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Dead Media Working Note 08.5
Dead medium: Computer Games Are Dead (Part 3)
From: ChrisCr_AT_aol.com (Chris Crawford)
Source: INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DESIGN Volume 9, Number
4, April 1996
Interactive Entertainment Design
5251 Sierra Road
San Jose, CA 95132
published six times/year, $36 year, $50 outside US
(((We now offer the third installment of Mr Crawford's
essay, "Computer Games Are Dead.)))
THE DEATH OF CREATIVITY
A related factor in this == perhaps a symptom of
the previous factors == is the death of creativity. I have
been participating in this industry for 16 years now, and
I have noted a sharp decline in the overall level of
creativity in the industry since about 1990. The last
truly original game we have seen is SimCity. This failure
manifests itself most clearly in the slavish imitation of
other designs. Everybody scrambles to make a Doom-clone
or a Myst-clone. Why must we spend so much time copying
each other? Isn't there anybody out there thinking an
original thought?
Another way of saying this is that we just don't try
fundamentally new ideas. Is the universe of entertainment
confined to adventure games, shoot-em-ups, vehicle
simulations, and strategy wargames? Is that really all
there is to design?
Some people have suggested that our standards of
creativity have fallen because we have already discovered
everything there is to create. Having already staked out
the territory, we are now in a more mature phase where we
merely examine the nooks and crannies that were overlooked
in the initial creative reconnaissance of the 1980s.
This argument leaves me aghast. I can't decide whether
to condemn it for its cynicism, its stupidity, or its
intellectual vainglory. Consider, for example, the scale
of human ingenuity unleashed by the invention of the
printing press. The basic technology has remained stable
for over 500 years, and yet during that time we have seem
an ongoing cavalcade of new ideas. First the printing
press was used for devotional works, then polemic works.
It was the driving technology behind the Reformation, and
then became a medium for scientific collaboration. It
also became a source of entertainment, expanding to bring
literacy to the masses in the nineteenth century. It is
now the basis for a bewildering array of elements
fundamental to our civilization. And this is just a way
of putting ink onto paper == contrast that with the vastly
greater power of the computer!
Consider the fact that the personal computer has
increased in power by at least a thousandfold since its
inception. To suggest that, in fifteen short years, we
have fully explored the creative potential of a medium
more powerful and changing more rapidly than any other
medium in human history is ridiculous. Creative life and
energy should be the hallmark of our industry; the
creative failings of the last five years are sure signs of
its morbidity. If all this creative potential cannot
inspire us to mighty leaps of creative derring-do, then
surely our souls are dead, dead, dead.
A DEAD COMMUNITY
Another indicator of industry mobidity is the loss of
the spirit of community. This is best evidenced by the
steady shift in spirit at the Computer Game Developers'
Conference.
Here's something I wrote in the June 1988 issue of
this same periodical in reference to the first CGDC: "But
easily the most powerful feeling of the day was the
dawning sense of awareness of community. For the first few
hours, you could see people looking around the circle of
faces with a sense of awe. 'My God!' their faces said,
'Lookit all these other people who are game designers just
like me!' People who have spent years working in
isolation suddenly realized that there are others who ask
the same questions, fight the same battles, and make the
same mistakes they have."
Contrast this with the spirit of the 1995 CGDC. It
was huge and impressive, to be sure, but the sense of
anomie was overpowering. The banquet was swanky but had
none of the warm communal spirit of times past; instead it
had shouting, food thrown, and people ejected. What was
once a communal gathering has become a carnival, a meat
market, and a promenade; it felt more like a cotillion
than a family picnic.
Some of this change is the unavoidable result of
growth, but we can't pin all the problems on growth. Some
cities have developed slums, crime, and inner city decay
as the consequence of their growth; other cities have
grown just as rapidly without encountering these problems.
Somewhere on the path from my living room to the Santa
Clara Convention Center, the CGDC lost its soul. And I
think that this loss is reflective of deeper trends within
the community as a whole.
Let's talk about morality. It seems to me that most
people take an entirely too religious approach to
morality, treating it as something mystical and sacred,
full of absolute truths and moral imperatives. I view
morality in more pragmatic terms, as a collection of rules
for social cohesion. Moral systems allow people to live
together in cooperating communities. Every community and
subcommunity has its own local mores, its special variant
moral system. Our industry is a community with a moral
system, and that moral system is democratically
established in much the same way that a language is
established: people embrace what they like and reject what
they don't like, and the collective average of everybody's
choices constitutes the language and moral code for the
community.
Thus, moral code and language are the primary glue
that holds the community together. A community with a
vibrant language and a strong moral code will prosper; a
community with a divided language or a weak moral code
will be destroyed by its fissiparousness.
I was once discussing a complex financial transaction
with my financial advisor when I suggested what I thought
was a simple solution to a knotty problem. He dismissed
my suggestion with the slightest edge of distaste in his
voice: "We don't do that kind of thing." He went on to
explain that my suggestion, however innocent in intent,
was similar to a ploy used by unethical persons and was
therefore shunned by honorable traders. While perfectly
legal, it was a violation of the unwritten moral code of
his community, and as I studied the workings of the
financial instrument in question, I came to understand the
practical value of my advisor's prohibition.
