Games are not Books
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
11093 / 50000
I’m listening to the latest Sofanauts (no. 31) which is my latest obsession (in the last fortnight or so I have mainlined their entire backlist). I’m loving the kind of discussions they have, about SF books and publishing and new media. I occasionally arch an eyebrow or two, usually when they start talking about fantasy novels (seriously, if you think the only reason fantasy is published in trilogies is because the authors are churning out words to suck extra money out of fans, you’re not really on the pulse of the industry). For the most part, though, they are cool smart people talking about stuff that interests me, and there’s always at least one British accent. Can’t do better, as far as podcasts go. (it’s also reinvigorating my interest in podcasting, might have to get back to that)
The current one has Paul Di Filippo and Peter Watts talking with Tony C Smith about the videogame industry. One of the things they discuss is whether games are going to replace prose as an artform. They bring in the whole issue of - photography didn’t kill off prose, TV and film didn’t (though they killed off most of the pulp magazines), etc. etc. So why would games do it?
The most obvious aspect of this discussion that jumps out at me is that - okay I get that people are enjoying participatory artforms and that many are turning to these instead of static artforms (games rather than movies, blogs with communities rather than hardcopy newspapers) - but what about me? I don’t mean the me that still likes to read a novel (but has to tear herself from the laptop in order to do it). I mean the me who is 31 and female and in no way the kind of person that games are designed for.
Sure, there are plenty of women who game. Hell, I spent two years of my life completely immersed in an RPG. One that was almost entirely peopled by female players. During that time, I certainly read a lot less than I do now. But… the kinds of games that they design to sell, the big shiny ones with all the graphics, may appeal to some female gamers, but they are not designed for us. As far as I know the entire medium, from its protagonists through to its storylines and priorities, is directed at not only the male gamer, but pretty much the teen male gamer.
Thanks to Hollywood, I’m kind of over media which have the male audience as their main priority. Worse, they have a particular IDEA of the male audience in mind, which I’m pretty sure assumes that men are sex-mad, gun-fetishising idiots, and is just as irrelevant to many of the guys I know as it is to the women. I’m not sure I want the games industry to be providing any let alone the majority of my future entertainment.
Sure, the SF field has a dodgy record with acknowledging audiences other than a certain kind of male reader, but there’s still plenty out there for me to read. Far more than I have the time to consume.
(The second thought that jumped out at me was - seriously, there are people who think prose might die out? Do they not know about NaNoWriMo?)
I was going to tie this into the article I found yesterday about why men win literary awards, but this is long enough already and I haven’t reached my day’s word target yet. Must write book. More later.