Landmarks

I'm very late to this discussion (and not bothering to tell any of the people in it that I've thrown in my two cents), but I felt like commenting on an issue I believe Stephen Totilo (here's the post) raised about landmarks in video games. Jonathan Blow (a thoughtful indie dev) took up the question on his blog (and here's that post). A lot of comments were made, but it seemed to me that the discussion was trying to go in a few too many directions at once.

First, let's look at the original comment from Stephen Totilo.

Thirty, forty years in, video games, I am sad to report, are without many famous landmarks and places. N’Gai, can you name a single famous video game building? Princess Peach’s castle (and courtyard) from “Super Mario 64,” maybe? Anything else? Yes I can recall locations in games. For example, I remember the giant vat containing a massive, submarine-sized floating mechanical shark in “Banjo Kazooie,” and I remember the green hill zone of “Sonic: The Hedgehog.” But the truly great places — the postcard-worthy ones — include, for me, just the moon in “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask,” the big sword bridge in “God of War,” Sanctuary Fortress in “Metroid Prime 2: Echoes,” and, not much else. Almost every other spot — even the fun ones — from Dracula’s Castle to Vice City feels generic, familiar, or plain unspectacular.

And because of this, I welcome Rapture. It is a place that looks like no other I’ve been to in video games. Who cares if there’s a gameplay significance to its rising flood-waters! It’s a special, specific place. I’d like to go to a few more [times.]

First off, I have to wonder about Rapture. I have only seen the earliest parts of Bio Shock, but outside of having wonderful production values, the game still looks like a corridor shooter to me. I didn't see anything that I would consider a landmark, and games that make you come back to the same hub areas frequently (Hexen, anyone?) are usually criticized for it, and I haven't heard any talk of backtracking woes in Bio Shock. But let's table that for now and move on to what Jonathan Blow had to say.

If locales are really going to be game landmarks, rather than fanciful imitations of real-world places that you could experience as well in non-game media, then the impression they leave needs to happen through gameplay; they need to be memorable because of the things they encourage to happen within them, not (just) because of the way they look.

In a sense, he's saying that game spaces are about gameplay, not appearance. This is certainly a valid argument. Who really cares if you're using hand carved hardwood pieces or Simpsons pieces after the chess game starts? He goes on to make another point worth making.

Stephen casually mentions fame as being one criterion for landmarks, but I’m not sure that’s a good gauge. Most Americans have heard of Niagara Falls as some kind of great waterfall, but Victoria Falls is much more spectacular. (Just to take one measurement for example, Niagra Falls is about 60 meters high, while Victoria Falls is 100). Victoria Falls is a better landmark, but it’s harder for Americans and Europeans to access, so it is less famous for us (though it is considered to be one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, whereas Niagara just isn’t on that list.

This is especially true of gaming where one person's holy grail is a game someone else may never have heard of. I was shocked and appalled to find out that Blaster Master didn't sell well. I consider it one of the best games of the NES generation, yet many people of that generation never played it. Also, when I think of landmarks, my mind immediately flies to Nosgoth and the pillars. Anyone who's played through Blood Omen, Soul Reaver, and Soul Reaver 2 knows that fairly early on you get to be present at the pillars at a pivotal moment. It made me feel like a tourist in Berlin watching the wall came down. I was witnessing history. But for most gamers, Kain is just a cosplay outfit they mistake for a generic anime vampire. My mind wants to go in a few directions at once, so let's back up and summarize where we are in the argument.

Stephen says video games lack famous landmarks like the real world. Jonathan Blow wants us to consider that the game implications are more memorable than the visuals, and that fame is not necessarily a good criteron in the relatively young and fragmented field of games.

Okay, where to start?

What makes a landmark? Memory. What makes memory?

Repetition
Most landmarks are landmarks because people have been visiting them for hundreds or even thousands of years. We see them in vacation pictures, on postcards, on t-shirts, in advertising, in movies, in songs. Games (in the less than half a century they've even been in stores) thrive on novelty. People criticize games for using the same locales (see Sam & Max: Season One), so they try to avoid it. In addition most games are sequels, sporting the same characters, villians, and gameplay they had in the previous iteration (or that the genre has had for a decade). So how do you set it apart? New tech; new gameplay gimmick; new setting.

Senses
Games really only hit two senses. Smell is a powerful memory trigger (possibly the most powerful). Games don't have anything in the way of smell or taste to trigger memory. Their touch is pretty weak, too. In fact, I keep hearing people on gaming podcasts say they only miss rumble in a few driving games where it's used as a cue to let you know you're close to losing traction. For my own part, my strongest touch memory of a game is from Metal Gear Solid. The rumble when Liquid's helicopter takes off at the start caught my attention and primed me for the real deal. When you find the hostage you're supposed to rescue, he's been poisoned, and you feel his frantic then fading heartbeat as he dies. It's horrible, but I'll never forget it. But that's still a very limited form of touch. I've never felt the weight or texture of something in a game world. I heard there was a peripheral that was supposed to simulate that on some level, but that was a year or two ago, so it obviously hasn't caught on. And even then you have no temperature, no moisture. All of these things contribute to memory, and games don't have them. And even in the senses games do play to, they still don't look (2D screens) or sound (no above and below which is kind of crucial if you think about it) real. In fact games have only a little bit more sensory output than movies and TV. How many landmarks have movies or television created?

Reality
At some level, games are daydreams we indulge in. Human memory is state dependant, so we're less likely to remember what are essentially daydreams. There's just something less impressive that comes from knowing that a canyon was built by a thirty man art team as opposed to six million years of erosion. Plus you can fall in and die. That's a pretty big difference, too. Finally, game landmarks are somewhat... flexible. I've been conditioned to expect that even if I do visit the same setting in a subsequent game, it may not be the same. All this contributes to a sense that game architecture is not there to be remembered.

Purpose
Landmarks don't mean the same thing in games. When you're walking around in an unfamiliar city, you are very aware of navigation. You use landmarks. "Oh, Sacre Coeur's over there. Now I can figure out where I am on the map." Most games have their own maps that show your exact location. Many games don't even model any parts of the location that aren't directly relevant, so you don't really need to navigate much. You also go to real landmarks just to visit them. They are an attraction unto themselves. You got the pamphlet. A tour guide told you stuff about it. You can tell normal people you saw it, and they might care. (That's a biggie.) While some game landmarks have actual backstory (the Citadel from Half-Life 2 being the popular example on Jonathan Blow's blog), they generally feel like a bunch of combat encounters in similar looking hallways at the end of the day.

Last Words
Well, I didn't even get to Jonathan Blow's discussion of gameplay architecture as landmark or the validity of fame defining the landmark, but I've gone on too long already. Do I think games will ever produce culturally recognizable physical landmarks? Sure, to the extent movies and TV do. But as in those media I think it's an aesthetic element that can add to a game, rather than an essential ingredient the industry needs to address.