Theory

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/massage_my_ass/

Just got an email from this guy:

Hey Alex,

checking your columns, I thought you might be interested in our little productions here at Retro Sabotage.

And you'll see that, indeed, Pac Man had a real message, though not a violent one...

http://www.retrosabotage.com

Cheers,

Tof

I played that Pac-Man browser game they have on there, but I still have no idea what the hell he is talking about. If anyone figures this out let me know.

[icycalm]

By the way, for those who had trouble understanding this, my article was a joke. I do not really believe that Pac-Man had a message for cristsake. I was just ridiculing the concept of "messages" in videogames. (And indeed the concept of "messages" in anything, but that is an issue outside the scope of the game discussion forum.)

[Udderdude]

I played that Pac-Man browser game they have on there, but I still have no idea what the hell he is talking about. If anyone figures this out let me know.

All of the games there have some sort of little joke that happens eventually, some of them happen right away. Most of them are pretty dumb, a few are actually funny.

My personal favorite would have to be this one .. http://www.retrosabotage.com/spacein/invasion.html

[icycalm]

I played the Pac-Man one and did not really get the joke. Regardless, the guy is talking about a message, not a joke.

[eae]

There are several pac-man "sabotages" on that site, I think the guy was referring to the mockumentary one, which implies that pac-man represents a consumist in his hunger for possession, and the ghost represents his guilt that eventually gets swallowed.

So, does pac-man, or any other videogame, really transmit a message? Yes, because to play it you have to pay, and by paying you are able to obtain gratification. It is the same message transmitted by pornography (at least, it was when you had to pay for pornography in pre-internet times): there's nothing you can't buy with money, even the experience of being a hero in some fantasy world. Sooner or later you'll feel guilty for spending hours on your expensive console while third world children are dieing of starvation, but videogames are made for the very reason of swallowing your guilt.
So that little flash game is not just a joke, but is indeeed meant to transmit a parodized message about the real nature of mainstream videogame entertainement.

[icycalm]

eae, I can tell from your post that there is almost absolutely no chance you will get this, but I still need to set the record straight.

Things do not transmit specific messages. Only human beings can do this. At the same time, only human beings can receive messages. Now one human being may create a thing and "imbue" it with a message in some way, but there is absolutely no way that other human beings will be able to be certain what that message was, or even if the creator had any message in mind at all, except if the message is explicitly stated.

So did the creators of Pac-Man want to transmit some sort of message with their game? Maybe and maybe not. They do not explicitly talk about any messages in the game, so there's no way for us to tell by simply playing it. The only way to discover if they had some sort of message in mind is to ask them. Until then there's no point in boldly declaring that this or that game had this or that message, because in that case we'll come up with a billion possible messages for each and every game, and what good would that do us?


PS. Please do not bother replying as I have no interest in whatever further it is you might have to say on this subject.

PS2. But at least it seems you answered my question, so thanks for that.

[eae]

You are welcome. Of course there's a big difference between the message someone puts intentionally in a game, or whatever else they make, and the more or less unintentional messages that are unavoidably carried by whatever action we perform; so that by just going to the supermarket and buying this and that we may be inconsciously transmitting our opinion on the society we live in: the latter is all in the observer, and how he decides to interpret what he sees.

Pacman doesn't have intentional messages, it does however carry a meaning, which in my opinion is the one I described.
The joke of that little flash game is to take this meaing and turn it into the "intentional message" of the game, fantasizing that pacman was actually created to transmit capitalistic values through the metaphor of the all-eating mouth, and then imagining how a communist pacman would look like.

And so of course, the pacman parody is different from the real pacman in that it actually has an intentional message

[icycalm]

Listen here, dude. Your smarmy, conceited tone is annoying me, and I am very close to asking you to stop posting in my forum. You make one post saying "So, does pac-man, or any other videogame, really transmit a message? Yes, because to play it you have to pay, and by paying you are able to obtain gratification.", and then when I explain to you that you are full of stinking shit you make a 180-degree turn, and in an equally conceited tone spew out this garbage:

Of course there's a big difference between the message someone puts intentionally in a game, or whatever else they make, and the more or less unintentional messages that are unavoidably carried by whatever action we perform

And at any rate you are AGAIN wrong, because messages can ONLY be intentional. Your so-called unintentional messages are called "FANTASIES" where I come from.

