Tom Bissell's recent post on Dishonored reminded me that I should stop taking the easy road with books I had mixed feelings about and actually review something I loved. His book Extra Lives qualified. This review comes perhaps a bit late, even the backlash against Bissell, or at least his imitators, is now a fading memory over at Critical Distance. Nonetheless, I devoured his book of essays about video games and I wanted to specify why.
First off, the man has style. The book's nine essays each using a different game as a framing mechanism and say something different about the medium. It is perhaps warrants a demerit that he tends to write about his experiences with games rather necessarily critiquing them in the manner of a game designer, but I think that better positions him to write out about larger questions that designers by necessity put aside. The most extreme example is the essay that ends the book and is available from the Observer on Grand Theft Auto and Cocaine, but this book should not be mistaken for a memoir and while that essay entranced me when I first read it, it was not my favorite.
What drew me to the book was Bissell's firm command of why I enjoy game but also why they are problematic. Even most of the best games often use violence as a crutch and have their stupid moments. As a English major, he naturally has a particular interest in those games with poor writing, but he also works through the wide array of reasons for that. Comparatively few of them, at least amongst the better games, could be solved simply by hiring more and better writers. That said, he certainly does not wish to abandon story:
Yes, as difficult as it sometimes is to believe, games have authors, however diminutive an aura he or she (or frequently, they) might exude. What often strikes me whenever I am playing a game is how glad I am of that hovering authorial presence. Although I enjoy the freedom of a games, I also appreciate the remindful crack of narrative whip–to seek entertainment is to seek that whip—and the mixture of the two is what makes games such a seductive, appealingly dyadic form of entertainment… I want to be told a story, albeit one I happen to be part of an can affect, even if in small ways. If I wanted to tell a story, I would not be playing video games.
Ultimately, the book raises more questions than it answers and undercuts itself with harsh realities nearly as often as it enchants. That is inevitable, it is the state of the medium. When he does provide answers, I don't even always agree them but perhaps especially when I disagree I feel I've learned from grappling with his suggestions.
The book helped me work out my theory of why I rather enjoy videogames, as well as various forms of RPGs that Bissell was not trying to address but that he speaks to even so. They give experiences, a chance to test out strategies towards living, try out paths not taken, or better yet chase down dreams that were precluded by detail birth or utterly impossibly to begin with. When other players are involved, some of the weaknesses fade away as there is another human that can react directly to the ways you try to affect the story and that can shatter the pleasing illusions of uber-competence bred by single player, particularly when quick loads are at hand. Travel appeals to me for much the same reason, I find that to be a more fulfilling habit on the whole, but also a far more expensive one. Thus, as for my favorite games, I must agree with a line from chapter one: "It was a an extra life; I am grateful to have had it."
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