Does Multiplayer Kill the "Games are Art" Argument?

Let's just ignore the fact the blog hasn't been updated in a long time and proceed with the article shall we?

I've been reading reviews for the ever popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, when I came across the following line by 1up.com's David Ellis about the game's single and multiplayer components: "Though still a blast, the single-player campaign isn't the reason thousands of people still play the original MW on a daily basis."

Ellis's comments, by no means, reveal some secret gamer practice. I never finished the single player campaign to Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne because I was so hooked on the multiplayer. But his review got me thinking about the single and multiplayer modes in relation to the "games as art" argument.

When people talk about video games being art, narrative is a big part of the critique. Games like Bioshock and Silent Hill 2 have received acclaim for not only their stories, but the way in which they presented them. Even Halo has been prasied for creating a great story and mythology to surround that story in. The point is, game naratives can present critiques and discussions about the world in the same way famous works of literature do.

So what happens when you take a powerful story like the one in Modern Warfar 2 and add a multiplayer component to it? If we were just looking at games as art in terms of narrative, there would be a problem with classifying games as "artistic." The multiplayer aspect undermines the single player's story because there is no real story attached to the multiplayer. Suddenly the game becomes less about the consequences of war and more about killing tons of dudes, either solo or with a team. And with more people interested in the multiplayer component of the game, the single player becomes the side dish rather than the main course. At best, the hardcore multiplayer gamers will play the single player campaign to gain achievements or unlock hidden bonuses.

This is why a critique of games must cover all aspects of games, and not just the narrative. Looking at games from a design perspective, artistic games may not even include a storyline at all. Super Mario Bros. is still regarded as a masterpiece not because of it's storyline, but because of how exceptional the gameplay was. Likewise, Team Fortress 2 is a strictly multiplayer experience, but the game earned the same amount of accolade as Bioshock thanks to its unique art style and entertaining gameplay. Narrative is important in video games, but it's only a portion of what constitutes an entire video game.

I obviously believe that games can be just as artistic as movies, paintings, literature, etc. I wouldn't be writing on this blog if I didn't believe that. However, I still feel there is some relevance to the multiplayer killing the integrity of a game argument. I'm currently working on a paper about science fiction stories in video games, and my professor is worried that because so many games can be reduce down to "kill all dudes," it hurts the power of those narratives. Even when considering all the other apsects of video games, that's a powerful arguement to fight against; one that I'm still trying to refute.

What do you guys think? Leave a comment or send me a message! I'd love to hear other's opinions on this matter.

How my First Two Years in College Convinced Me To Be a Computer Games Journalist

This is a speech.

(Speaker first explains to audience what he’s going to tell them: the first two years at UCSD and a defense of his career choice)

I love computer gaming.

We have been together for sixteen years, and for the last sixteen years, only once did I try to leave computer gaming, when I decided it was a time-consuming, childish, distraction. A week before my first year at Sixth College started, I bought a Mac Book Pro. I could have bought a gaming laptop, but it was time to get serious, to have a machine that, to my knowledge, couldn’t play games other than World of Warcraft, a game I avoid because it’s like cocaine.

I tried to abandon gaming forever, but in the first quarter at Camp Snoopy, I picked up an issue of my favorite gaming magazine, Computer Gaming World, and asked myself: “Why? Why is this necessary? Do I really need to stop playing computer games?” And I realized, no. I loved it.

So in the fourth week, I bought a copy of Windows XP, installed it on my mac, boughtWarhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, and convinced two guys in my suite to play it with me. And it was awesome.  Specifically, the multiplayer in the game was awesome. The singleplayer was monotonous. Don’t get this game unless you have friends who want to share the experience.

(Speaker Ahems) Anyways. 
            In the second quarter of my first year, I moved to one of the party-suites, where the 2^ndhighest GPA was a 3.2 and I automatically became the pretentious one. It was there that I learned to hate everybody. My new peers were more interested in alcohol than learning about themselves. Hating my peers drove me into über-study. I only took breaks for two things: exercise, and gaming.

But I failed to absolutely hate my suitemates, and there were two reasons why: Dota, and Starcraft. Every midnight, everyone in my suite would stop what they were doing and play Dota or Starcraft with each other. And it was pure joy. On Saturday night, we would play from ten p.m. to four. Because of Dota and Starcraft, every early morning, I loved my suitemates.

By the beginning of my second year at UCSD, all hatred I had for others vanished. I became more laid back. I looked at my 3.78 G.P.A. and I couldn’t get any joy from it. Then I started going to LAN parties. Every Friday night, I went with my laptop and USB mouse to a friend’s apartment where up to eight of us would play Team Fortress 2. We would play from eight in the evening to two in the morning. The next day, I would play more Team Fortress 2. Than I would eat lunch and play a new game.

I became addicted. During the 2007 October fires, the ones that caused 1,000,000 Californians to evacuate their homes, I should have been helping out, or studying for my postponed midterms. Instead, while SoCal burned, I played Company of Heroes, an amazing, perhaps-too-often-intense, real-time strategy game by Canadian developer Relic Entertainment. I remember in one online match, it was 2 vs. 2, and I was playing as one of two Nazi companies against two British ones. I started chatting with the other players. One of the Brits asked where we were from, and I told him I was from UCSD. Then he told me that UCSD sucked.

