Tom Farrer, Producer, EA DICE

I was told I could write this article about anything that took my fancy. It’s always tricky to make a choice when you can choose “anything” so after wondering about different subjects for a while I decided to share a rather rambling stream of consciousness that was running through my head the other day.

I was moving in to a new apartment (something I hate doing and seem to do far too often) and it rather strangely got me thinking about reality in games. As I staggered around, sweating under the weight of the heavy boxes, stubbing my toe, and straining my back, I realized I was playing a real life crate puzzle. Many a time in games have I had to cleverly stack boxes in a certain way to reach the golden treasure in a lava dungeon in order to save the world. Now here I was stacking boxes in a certain way so that I could… reach the bathroom.

Not one of the most captivating events in my life and I’m not for a moment suggesting we should make games about answering the call of nature in mundane settings (although they’re probably out there). Still it made me wonder whether there would there be any interest in more realistic settings to frame the challenges games present us with. I know there are plenty of games considered to be “realistic” but the drive for realism has, for the most part, centered around increasing the visual fidelity of the situations we depict but not on the actual nature of the situations in which you find yourself as a player.

You are generally the hero saving the city/world/universe. Is there room for more contemplative experiences in the mainstream? Does anyone want to play a war game and see the real human cost of war and the ambiguity of the motivations behind it? Instead of “BOOM HEADSHOT F@#$ YEAH!” we would have “my god…look what I had to do to survive”.

Would this deepen the experience and make the player consider their actions in a different light? Would people get more from the experience than just visceral excitement? Or would it just be deeply unpopular because gamers only have an interest in being the perfect action hero? Do we only play games to escape from reality or would we like them to inform our reality and provide us with a different perspective on it?

There are of course games that do explore themes more complex than “kill/smash/beat a bunch of stuff”. The other day I played “Passage” by Jason Rohrer which I thought had some interesting points to make. However to be honest many that I have played deliver their message in such a dull way that it’s a fight to engage with them at all.

Questions like this come up a lot when talking with others in the industry as the aging “games as art” discussion always seems to rear its head along with comparisons of our medium to literature and film. Those two forms of entertainment have a much broader spectrum of setting, theme, message and generally speaking a deeper emotional resonance. But you know what? I’m tired of the discussion. I just don’t think it matters, I think that often when you work on something and are focused on creating an enjoyable and interesting experience “art” is a result of that. It doesn’t need to be a goal you set yourself or something you need to bother yourself with arguing about or justifying.

When we created the “Pure” time trial pack for Mirror’s Edge it was born out of a desire to push the limits of the movement gameplay, to work with our core mechanic unfettered by the restrictions of a realistic setting. The basic idea for the structure actually came from the original rough prototype areas we created when we were getting started on the project. What resulted was the creation of a vibrant abstract world, giant sculptures floating in a dreamscape above an endless ocean. For me that really turned out to be a piece of pure interactive art and I guess my point is that we weren’t aiming for that but we got there anyway.

All of this was swirling around my head along with the pain from my poor stubbed toe whilst I was solving my home made crate puzzle and I thought that really it all comes down to fun, that ostensibly simple word that conceals so much complexity.

Creating fun is what this industry is about and I think it’s in pushing forward in that area that we will continue to realize the potential of this medium. Let everything else grow organically out of that core principle and we’ll see the spectrum of experiences we create broaden. No need to argue about it or try to force it, just let it happen and it will.

- This article originally appeared in GameAxis Unwired July 2009