I don't play a lot of videogames.
This is entirely because videogames are very expensive. But, I really like videogames, it's a fascinating medium for experiential storytelling and has the potential to engage the player in a world that they otherwise never could. That's really cool and so I would like to play more games...
So, about a year ago, I bought a Playstation 5. I bought it second-hand, and the controller definitely has some slight stick-drift. Thankfully it doesn't impact gameplay so much as precise cursor movements on some map screens, so whilst I'm looking to find a second controller it doesn't negatively impact gameplay.
But, I'm not here just to talk about a recent-ish purchase, or the games I play. Like I said, I don't play a lot of games. I own eleven game disks, and they're all second-hand. I got Spyro: Reignited Trilogy for $1 at a swap-meet, and even though I found it in a dusty bin and it had a cracked box, it works. It's simple and kinda childish, but still fun.
But, I'm not here just to talk to you about the games I've played. I'll say what they are for context, but I recently finished two games and I started playing a third, and something has been bothering me about all of them...
The Word of the Day is: 'CRUNCH'
Crunch /kruhnch/ v.t. 1. To crush with the teeth; chew with a crushing noise. 2. To crush or grind noisily. 3. To tighten or squeeze financially: The administration's policy seems to crunch the economy in order to combat inflation. ◊v.i. 4. To chew with a crushing sound. 5. To produce, or proceed with, a crushing noise. ◊n. 6. An act or sound of crunching. 7. A shortage or reduction of something needed or wanted: The energy crunch. 8. Distress or depressed conditions due to such a shortage or reduction: A budget crunch. 9. A critical or dangerous situation: When the crunch comes, just do your best.
So, for context, I finished playing Just Cause 3, and I also worked my way through Doom (2016). I'm not very good at either of these games because they both require shooting, and I'm terrible at it. I'm not really a fan of shooter games, since I do find it gross the way that we are gamifying war. I'm not opposed to violence in videogames, I just think it's kind of gross. Also, that's no excuse, I don't suck at shooting because I don't like it... I just suck at it.
Both of these were relatively fun. But, something I noticed in these games is that in both of them, moving very quickly is a key element of the gameplay. In Doom, standing still in the middle of a battle isn't a good idea (I learned that the hard way, even though I was trying to use a tactical scope to shoot from afar), and also it's a linear game, so you move from one level to the next. If you stop moving then you're probably stuck, and I can tell you from experience that being stuck looking for a particular keycard or doorway just isn't fun.
In Just Cause 3, not only should you move in combat, but more importantly it's an open world. Whilst you could jog from one area of the map to another, that would take literal hours. So, you're encouraged to hijack cars, parachute or (my favourite, and the best part of the game) ziplining into the air and using your wingsuit to glide like a bird.
In both of these games movement is fun, but I noticed that the maps in these games are very pretty.
For different reasons obviously, in Doom you're usually walking through high-tech mars bases; bloodstained warzones; corrupted facilities or Hell itself. I started noticing all of this because I got stuck at one point. Like I said, being stuck isn't fun, but I tried looking for a keycard all over the map and I found out that the walkway leading into the area was a grating that didn't touch the ground. So, I jumped down to check it out, and I got even more stuck. I clearly wasn't supposed to be there. There were some pipes and vents around, but there wasn't an easy way to jump back up. I considered killing my character to respawn, but eventually I crossed under the walkway, found a particularly wide edge and jumped up, over it and out.
But, when I got out, I was wondering "why is that there?" It wasn't a secret area... because those are usually clearly indicated on the map. I wouldn't have even noticed it if I hadn't taken a wrong turn and failed to find the keycard for the locked door. So, why put that there?
But once I had even asked that question, I couldn't help but wonder about that for everything aesthetic in the game.
For instance, in some levels, as you enter a combat area, there will be these sigils drawn on the floor. they're always decorated with candles and there's often blood or viscera strewn up the walls from whatever poor soul was sacrificed there. But, they're almost always in corridors that you are meant to either walk past, or more likely run past so you can attack an oncoming zombie. Why go to all this effort for a corridor? I'm not bothered that someone did a good job, but I can't help but wonder why you would spend so much time and effort on something that I, as the player, am supposed to ignore. These details are all over Doom. In facilities, the "greeblies" on the walls, all the different crates and stock, the random forklifts in certain rooms. In hell, the bones that the world seems to be built from, floating platforms with gigantic iron chains that seem to be imprisoning the very stone itself in chaos.
It's even worse in Just Cause 3, because that game is absolutely gorgeous. In it, you are fighting to free the archipelago of Medici from an oppressive, tyrannical, militant government. Don't get me wrong, I love how the islands look. Driving from one city to the next, or flying over the landscape, I was struck by the natural beauty of this oppressed land. I was glad to be a rebel trying to free my homeland from tyranny, as my character Rico Rodriguez is a Medici citizen himself.
But, it struck me that a lot of the gameplay involved going from one place on the map to another, which was usually around 5 kilometres away. The map even helpfully shows the relevant settlements and military bases with an outline... but it made me wonder, if these parts are important to gameplay, why is there so much of the stuff that isn't? Why do I have to drive five kilometres from one part of the island to another. I started listening to podcasts as I played, to pass the time whilst driving or flying across the nation. Sure I could have used the Fast Travel system, to simply skip over the travel, but if I had a chance to use my wingsuit, I wasn't going to pass up that opportunity. But that also rubs me the wrong way... a fast travel system.
The only reason you'd offer that is if you know that some people won't enjoy traveling across your open world. But (and I hate to burst anyone's bubble here), Medici is not a real place. Everything in it was created and devised by level designers.
