Chris Bateman Responded!

Of the three emails I sent out to scholars in the field of video games, the first to get a response went to Chris Bateman, writer of Beyond Game Design. For posterity's sake, here's his response in full:

Hi Paul,

The email you used is the correct one for 'first contact', but please use this email address for any future correspondence.

My basic point is that we need a "Shakespeare of Games." Shakespeare was himself as much an innovator as a storyteller, mostly taking old stories and adapting them to the new medium of English theater. He took this medium from simple popular entertainment to a true art form. Sometime, I argue, someone could/will do the same for video games and change the world of art and expression all over again.

I agree with this claim, and have made similar suggestions myself. In fact, there is a definite gap in contemporary video games for exploring the concept of adaptation. It's notable in Shakespeare's career that he did not create stories, he only adapted them for the stage - and in the process perfected them for that medium.

 

My question for you, then, is simple: What do you think it would take to create such a "Shakespeare of Games"? Is it possible for just one person, or will it have to be a whole team? Or has it already happened, in your opinion? If so, who?

The problem is not the person, it's the economics. At the moment, videogames have a number of viable commercial niches but none of them lend themselves to a Shakespearean moment. In the upper market, budgets are too high and development too constrained by marketing concerns. Experimentation is essentially impossible in this space.

There are those artistically motivated projects that are funded by a corporation, such as Sony, for brand benefits - Shadow of the Colossus or Heavy Rain for instance - but I don't see this space as likely to give rise to a Shakespearean moment, for slightly different reasons. Innovators in this space are too focused on the form, for a start, and far too likely to want to express their own ideas. This is a possible space it could happen, but not a likely one.

There is currently no middle market for games, which is a problem because this is the space a Shakespeare of games would be most likely to happen. We might get it back, but it's not likely at the moment.

The social games market dominates the lower market with cheap, disposable, addictive games, and other games for smartphones and tablets are largely similar economically. This is not a space likely to give rise to a Shakespeare of games.

Finally, the indie developers are too caught up in their own imaginations - obsessed with fantasy and science fiction, addictive game mechanics etc. - and this space is dominated by the programmers for pragmatic reasons. I doubt any programmer has the mindset to be a Shakespeare of games - although I would love to be proven wrong.

So the economics of game development are currently toxic to the kind of narrative innovation Shakespeare is justifiably famous for developing. The best bet for something like this to happen would be a community-driven development network which pooled resources, providing a wide range of assets that could be shared to create worlds. I tried to set this up myself a while back, but no-one understood why it would be useful and it fell flat. Trying to get game developers to co-operate on anything is a trial; trying to get them to form mutual communities is like pulling teeth, although this is not to say that devs aren't friendly, nor that they don't help each other out.

What would really help this would be an end to the obsession with rising technical specifications and what they can do for games - which is to say, an end to the current economics of home consoles. There is already an instability in this space, so perhaps the situation will improve, but I think not rapidly.

 

Also--do you see games ever being studied as part of the "liberal arts" with a "canon" and "conventional interpretations" and other such academic dressings, or will games remain part of "cultural studies" more for sociologists/psychologists? Or are they something entirely new?

No, I don't believe games are something entirely new - they build upon long traditions in both games (which have at least an 8,000 year history, if you don't count non-human games) and stories (which are even older). These ideas are explored in my book of philosophy "Imaginary Games", which suggests that all art forms are a kind of game, although it is really just a part of that book's topic.

I would say that games are already being studied in the liberal arts - narratologists, for instance, have already written quite a lot about narrative in digital games. There are already conventions and canonical trends within the space, so it is only a matter of time before the humanities side of game studies gets picked up and explored more directly. To get there, however, games have to continue to break with their commercial forms. Artistic developers like Tale of Tales are vital to this process, and I continue to support all artistically-motivated games to the hilt in the hope that we can begin to explore the untapped potential of this medium.

All the best,

Chris.

So, the social scholarship actually works! People really are willing to talk if you engage them in a good conversation. This is awesome!