Now that's enough with this nonsense. Do NOT post in this thread again.

[taidan]

I have been frustrated for a while with how inane people can be when it comes to finding messages in games, but no recent game has been as frustrating to observe as Portal. The game is about a nifty portal gun that you use because someone wants to kill you. That's it. And yet there are pages of commentary out there about a metal cube.

I mean, people are writing that with a straight face.

[another god]

dreaming in an empty room

[icycalm]

That wasn't so bad, really. I mean all he said basically was that the plot of MGS2 was not supposed to make much sense, and the game was all the better for it.

I liked that article.

Tim does write some silly stuff now and then, but he's nowhere near as bad as the Tim wannabes.

Also: sup taidan.

[another god]

I posted about Dreaming in an Empty Room because it's a really good analysis of a really good game that got unnecessarily punished for going outside of its bounds. As if we needed another game like Metal Gear Solid? I don't think it's necessarily good to say "games don't have messages" as much as I don't think it's good to draw messages from games that don't really exist.

Mario's a game that shows you what it's like to run around in the Mushroom Kingdom. Sonic's a game that rewards you with speed. Whether you want to call it a message or not isn't important. What's important is the experience drawn from games - DiaER just explains that MGS2 can lead you to a more complex experience, and in a way, encourages gamers to want more of it.

I think it's interesting to take this idea of messages in games. Even big name companies like EA are churning out very traditional games that have things they want to say. I'm not commenting on the quality of the game, but the game has a lot of things it wants to say about mercenaries for hire. Whether or not that too will be missed by AoT's audience, I don't know, but it's still fascinating that it's there.

[icycalm]

I posted about Dreaming in an Empty Room because it's a really good analysis of a really good game that got unnecessarily punished for going outside of its bounds.

It was not an analysis of the game. It was an analysis of the plot. There is a massive difference. And the game did not go outside "its bounds". The plot did.

I don't think it's necessarily good to say "games don't have messages" as much as I don't think it's good to draw messages from games that don't really exist.

And who is to say if a message exists or not? Tim Rogers?

Like I said, the only people who can tell you if there is supposed to be a message are its designers. Anything else is pure guesswork, in which case I really don't see the point.

Mario's a game that shows you what it's like to run around in the Mushroom Kingdom. Sonic's a game that rewards you with speed. Whether you want to call it a message or not isn't important. What's important is the experience drawn from games - DiaER just explains that MGS2 can lead you to a more complex experience, and in a way, encourages gamers to want more of it.

Again you are getting it wrong. MGS2 did not lead you to any more complex experiences than MGS. All it had was a couple extra moves.

You are mistaking the video clips that play between pauses in the game for the game.

I think it's interesting to take this idea of messages in games.

This idea goes against everything this site stands for. I've been playing games for longer than most people who now write about them have been alive. I play games to get away from retarded people and their retarded messages. If I want messages I will read Baudrillard or Gogol, not watch some anime clips made by people who are practically functionally illiterate.

Even big name companies like EA are churning out very traditional games that have things they want to say.

lol

[taidan]

Also: sup taidan.

Sup Icy! Glad I could make it here.

[icycalm]

It must have been quite a trip! How many clicks exactly did it take you to get here from SB?

[taidan]

Few enough that I should have done so some time ago.

(and it was zero clicks to the front page. I typed the URL in).

[another god]

Icy, I don't expect you to get off your whole post modern high horse. All there is when you play MGS2 is the data being jumbled around on the disc through the system onto your TV. I get it. "There's no message" etc. etc. But to deny that the complexity of the experience does not vary from Super Mario Brothers to Metal Gear Solid to Metal Gear Solid 2 does not change is ignorant.

There are a lot of videogame pundits that want to say "games are art" and want to elucidate the rest of the world about the value that they find in games that other people seem to gloss over. I find them to be just as annoying as you do. But when an article like Tim's gets people to think about what games are and what impact games have on the player, it works to the benefit of the player audience.

