replaying games and postmodern gaming

I was recently considering the RPG landscape these days, with Fallout 3 and Fable 2 soon to release, not to mention two very good DS games in the remade Dragon Quest IV, the ported DS Disgaea, and the virtual console releases for Secret of Mana and Super Mario RPG. Whether it’s a remake, port or sequel, there’s no doubt that gamers appreciate the history of their games. These are things that are known and loved, like when I read or watch The Godfather, 100 Years of Solitude, Unforgiven, Man in the High Castle for the third, fourth, fifth or more time. We know that playing that game, reading that book, or watching that movie again won’t be the same . . . maybe simliar but not the same. Often, though, we’re not looking for the same because we know what’s coming. Instead, we want to focus on the unfolding of what’s to come, largely because we believe that the unfolding is a rich process, containing things we might have missed before, like looking for the door images and their meanings in the Godfather.

Arguably, with each subsequence experience of a game, book, art work, the gamer and the audience are much more aware of the structure. At times, it can be hard to appreciate much older works. When my wife and I watched It Happened One Night, we knew this was a great movie, but the changes in acting, directing, not to mention in society, made actually enjoying the movie difficult. It is often difficult to check in at the door all the expectations, assumptions, values, and knowledge that you now use on a daily basis so that you can pick up that older work and appreciate it in its own right and context.

Keeping that mind, bear with me on a transition to postmodernism and gaming. My question is can we have postmodern games, and do we need them.

Postmodernism is somewhat nebulous, but most postmodern works have a kind of family resemblance.

• a combination of styles, perspectives and meanings
• an ironic perspective that takes little seriously
• no pretension to create a ‘realistic’ work because realism is unattainable and art is necessarily artificial
• a disbelief in quests for the truth

I’m one of those who good and bad in postmodernism. It dispels the idea of singular, unwavering meaning in art and calls attention to that there’s more than one to skin a cat or create art. To me, these are good things because it democratizes art. I appreciate formalists like T.S. Eliot, but modernists and formalists put art up on the highest cupboard shelf in a locked pantry that only certain people could enjoy. But the problem with postmodernism is the almost inevitable cynicism, the disbelief in belief, the knowledge that we can’t know. When I recently reread Cat’s Cradle and Catch-22, I was much less impressed than I read those books 20+ years ago.

In short, postmodernism points out that formalist goals were shadows on the cave wall but doesn’t offer viable alternatives.

To my first question [can we have postmodern games], it’s worth noting that some exist, such as No More Heroes or Vampire – Masquerade The Bloodlines. So, of course, postmodern games can be made in one sense. But my question has to do with the idea that many argue we’re moving past postmodernism. For example, I remember when Roger Rosenblatt argued that 9/11 killed ‘the ironic age.’ The fact is that postmodernism has been around for some 60, 70 years now. Postmodernism is that sad friend that keeps making the same argument over and over and over — right, we get it . . . there is unifying ‘truth’ and unequivocal meaning.

Do we need postmodern games? True, there’s always the idea that it’s cool to thumb your nose at tradition and give everyone the winking nod. But do gamers need them? We have games like No More Heroes, Braid, even Contact, that mash up styles in a game. To return to my point about replay highlighting a game’s structure, it could be argued that gamers provide much of the point of postmodernism themselves. When we replay Super Mario, for example, we know what’s coming — 8 different worlds with 4 levels, the last of which is a castle with Bowser [who isn't really Bowser]. Yes, we know — Peach is another castle. And then you have gamers who invent new ways to play the game in a way that wasn’t intended. Lastly, you have the truth of 8-bit gaming, which is that it will never, ever be mistaken for realism. Replaying games almost seems inherently deconstructive, taking apart the known and taking it less seriously.

So what would we gain from postmodern gaming that we don’t already have?

I think while society as a whole might be moving away from the need for postmodernism, gaming itself could still use it, though probably in smaller, more focused doses.

1. Realism is an increasingly important measure of games. Chris at artful gamer dissects the problem of realism in gaming.
2. Even though we have some genre-busting games, genres are still very powerful, and gamers are sometimes disappointed if those genre expectations aren’t met. Give us more games that can’t be categorized. A friend of mine tossed out the idea of embedding a romance into a racing game. Why can’t we have those type of games? I came across this attempt [parts 2 and 3] to explain games through a game and that offers basic rules that seem true. But can’t we question them? I guess because No More Heroes didn’t have a certain, unambiguous ending, it wasn’t fun.
3. In RPGs in particular, I can’t help but look at how quests are still largely the same old thing. What if a character followed a quest but learned, like John Grady Cole, that the object of the quest doesn’t exist at all. Or what if, like a kind of Estragon and Vladmir, RPG characters start a quest without even knowing the goal.

And there are other, finer examples, but the point is that in some aspects of games, we sometimes don’t question what is and has always seemed to be. On the whole gaming has much of postmodernism has to offer, but it could do more. For those who would like to see more art in gaming, it would be interesting to see how games can tackle ‘serious’ topics playfully.