the medium, but more on that soon.  Point is, video games are new.  They are different.  They do not fall neatly into our previous definitions of art.  But they most certainly are art; the question is exactly how.  What changes, both about art and games, to make the two mesh as well as they do and can?  Part of the journey toward answering that question, both for us gamers and our cultures, is to understand the objections to the artistic viability of our medium.

4. Change the Focus of the Design Process
Any current or aspiring developers out there, this is for you: stop heralding gameplay as the end-all goal of your games.  Yes, it's important.  Yes, if your gameplay sucks, few people will be willing to stick with your game just for the story.  But the proper response to these facts is not to focus primarily on gameplay, it's to focus on each element of the game as a unifying whole.  Allow me to use theme parks for an analogy, since they provide one of the best examples of this concept.  The goal of a theme park is the rides, obviously.  Most theme parks just make a bunch of roller coasters and other attractions and give them names and basic aesthetics in keeping with the park's overall theme, and as long as the rides are great, people will love them.  But you know why Disneyland stands out?  Because they don't just focus on making good rides and slapping a theme onto them, they make a cohesive whole of the experience.  Experiencing a Six Flags park consists of going on the rides; experiencing Disneyland consists of not only the rides, but the walking from ride to ride, the waiting in line for the rides, even throwing away your soda cup in their trash cans designed based on the theme of the area.  In the same way, you can make a good game by prioritizing the gameplay, going from battle to battle, but you'll never make a truly great game until you can make an experience that melds gameplay, story, character, aesthetics, and all the rest together into a single interactive experience.

These are just a few small things, and I know I'm not the only one to say them, but that doesn't mean they don't need to be said.  This is our chance, the time our culture is putting us in the spotlight next to artists and critics instead of murderers and addicts, and it's vital that we take it to show the world what video games really are, what they really mean, and what we gamers really care about.

Level Up: Respectability +10

As many of you probably know by now, gaming has won a great victory this week.  On June 27th, this past Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States voted in favor of video games.

In case anyone is not familiar with the case, Brown vs. EMA was an attempt to regulate "violent video games" (yes, it was purposefully vague) with government involvement.  Rather than the voluntary rating system by which the video game industry already keeps M-rated games out of the hands of children (the exact same system by which the film industry voluntarily abides), this law would have made it illegal for anyone under 18 to buy whatever games were deemed offensive, effectively controlling video games not like an artistic form of expression, but in the same way as pornography and cigarettes.

Because clearly, video games are just
as dangerous as lung cancer.

Obviously, little could possibly be worse for a developing medium than the involvement of a legal censorship movement.  Imagine if the only way to buy Mass Effect or Halo was to go to that creepy backroom some movie places have.  Imagine how most developers would decide that it's not worth the risk to make violent games, or tell stories through games that deal with mature issues, such as Bioshock or L.A. Noire, since they wouldn't be widely sold or advertised.  Imagine if any games deemed too violent by our government were treated by console makers the same way AO games are now; shunned from official publication.  Not a very bright future.

But thankfully, the Court ruled against this law, not only allowing us - gamers, the video game industry, and the first amendment itself - to dodge a huge bullet, but also supplying us with some pretty powerful ammunition.

And our ammunition has always been better than theirs anyway.

No longer must we defend ourselves with rhetoric that will me violently turned against us.  No longer must we suffer the lies and ignorance of entities like Fox News.  No longer must we fear for the censorship of our medium.  Will these things still happen occasionally?  Of course.  But it's always been more difficult when the opposition was intensely convinced they were standing on solid rock; now it's becoming blatantly clear they've built their house on the sand.  And while they may never accept this personally, there is little they can do when the legal precedent is no longer neutral, but dead-set against their attempts to silence interactive art.

"Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium.  And “the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary” with a new and different communication medium."  So says the syllabus from this case, plainly and for all to see.  Two pretty simple sentences, but they say everything necessary for us to know that this medium, our medium, is safe.

If ever you've doubted the importance of video games being widely accepted as an art form, look to this example.  Had it not been demonstrated to these people, some of the men responsible for how life is conducted in one of the world's most powerful countries, that video games are in fact a viable artistic medium of expression and communication, millions of people would be barred from these incredible interactive experiences, and, according to some analysts, the industry itself may have crumbled entirely, banished into obscurity.  The very existence of this case, what many are rightfully calling the biggest victory video games will ever win, was based around this simple question: Are video games art?

Some claim it's not important.  Games are just fun, that's the whole point.  As long as we can enjoy them, it doesn't matter what other people think.  Some claim "art" is too subjective and elusive a concept to bother trying to classify anything under it.  But these events very strongly beg to differ.  This is a fight for respectability.  This is where we step up and show what video games can truly be; not just enjoyable pastimes, and not harmful addictions, but a medium of expression that is truly deserving of the first amendment protection its very nature clearly warrants.

This is an art form now, fellow gamers.  Not just in identity, but in social status.  Let's show the world that the Court made the right choice.