Games Should Be Fun

Oh hey there. This Note is written within the actual last minute because I was very busy this week, with Stuff and with Camp NaNoWriMo. Things are, objectively, going well, but because they are going well I’m convinced that they’re about to go badly very soon. And if that happens I’ll be in like the Worst Emo Phase, so, uh, brace yourself for that.

Anyhow I’m going to talk about video games.

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Video Games Should Be Fun

I haven’t played The Last of Us Part II. I can’t review it or comment on its content too heavily. But something I’ve seen in a lot of reviews, both positive and negative, is that while it’s got an ambitious and detailed story, it’s not that much fun to actually play. Tor had a glowing review, but the critic made a point of saying that it’s not a game that really invites replays. It was a good experience as a piece of art, but it wasn’t fun. And… that’s kind of weird, I think?

To be clear, this isn’t that strange of a jump to make: games that are more interesting to watch than they are to play. I made this complaint about Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, which is full of cinematic moments that are cool to watch but not so much to play. And that was made by the same studio that made The Last of Us. In both cases, they’d make great movies, but (at least with Uncharted) it made a less-than-stellar game experience, because I wasn’t having fun playing the game.

There are other similar examples that pop up every now and then. I recall that when the game Asura’s Wrath came out, there were reviews that pointed out that the gameplay was really repetitive and not very inspired, with tons of Quick Time Events, and basically you spend the entire game button mashing until you fill your BURST bar so you can unleash a cutscene. But plenty also pointed out that if you looked at it like a kind of interactive anime, then it’s a much more enjoyable experience. And maybe that’s not exactly the same deal either, because as far as I could tell fans of that game did enjoy playing it, but gameplay seemed to take a backseat in the mind of the developers, as they wanted to focus on presentation.

While I don’t hate that idea, it is not how I approach video games. I remember very distinctly a line from a Zero Punctuation review (and yes, I get that Yahtzee shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all of video game criticism, just bear with me) where he replies to an argument about a game making him angry or frustrated being the point with, “Shut up, it’s a game. Games are fun.” And that is kind of where I stand on this.

I wondered if the idea that games don’t have to be fun is related at all to the popularity and influence of games that are incredibly difficult and unforgiving--saying something is “ like Dark Souls” is cliched at this point, and kind of ridiculous to all the games it’s applied to, but Dark Souls has been an incredibly influential game that’s famous for being incredibly difficult. But I don’t know if that’s a fair game series to point a finger at for this idea, because I think people who play those games do actually enjoy them, and they find it fun to have ridiculously hard games. It’s not what I’d find fun, but someone else does. The point of the game was still to have fun, just not in the way that I would.

But how did we get here with games? That a game that many critics who love it admit they didn’t actually enjoy playing it is getting rave reviews? And again, that’s not a condemnation of The Last of Us Part II, because I haven’t played it. But… a game that wasn’t designed to be fun to play?

It’s a bit funny, because this is a design choice that’s well-ingrained into other mediums of art at this point. Movie critics love fawning over films that are incomprehensible or outright boring to the average moviegoer; there are playwrights who are disgusted when everyday audiences enjoy their works on stage. And books? Look, have you looked at award-winning “literary” fiction? Or sat in a high school English class reading modern books? Most of it is utterly boring to the average reader, leading to high-minded book critics to lament the stupidity of the common people every so often.

I wonder if we’re going to get to that point in video games, or if we’re almost there. If soon enough developers are going to regularly be pumping out video games that are deep and meaningful in themes and ideas, ambitious in their execution, but not much fun to play, and most players don’t want much to do with it because it’s not fun. I’ll be very sad if that day comes, because even though I generally value story pretty highly in games, the fact is if a game’s not fun to play I don’t consider it worth my time.

I don’t think we’re quite there, and I’m not sure if we ever will be. But I find it uncomfortable to think about.

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