After that, the only thing that mattered to me was beating those fuck faces at Company of Heroes. It was the most intense game I’ve ever played. It started out bad when my teammate told me it was the first time he ever played. I had to keep two companies of British troops and armored vehicles from crossing the river separating the two sides, and teach a noob. And they attacked immediately. And I always just barely kept them off with my superior brain and über micro.

The game lasted three hours. It was four in the morning. Eventually the Brits captured some territory on our side of the map, and I threw everything I had at them. I caught them building trenches and forced them back across the river. It was then that my ally told me he was ready, with eight, fully upgraded tanks. And we crossed the river. I called in all the artillery I had on their riverside defenses, and we blitzkrieged them. We destroyed their defenses and killed their remaining troops, and they surrendered. (Speaker breathes in through nose with a grin on face) Ahh. In the middle of the 2007 California fires, I experienced the best moment of the year. And when school restarted, I was totally unprepared for my midterms.

Computer Gaming and I had spent too much time together. I got a D on my Spanish midterm. And in that Spring quarter, I got a C+ in a philosophy class. It was the first C+ I had gotten since the 8^th grade. But I wasn’t unhappy about it. I wasn’t unhappy because I was learning a lot from my classes, especially from one.

A friend of mine named Colin Wheelock, also an undergrad at Sixth, told me about a computer game studies course under the Communications Department. I took it in the Spring Quarter of my sophomore year, and it changed the way I looked at games. From professor Noah Wardrip-Fruin, I learned about Effectance in computer games, flow in computer games, community building in computer games, story telling in computer games, procedural rhetoric, and more. This convinced me to do my own study. Now I can also discuss pacing in games, the importance of having varying gameplay scenarios within any game; I can discuss the faults of realism in games; I can discuss the effects of immersion, and I can speak about the game industry in general. COCU 177 was the most interesting class I had ever taken.

But that wasn’t the most important thing to me that year. The most important thing was my analysis of game news outlets. I studied game journalists from various websites. I watched videos of them doing work and listened to their podcasts. What I noticed, other than the game news, were the things they said future game journalists need:

They need to be entertaining.

They need to be writers as much as gamers.

They need to have good people skills.

And they need to love computer gaming.

They were talking about me.

When I first came to UCSD, I wanted to become a humor writer, but I didn’t love humor enough. Humor is an awesome tool, but there are other types of writing I also like to do. In game journalism, I can still write humor, but I can cal write other things. And in game journalism, I will get to write about something I love: computer gaming. Now I study games in my “spare time.” I play them and I read all kinds of books and articles about them. I also have a blog that I update now and then. That’s where I am today.

Before I end this though, I want to give an apologetic for my desired career. There are those who look at my dream and refuse to call it a real job, with the biggest complaint against everybody in the gaming industry being: “Why don’t you do something more important?! Something like engineer or physicist or teacher, which will bring humanity closer to utopia and farther away from Armageddon like it always does!”

Well, in defense, I’ll give you three things:

First, my college education: one of the most important things I’ve learned from CAT is that humanity is totally doomed. Thanks CAT! (Speaker smiles) I am convinced that if we don’t destroy us, nature will. Nature’s got our back.

A second defense is my Dad and something he told me last summer.

My dad went to the University of Chicago as an undergrad. He had awesome grades, and took honor’s courses in mathematics. But there he had a caffeine addiction and felt miserable. He left after his second year for the army in order to find himself. He loved the infantry. He finished his undergrad at Knox College where he Phi Beta Kappa’d in mathematics. Eventually, he became a Special Forces officer, and he became an Olmsted Scholar, which brought him to Thailand. Later, during the Clinton administration, he was the U.S. Army attaché to Thailand. During the Bush administration he was a military intelligence officer and then a civilian boss of a Special Forces unit that I won’t talk about.

Last summer, dad told me that he wished he had been in Washington longer. He told me that he did great work in Thailand and Cambodia and Iraq and Afghanistan, but that he did great, small things. He told me that, in the military, if you really want to make a lasting, significant difference, you have to be in D.C. for a certain amount of time. If you want to change the Empire, be in Imperial City.

After he told me that, I said that I did not care about doing a whole lot for society, and he told me he felt exactly the way I did when he was my age.

Now my dad is a mathematics teacher at a poor, primarily black, high school in San Antonio where he keeps winning the “Teacher of the Month” award. And he hasn’t been a teacher for more than a year. (Speaker smiles)

I think my father agrees with those who look at my dream, that it’s just not helpful enough to be a justified career choice. But dad, that way of looking at life is not something I want. Not everybody can be Abe Lincoln, and not everybody should. And wouldn’t trying to be better for the world than everyone else, rather than enough, constitute a self-esteem problem, or perpetuate one?

Dad, I don’t want to burn in this bonfire of vanity society roasts itself in. I think it would be worse for me to do something I have no passion for, just because it arguably makes a greater, positive difference in people’s lives. I don’t want to be part of the international penis-size competition.

So game journalism it is! I’m excited. All the fun things I’ll say and the interesting people and games I’ll meet and play.

O Infinity Ward! Wilt’ thou maketh Shakespeare proud?

Make sure, in Modern Warfare 2’s story, the Russian terrorists end up being fair while we Brits and Americans end up being foul.

And indy-game developers: keep making World of Goo-quality titles. Keep innovating.