While listening to Michael Abbot (Brainy Gamer) and his guests for the Summer of Confabs and doodling (I’m somewhat of a habitual multitasker) one of the guests (Chris Dahlen and Manveer Heir) or Michael were talking about The Path. Though I haven’t played this game myself, they talked about the subtext of the game and how the story doesn’t always spell out for you what happens but might imply it.
I had just recently finished a master’s class in postmodernism (The Death of the Novel, Crash, The Crying of Lot 49, and Slaughter-House Five were the books we focused on), an era in literature where the story almost never means what you are reading and instead focuses on an entire subtext story that the reader has to go digging for. It was hard work and proved to be very difficult if you did not know the context of the time and thoughts of the author of the era these books were written in.
Now both of these moments got me thinking, well what about video games? Can games every have a dynamic subtext that brings across something much deeper then what is seen and played? But more importantly, can mainstream games (with video game projects costing millions of dollars) achieve such?
I’m not entirely sure to be honest. My first thoughts were that games in this era (unless a smaller affair or put on by independent designers and developers) is just not possible. With such a demand for mainstream games it would seem these same mainstream games cannot afford to travel too far away from “what works”. However that doesn’t mean those of us looking for more are totally starved.
Bioshock made such a big impact on players because of this subtext (and because it was so accessible). The gameplay wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t great either. But the world, writing, and subtext of power, corruption, and choice were incredibly strong. Besides that blockbuster I can’t think of many others, but perhaps I haven’t been looking hard enough.
If you have any games that you think meet the criteria go ahead and leave me a comment. It would be great discussing what exactly some of us players are looking for.
Until then I suppose playing various Independent games (which are getting more popular and bold, because of their shying away from the mainstream) will have to do. Along with The Path mentioned up top there is Braid. I’m afraid I haven’t played much else but feel free to suggest something.
