Computer Games

Though most computers are actively used for relatively pedestrian activities like accounting and word processing, a remarkable amount of their resources is devoted to simple diversion. Games and puzzles account for a significant portion of younger people’s interactions with computers; indeed, supervisors of many adults who work with computers might be surprised at the amount of gaming that goes on with these “business machines.”

The original computer games arose almost as soon as computers were powerful enough to do anything remotely “interactive” with humans. Though they were rudimentary, puzzles like Wumpus and forerunners of arcade games like Pong set the stage for the more sophisticated games of today. These games began to define the kinds of games computers could be “good at,” that is, activities providing fun for their human companions. Computers quickly became both interesting playmates and challenging opponents.

The current generation of computer games may use dedicated hardware (the Sega and Nintendo units, or complex joysticks for input), but they can often be operated on general purpose machines with corresponding input devices. In these cases they are impressive for the sheer quantity of computing resources they require. A machine that will comfortably run the most demanding business software sometimes grinds to a halt when asked to run gaming software. Complex video and audio requirements that are standard for contemporary computer games have become an important factor in making increasingly robust computers available at a reasonable cost.

Similarities to Traditional Games

With some important exceptions, computer games fall into all the categories of traditional games. There are games of skill, usually called arcade games from their origins in pinball arcades. While these games are hardly aerobic, in other ways they are very much like traditional games of skill such as athletic contests or pocket billiards. Arcade games generally require speed and coordination in the use of input devices from their players. Current arcade games couple these demands with the color and sound distractions used to complicate pinball games for decades. Common examples of arcade-style games include various chase games and flight and driving simulations.

Related to arcade games are the action games, which require arcadelike skills but use those skills in a more or less continuous series of battles. The violence of these battles may be quite graphic at times. Indeed, the excesses in violence and gore of some action games led to the current system of voluntary rating of computer games by the industry.

A third category of computer game is solitaire games or puzzles. In these games, computers bring a fresh capability that revitalizes the game itself. Computers selflessly shuffle the cards or set up the pieces, leaving only the play to the human partner. Computer versions of crosswords allow you to erase the same word an unlimited number of times without making the paper illegible. In these cases, the difference of medium is an enhancement to the game itself.

We have also developed computer versions of traditional games that use boards or manipulatives. Chess and checkers, for instance, are based on relatively simple sets of determinate rules. But both games are endlessly rich in their strategic and tactical variety. In these cases, computer versions provide portable partners but also do something more significant. Here, computer games can become serious contests between people and machines. It is a point of pride that chess programs cannot at present consistently beat the best human players, although they can now do so with increasing frequency. How long we can expect this to continue is a matter of speculation, but the research behind development of these games has illuminated a great deal about the processes the best human players use.

A final category of computer game is adventure games, including the newer interactive story. These games have fewer counterparts among traditional games, although the scavenger hunt is a reasonably close analogy. Adventure games require players to follow a thread (or one of several threads) through a story. Along the way, problems arise that the players need to solve, often using materials they have gathered in the course of the adventure.

Adventure games run the gamut in their premises and plots. Some require fights of various kinds, some are set in magical fairy-tale worlds. The themes may be overtly sexual or romantic, or they may be dominated by black magic or warfare. Overall, adventure games are much like novels or movies and cover the same range of themes. They also require similar guidance from parents.

Significant Differences in Computer Games

Although in most ways computer games are simply traditional games thrust into a new medium (with all the changes in speed and dimension that brings), they are qualitatively different from traditional games in three important ways.

First, computer games have strongly contributed to blurring long-standing distinctions between gaming and education. In the past few years we have begun to hear this described by the neologism edutainment. Edutainment—and many computer games, especially those aimed at preteenagers, are excellent examples of edutainment—is shorthand for the loss of easy differentiation among the so-called content industries, such as schools, media companies and publishers.

Twenty years ago it was easy to distinguish music from movies and learning from playing. Now MTV and video gaming have made those conventional distinctions less compelling. Skillful teachers have always known that their job was at least part entertainer. That knowledge is now mainstream in the sense that it is often difficult to tell which part of an activity is the instruction and which the entertainment.

Edutainment presents information or drills on skills in the context of a game or, alternatively, creates a game which requires players to master certain information or skills to succeed. Contemporary analyses of edutainment are also hobbled by the fact that the widespread use of computers has revolutionized the types of skills required for success in the working world. In some sense just being “computer literate,” a skill players on standard desktop machines often develop merely to tune their gaming environment, is itself an important educational achievement. The edutainment phenomenon has been driven in large part by the evolution of computer gaming, but its influence on traditional educational goals is far from complete.

A second way that computer games are qualitatively different from traditional games is the way they can transport the player’s senses. Unlike almost all traditional games, many computer games give the player a change of scenery. Computer games give you travel opportunities. The ability to explore strange buildings or cities or worlds is one of the novel fascinations of the computer game.

Of traditional games, only golf comes even remotely close to this aspect of computer gaming. But even in golf, the terrain you can explore is limited by such parameters of the game as the dimensions of the course and the other players on it. In a computer game, the cities of the world (Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?), a fantasy island (Myst) or a postholocaust building complex (Doom) is yours to explore. Computer games allow, and often reward, simply “poking around” in unknown places. In this particular they correspond much more to other rewarding human endeavors like natural science than do any traditional games.

Third, computer games are qualitatively different from traditional games in their graphic portrayals. A most instructive comparison here is between traditional chess and a computer version called Battle Chess. Chess is of course about war, and war is about killing. Yet chess hides all that carnage behind stylized game pieces and their moves. When a pawn is captured by a knight, what has “actually” happened in the reality represented in the game is that the footsoldier has been slaughtered by the horseman. Yet in the game, the wooden pawn is bloodlessly removed from the playing surface. Battle Chess, however, does away with this antiseptic distance between the game and what it represents. When the queen captures the bishop in Battle Chess, you watch on the screen as she slips out a stiletto and slides it between his ribs. The other pieces are no less violent in their activities.

Part of the “realism” of computer games, and the violence and gore that sometimes come with it, is a mere change of aesthetic. Photorealism has its seasons in art of all kinds, as do less representational forms. Traditional games were forced to stylize what they were portraying. With the computing resources currently available to games, this limitation is no longer in force.

Partially, however, the change from mere representation to more graphic realism is in the social role of the game. Traditional, less representational games are played at a distance of abstraction from their theme that computer games deliberately avoid. Chess may be about war, but it is a very abstract kind of war. Many action games are simply about killing, and the closer they come to the sensory reality of killing (it seems) the better. This difference gives traditional games a refinement and finesse that many computer games do not even try to achieve.

This change in portrayal may be only a stage in the evolution of computer gaming, but it has the same net effect as the evolution from screen kisses to graphic sexual encounters in movies. When mysteries like these are unveiled, a certain innocence is lost that cannot easily be recovered. The ultimate effect this will have on computer gaming remains to be seen, but it is an important development to watch.

» See also: Computers

» See also: Entertainment

» See also: Games

» See also: Leisure

—Hal Miller