I remember another case in which I was discussing a
business deal with my agent, who was a member of the New
York book publishing community. As part of the deal, he
wanted me to jump through some hoops, and I was rather
impatient with the rigamarole. When I protested the
impracticality of his request, he explained, "That's the
way we do things." My protest ran afoul of an unwritten
rule of his profession. Again, that rule made perfect
sense in the context of the kinds of business transactions
he worked with every day.
It seems to me that the games community has failed to
establish a solid moral code. Perhaps the gold rush
mentality that we have lived with for so long has seeped
into our souls and poisoned our values. In the last five
years I have observed with growing dismay the steady
erosion of altruism, the decline of artistic aspiration,
the stealthy march of greed. But worst of all has been
the moral apathy of the community as a whole, a cynical
shrugging of the shoulders at the process of moral
decline.
Some years ago a powerful publisher brought under-
the-table pressure to bear to prevent an individual from
giving a technical lecture at CGDC, even though the
primary subject matter of that person's lecture was his
own proprietary technology that he had used in conjunction
with a project involving the powerful publisher. The
powerful publisher's attitude was that every aspect of
their operation was a proprietary secret, even those
aspects that they had not themselves created.
I publicly raised the moral issue created by this
case; did we as an industry want to live with this kind of
moral precept? My question should have spurred a soul-
searching debate about the complexities of intellectual
property and how ownership of that intellectual property
can spread to others through business relationships;
instead it was met with utter apathy. Nobody seemed to be
interested in the question.
More telling is the sad story of the sale of the CGDC
to Miller-Freeman. Here was the premier community event of
our industry, explicitly founded and historically operated
as a public service, not a vehicle for personal gain.
Incoming directors were required to promise not to harbor
expectations of deriving personal gain from the power that
they were being given. Their stock was contractually
specified to have a value of exactly $25.
In the early years, there was no question as to our
altruistic intent; it was woven into the fabric of our
corporate culture and provided the basis of many of our
decisions. It was a profoundly healthy moral rule,
something that conferred great power on CGDC and a major
factor in its spectacular success. In the early days,
everybody pitched in to make CGDC a success.
But then the moral miasma of the community infected
the CGDC. Greed whispered ever more insistently in our
ears. I must confess before God and the universe that I
was sorely tempted; I flirted with greed and explored the
possibilities of being "just a little greedy". I wondered
aloud whether there was not some middle road between
altruism and greed.
I never had the opportunity to transform my illicit
fantasies into actions noble or evil, for the others
kicked me out and confiscated my stock. They then decided
the issue themselves by selling CGDC to Miller-Freeman for
an undisclosed sum. I do not know how much they got; I am
told that it was a great deal of money. In so doing, they
violated their promises to others and indirectly
transferred huge amounts of money out of the pockets of
their colleagues in the community and into their own
pockets.
Even more striking was their treatment of their
former partners, the previous directors of the CGDC: they
gave each such person $3,000 in return for a legal waiver.
This amount represents an infinitesimal fraction of what
they kept for themselves.
The most astounding aspect of this entire affair is
the reaction of the community. When I laid these facts
before members of the computer game community, the most
common reaction was a cynical shrug of the shoulders.
"What did you expect, Chris?" There was no sense of moral
outrage, no concern that such behavior poisoned the
atmosphere for everybody. Instead, some people applauded
the sellers for having gotten rich. Others abdicated all
moral responsibility, arguing that moral policing is the
duty of the law, not of individuals. Some placed personal
loyalty ahead of moral sensibility, deciding the case on a
strictly ad hominem basis. Some chose to bury the matter
under an obfuscatory pile of uncertainties, demanding
written proof of criminal intent before they would pass
judgement. Some just preferred to avoid conflict. The
end result was a community-wide acquiescence to behavior
that many other communities would refuse to tolerate.
Some of the same people who sold the CGDC are now
running the CGDA. One would think that CGDA members would
demand their replacement at the earliest possible date, if
only to assert the highest moral standards for their
nascent organization, but in fact no such demand has
materialized. Indeed, one of the sellers, Ernest Adams,
is now a candidate for a full-time salaried position as
Executive Director of the CGDA. When I point out the irony
of this situation to members of the community, the most
common response is, "If he does a good job for us, why
should we care about his past?"
The problem here isn't Ernest Adams or any of the
other people who sold CGDC. They are only the touchstone
against which the moral strength of the community is
tested. The problem is with the community. A group that
responds to allegations of unethical behavior with a
cynical shrug of the shoulders is a moral corpse, a
collection of individuals elbowing against each other
rather than a cohesive community. Without a strong moral
infrastructure, this community is only marking time before
it fractures into defensive enclaves.
(((The last and fourth part of Mr Crawford's essay follows.)))
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