[JoshF]

I don't expect you to get off your whole post modern high horse.

Uhh, he's not the one here who's on it.

[another god]

Dear JoshF

Post modernism is the critical theory that breaking down the oh-so-happy idea that everything can be perfect. What it essentially boils down to is cynicism that nothing is perfect and we have to accept that. When Icy breaks down the notion that "games can have meaning" and whatnot, it's aimed at interweb video game pundits that sound like stoners making shit up. Unfortunately a lot of those guys can't even use drugs as an excuse for their failings.

I don't even think Icy and I really disagree that much. I bet if I've read nearly as much of the crappy internet video game articles that he has read, I'd be a lot more like him.

[JoshF]

Post modernism is the critical theory that breaking down the oh-so-happy idea that everything can be perfect.

I always thought post-modernism was about using language to build extravagant fantasy truths and trying to find meaning where there is none, which would be the exact opposite of the definition you gave and closer to Mr. Rogers than Alex. And as far as I know the term has many useless definitions.

[icycalm]

About the only way we could define postmodernism is as something that "doesn't make sense". That's why the plot of MGS2 is indeed postmodern, because it doesn't make sense. And there's nothing wrong with that. It is delightfully nonsensical. That's what Tim was saying, and I couldn't agree more.

I mean -- what, are all those JRPG plots that do make sense better?

But to get back to the issue of messages, me and Raphael (another god) are indeed not really disagreeing. If he wants to see messages in games that's fine and dandy -- I can also see messages, as I explained in the article, in every game ever made. Spacewar, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, GTA III.

So any way you look at it, I am right and everyone else is wrong. Either:


1. All games do not have messages (icy: right, artfags: wrong)

or

2. All games do have messages (icy:right, artfags: wrong)


Because what the artfags are telling you is that only SOME games have messages (ICO, Shadow of the Whatever, Rez, etc.), and only THEY are the ones who can discern them and tell you what they are! My God, what bullshit those people are spewing in order to obtain some measure of superiority over the rest of us!


But let's put the nonsense aside, and get back to the heart of the matter. The issue at stake is much more profound than even people like Tim Rogers can understand. It is the issue of the possibility of the existence of messages. And this issue has been resolved by Wittgenstein ages ago. I quote from my article again:

According to the formulation of logic that Wittgenstein bequeathed to us, "The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists -- and if it did exist, it would have no value." A message of course being something that has value, and the evaluation of messages being strictly the province of ethics -- with these two facts in mind we move on to Wittgenstein's next propositions:

If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.

6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.

Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.

Ethics is transcendental.

(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

So that's it. Messages -- i.e. ethics -- cannot be put into words. If you try to put them into words your words will be nonsense.

But to fully understand why this is so you need to understand the Tractatus, and to fully understand the Tractatus you need to spend years studying philosophy.

Which is why I am the only one writing about games who fully understands this stuff. Everyone else is just inhaling their own farts, and will continue to do so until the end of time.

[icycalm]

Also!

But to deny that the complexity of the experience does not vary from Super Mario Brothers to Metal Gear Solid to Metal Gear Solid 2 does not change is ignorant.

Who is denying this? Surely no one on this site!

It is a matter of reading comprehension. You are reading things into my words that aren't there.

The complexity of the experience does vary between MGS and MGS2. Like I said, MGS2 has a couple extra moves.

As for SMB and MGS -- indeed, there is a complexity disparity there too. But as to which of the two is the more complex... That is a rather complex issue -- and an off-topic one.

[Randorama]

What's the meaning of Life?

λx.life'(x), of course.

[Molloy]

It goes back to the old joke: "If we were really influenced by videogames we'd be going into darkened rooms, eating pills and listening to repetitive music."

Didn't play all the games there but the last one seems to be along those lines.

[icycalm]

T. S. Eliot on "messages":

The method is to take a well-known poem . . . without reference to the author or to his other work, analyse it stanza by stanza and line by line, and extract, squeeze, tease, press every drop of meaning out of it that one can. It might be called the lemon-squeezer school of criticism. . . . I imagine that some of the poets (they are all dead except myself) would be surprised at learning what their poems mean . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frontiers_of_Criticism