Moby Dick in an X-Box?
By Dave D. Davis
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It has been commonplace to dismiss video games as trash entertainment, but can video games become recognized as classics -- in the same sense that The Great Gatsby, Citizen Kane, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are?

Webster’s Dictionary defines a classic as “a work of enduring interest and appeal – used especially [in] literature, art, and music.” Beyond that, the criteria for defining a ‘classic’ work are subject to debate, but most scholars expect a work to provide plot, dramatic tension, crisis and resolution. Certainly, most video games today are merely diversions (think Minesweeper or Tetris). They do not aspire to more than mere amusement -- and nothing says they need to.

But when can we expect the literary or artistic experiences, expressed through the medium of video games, to achieve 'classic' status?

Edison's kinetoscope parlor (i.e., movie theater) first opened to a paying public in April 1894. Edwin S. Porter crafted The Great Train Robbery in 1903; Talkies arrived in 1928, and such films as King Kong (1933), The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone With the Wind (1939) draw interest and are generally viewable today. It took four decades of development and experimentation, but film had arrived as a full-fledged dramatic medium.

As entertainment technology progresses, and as audiences grow more sophisticated in their appreciation of new media, ‘works of enduring interest and appeal’ will emerge in the medium of games as they did with cinema.

“Developers have realized they must move beyond the 'zombie' effects of really beautiful characters who have no social and emotional connection to the player. And this requires different ways of thinking about the game play itself,” says Katherine Isbister, Associate Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in upstate New York.

Indeed the quintessential zombie video game, Pong, became available to consumers in the mid 1970s; yet by 1981, even the most formally dramatic games had hardly progressed beyond Colossal Cave Adventure or Zork, and the “innovative” Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. (At least they had characters, of sorts.)

So what games might still be played 25 or 50 years from now? What, if anything, may be enduring about this new, more interactive medium for sight, sound, motion and text? The core characteristic games have -- that more traditional media don’t -- is interactivity. In a game, not only does the main character drive the action, the player drives the character. Successful games engage the player in making the choices. By making full use of interactivity, in concert with the other dramatic elements, games have potential for more deeply engaging narratives, ones that force the player toward an axiom of choice.

But will the dimension of interactivity impede, rather than enhance, a ‘good story, well told?’

The video game industry by and large (and self-admittedly) lacks a rationale or any sort of roadmap for providing a new and uniquely powerful form of literature.

“Creating detailed, realistic, and expressive content takes a lot of people, time, and money,” says industry expert Andrew Glassner. These costs create a powerful argument to play it safe. The major [game] studios do take some risks, but generally they need to be conservative and stick to what they are confident will sell.”

But the industry may be getting closer. Several recently released games may be the forbearers of the first critically accepted classic in the gaming genre:

Indigo Prophecy

Indigo Prophecy (Quantic Dream/Atari 2005) is an innovative and interesting game in which the player participates in solving a supernatural murder mystery from the points of view of multiple characters. Indigo Prophecy employs the suspense/horror genre much in the way an earlier game, Max Payne, employed film noir. From the first cut-scene -- where the crucial character (Lucas Kain) jerkily lurches forward to attack and quickly stab a man to death -- to the initial return to player control ("What have I done? I've got to get out of here!"), we are engaged both as viewer and player.

In an echo of Hitchcock’s introductory scenes at the beginning of each episode of his 1955-62 television show, game director David Cage introduces the game and its mechanisms via the tutorial and leaves us with two pearls of wisdom to apply as we explore the game’s challenges: "Every action has consequences," and "Things are never quite what they seem."

Indigo Prophecy provides players an innovative select-and-commit interface for interacting with the game environment or other characters. These choices play out in unexpected ways -- asking one question may preclude your opportunity to ask a different question, or a time limit may pass before you have decided which tack to take. For example, early on in the crime investigation, the detective characters encounter a wino in an alley near the crime scene. Once the player initiates conversation with the wino, a timer kicks in. The choices of conversational line will branch, and then irrevocably drop out.

The plot device of invoking multiple points-of-view -- first, that of an unwilling killer who seeks to find out what mysterious forces caused him to kill, then second, that of the detectives who are investigating the crime -- involves us in the characters’ struggles and moves the plot to its crisis while avoiding repetition.

Within the limits of current game design constraints, Indigo Prophecy constitutes, at best, a promising beginning.  What is significant about this game is not merely the rich plot and the characterizations, but the high degree to which it succeeds in meshing the metaphor of a supernatural mystery/suspense movie plot and its attendant conventions with a (mostly) playable and challenging game experience.

David Cage is on record as saying, "…Video games were only exploiting a tiny part of their amazing creative potential, because they concentrated on 'Action' and totally neglected a fundamental element of human experience – emotion."  It is on the basis of this worthy observation, as well as on entertainment value, playability, etc., that this game should be considered.