I'm not even complaining that the land is big, the large space meant that I could use my wingsuit and that's clearly a big and fun part of gameplay. But, my issue is that every single part of the map is lovingly textured and coloured, you can count the individual bricks on every house.
I want to state upfront, I am not complaining that I had to go from one place to another, or that the maps were big, or that I like going fast. My issue is that because these worlds are fake, someone had to make all of this stuff. Someone had to design the texture, branches and foliage of the trees that I am flying 4 kilometres over. Someone had to build the raised platform that I am not supposed to notice, for fear of getting stuck. Someone had to form and colour the stairs that I always zipline over. Someone had to draw the sigils that I am spilling demon guts onto in another glory kill because I'm low on health.
At first, I thought maybe it was just the speed. Why are they putting so much detail into something that I am meant to fly or run past, but that's not even it... because after finishing these two games, I started playing Until Dawn. I have not heard that this is a "good game" (in fact it seemed kind of bad), but I call myself a horror author and this is meant to be a "horror game", and I found it secondhand for about $10, so I figured it was worth at least that...
But Until Dawn truly highlighted the issues I'm having because of the lackluster gameplay. See, Until Dawn has very simple game mechanics. Walk around, maybe interact with something. But it's made very clear that if you can interact with something, it will have an unmissable glint of light off of it. Or, on occasions when you talk to another character, you're bolted into a cutscene where you must choose how to respond... from one of very few options. I'm not here just to complain about the game, because the story works with these minimal mechanics (at least, so far). But, these basic mechanics are juxtaposed violently against the graphics which utilize photorealistic rendering of the faces of several prominent actors, who also motion-captured the movements of their characters. Also, the story is set on a remote, snow swept mountain getaway. As you walk through the pine trees and rocky trails, there's this constant fog-like breeze with snow lifted on the wind, and as you enter the enormous log vacation home, it's this gorgeous, detailed, two-storey villa... and all you do, is walk through it. I think it's made worse by the fact that, to show off the rendered actors, you have this third-person perspective that sets the camera far back. But even if it was first-person, why are there so many rooms in the villa without a single, interactable element? Why are there so many mountain trails, where there isn't even a fork in the road, it's just a long path you need to follow.
Maybe the realistic visuals and high-fidelity graphics are meant to make it "scarier" somehow, but I don't see how. Some of the scare set-pieces are jumpscares, and as they involve things literally jumping out at you, detail does not help in the fear. In two separate scenes, fake-out scares were ruined because I could identify the person, or animal, as non-threatening.
Regardless, my issue isn't that the game is bad (even though it is), my issue is that this high quality detail, gorgeous imagery—all of this artistry was being lost, because it wasn't helping to improve the way these games felt, or played. I'd argue that they don't even improve the way they "look", because in each of these, you only notice in moments when you aren't playing the game.
And all of this brought to mind a tweet that, the more I think about, the more it resonates with me.
@Jordan_Mallory
i want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i'm not kidding
4:07 PM · Jun 29, 2020
That is Jordan's opinion and when I first read it, it was being quoted in a Jimquisition video by Stephanie Sterling and I agreed with it wholeheartedly. See, this was before I had bought my own console, so my main source of videogame content was Let's Plays and games journalism. And if you listen to any kind of games journalism, you'll learn about crunch. If you don't know what crunch is, it's very simple... it's overworking people, leading to stress, health issues and lack of fair compensation, and it is rife in the games industry game developers. The most common way this is done is through compulsory overtime. But even that can be caused by myriad issues, including firing staff to save money on payroll (thus, forcing a small team to overwork to accomplish the work of a bigger team); shortening game release deadlines to unmanageably short timeframes, or just a culture of workplace exploitation and stress.
However, at the time I merely saw this as "inside baseball". It is a genuine and serious problem that needs to be fixed in the games industry at the very least, if not outlawed for every industry on a grander, legislative level. I didn't think it would affect my enjoyment of the game. If anything, it should make me like the games more, right? If we're forcing people to suffer under unfair working conditions, surely it should be to the games benefit right?!
Even before I knew that Avalanche studios made a large number of staff redundant after releasing the award-winning Just Cause 3, the amount of effort being put into the physics of the golden wheat blowing in the breeze or the voice acted lines of propaganda from the speaker-towers that I am meant to blow up or all of the landscape underneath the stunt ramps that are designed for my vehicle to fly over, it made me uncomfortable. Heck, I haven't been able to find anything negative that came to id Software after Doom, or Supermassive Games after Until Dawn, but that's not the point. The point is that the game isn't helped by having so much detail on the surface of a battlefield that you never look at in detail, or photorealistic faces on a character you see from behind for 90% of the gameplay. None of this aesthetic is helping to improve the game, and in some ways might even be making it worse, but it feels like it exists because it is expected to be there. It's a "Triple A" game, after all, they need to be the prettiest, the biggest, and offer the most DLC and multiplayer content and make the game publishers rich.
Maybe I'm alone in this. Actually, I'm almost certainly alone in this because so many games seem to sell themselves on the quality of their graphics, but I feel uncomfortable seeing so much effort put into something that I am encouraged to ignore.
Some of the other games I own include the Uncharted game series (a trilogy compilation, and Thief's End on its own), and God of War (2018), so I'm pretty sure this won't be the last time that I feel like this when playing one of my games. But, all of these are secondhand games, they're not all that new, so I find myself hoping either that eventually games will have worse graphics, or that one of these game with amazing graphics will have them for a good reason, that I am supposed to pay attention to and not simply ignore.
After all, I play videogames to have fun. And knowing that someone was overworked and underpaid to texture the blades of grass that I'm crashing my helicopter into... yeah, that isn't fun to me. I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I'm going to play more of Spyro, since I can appreciate the simple, cartoony graphics for what they are. Also, purple dragons are cool...
