Comments on: Message Me, Videogames

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:17:34 +0000

Okay, anything can be interpreted if one really wishes. One can read into tea cup if he really wishes! So, I think whether games do have message or not is not as important as whether games merit themselves for deeper interpretation. Some mentioned Super Mario, and I’ve heard of academic interpretation of that game, and honestly, I think it’s nothing more than reading into tea cup. Seeing that Nintendo is all about casual party games now, I doubt there is much meaning into Super Mario’s design.

But “how a game expresses its messages” is a whole other topic. As I believe that game’s unique advantage over any other form of medium is its interactivity, or the gameplay, I believe Passage is well above Portal on this one, since the difference between how much they rely on other types of medium is vast, and clear.

By: Jonathan Leenman

Jonathan Leenman — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:45:33 +0000

I think that the way both Portal and Passage do or do not tell a message is what makes them quite similar. They both do not really have a specific message to tell and they both do offer a virtual world / story in which the player can more or less interpret his own message. This gives interesting stuff to discuss about as a lot of people have different opinions about the supposed message(s) of these products.
The difference is though, that Passage seems to be purposely designed to imply having a message in this way, while with Portal this seems to be a mere side-effect of the developers wanting to create a game that focuses for as much as possible on a certain game play mechanic.

As a product I really do appreciate Passage, to me it is a fantastic barely interactive non-story, seriously… but if we’re talking about games I cannot say that I think that Passage is a game at all*. And Portal, well… that’s just a game, an awesome game.

I don’t really play games for the message I expect it to tell me.

* http://grandtextauto.org/2008/02/24/pvp-portal-versus-passage/#comment-208750

By: Zack

Zack — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:08:43 +0000

When I played the game the score was the one part that didn’t make sense. To me it doesn’t belong, but I wonder if that isn’t the point:

The score is the only part of Passage that connects to other “lives” — everything else is this private little journey (with a partner, if you choose). And it’s just positional; it’s pointless in the game. Yes, you can focus on maximizing score, but I think you will have missed the point of the journey. The real life parallel is “keeping up with the Joneses,” and to focus on that in real life is, again, to miss the point.

I think the game equates “higher” with “better, but so what?” That’s my take, at least.

By: Dominic

Dominic — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:20:53 +0000

Doesn’t this touch the age-old issue of interpretability and meaning? I am of the opinion that an interpretation needs not be rooted in deciphering the author’s intent, and so any comment from an author regarding the fact that “this was really supposed to mean that”, or “this had no intended meaning” is mostly irrelevant. Not completely, but mostly. I would argue that all game mechanics are based on assumptions – philosophies if you will – of the world, very much akin to what josh g. outlined earlier, and that whether they were intended to reflect X rather than Y is meaningless. This line of thinking faces the problem of determining valid criteria for differing interpretations (i.e. not all is the same and not every interpretation is as good as another, treasure chests are not silver spaceships indeed), but at least has the merit of permitting multiple interpretations, unlike the search for the “intended meaning”. I think games are much more prone to that because of the emergent nature of rules. Games routinely get out of hand and go beyond what their creator intended – that’s why there are teams of testers working for weeks or months on them. If they do their job right, all is well, and the game goes somewhat along the intended direction (yet even then, the player’s skill and knowledge can be completely out of the expected range and warp the experience – for one player, Super Mario Galaxy is about freedom of movement and paidia, while for another, it is about achieving perfect coordination and executing pre-scripted sequences). Sometimes, there’s a few exploits left over (was the Rocket Jump in Quake intended? Is the game making a statement that “sometimes to succeed you have to shoot yourself in the foot”?).

In all cases, I would say that all games are interpretable. One can always infer meaning from any game, though it is true that some showcase it, or otherwise encourage this activity, more than others. Labeling a game a “message game” or a “not-a-message game” tells us more about its production context and the team that made it, about the game’s origin, than about its actual content.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:23:58 +0000

I think BigBoss put it well in the last one, to the effect that there is a difference between our nuerochemistry and our nueroelectricity, or our emotions and thoughts. Passage makes you think which triggers some complex emotions (in a number of players anyway), while Portal is a simpler emotional experience which makes you think about manipulating time-space in a lot of interesting, specific instances. I think we should stay in the perspective of our own brains reacting and not get caught up in semantics, too much – some semantics is alright.

By: josh g.

josh g. — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:59:19 +0000

(Spoiler warning)

While the message in Passage is open to interpretation (as is Portal’s, as is anything’s), I don’t think it’s without any message. The game’s scoring and mechanics express value judgements, such as:
– Once you’re in a lasting relationship, it’s much harder to attain and achieve things of significance.
– Treasures that you do find are more valuable if you have someone to share them with.

As an experiment, I replayed with a few strategies for optimal score, and found it much easier to achieve a higher score when alone than when bringing the woman along.

It’s debatable what sort of value the score is meant to convey, but it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to equate “higher score” with “better” when looking at the message of the game.

By: Chris Lewis

Chris Lewis — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:19:19 +0000

I’m not going to claim to be much of the artist, but isn’t Portal’s message pretty much whatever you want it to be, as it they avoided it altogether? It seems that the freshness of the gameplay, only one speaking character (who isn’t human), and the fact they worked so hard to avoid saying anything, allows players to take many different readings.

I do agree about Space Channel 5.

“Are there games that aren’t really fun to play, don’t have messages, but are still good games?”

I don’t think you can have a good game that isn’t fun to play, whether you derive that fun from the gameplay or the narrative. I’m of the opinion that quality gameplay or narrative can make up for deficiencies in the other aspect. For all intents and purposes, the LucasArts adventures had awful gameplay with some truly bizarre puzzles (particularly in Sam and Max), but the very strong narratives balanced that out, creating classic games. Because the question appears to be impossible to solve, it’s not answerable!

I do think that you’ll be hard-pressed to find a good game that you could not read some form of message into, if you were looking hard enough and willing to grasp at enough straws. Alexey Pajitnov once described Tetris’ compelling quality as a need for humans to clean up the chaos of the bricks falling down the screen. That’s a deep message! I think that the very act of performing something or overcoming some obstacle which leads to enjoyment says something about the human condition. Although I am challenged right now to think about a message for games where the physics are the key: Super Mario Bros. being a great example. What’s the message there? That we all wish to be empowered to master our interactions with the environment in which we live?

Terrible games, that are broken at a fundamentally technological level, aren’t able to communicate a message because you aren’t able to properly interact with them.