Playing Through
Part Two: What It Means To Play
Sept. 28, 2008
By stealth_toilet

Perhaps the pressure of being the internet’s foremost videogame blogger finally got to me. Or maybe it was a particularly strong brew of coffee that morning which beleaguered my senses. Indeed, it is also possible that the physical weight of my own hubris, combined with richly caffeinated concoctions, led my mind to connect dots that ought never be connected. Whatever the circumstances surrounding this epiphany, sitting in that dimly lit room oblivious to the demands and temptations of the real world, seeing Niko Bellic survey the picturesque skyline of Liberty City tore my virtual world asunder. I ceased to play Grand Theft Auto IV: The Game, and realized that instead I was playing Grand Theft Auto IV: The Toy. ‘Dear God,” I whispered, and the words dropped heavily into the fetid air, “I might as well be playing Boomblox!” The light faded, I tasted panic, and for a time, I drifted into darkness.

Part One of Playing Through may have seemed disjointed, unkempt, and indeed, entirely without purpose. I can only congratulate those stouthearted patrons who managed to wade through that vile swamp and emerge neither bitter nor accusatory to he (me) who it was that first suggested you embark on that specific path. In my defense I can only say it was necessary in establishing the difference in how pseudo-professional industry aficionados play games, and how gamers play games. The purpose of Part Two is to state, in no uncertain terms, why it will be increasingly important to understand this difference as gamers are being told that the games they know and love are now being driven into increasingly uncharted territory. Territory so uncharted it is erroneous to even use the word uncharted to describe it, and only variations of negative prefixes can explain just how intangible games of the future will be. Also monsters live there, monsters that hate traditional gaming experiences with depth and subtlety, and will only play games that are simple and derisive. Ok, perhaps “uncertain terms” was a poor choice of phrasing on my part. The point I want to make in Part Two is that making a distinction between games and toys is a damaging one, and that gamers need not fear the rhetoric or cynicism of the industry on this point, because the media just doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Most of the current discussion arose out of the now infamous Nintendo E3 showing, where Wii Music was internationally elected as the scapegoat for Nintendo’s cumulative failings. Wii music is a game centered around music, that unfortunately debuted in the wake of two well established, beloved, and unprecedentedly successful music games: Guitar Hero IV and Rock Band 2. The key difference between Wii Music and these two juggernauts of rhythm based gameplay is that Wii Music doesn’t really have any gameplay. There are no specific goals or challenges associated with the game. Its sole initiative is to provide people with something to play with, like a toy, as Shigeru Miyamoto phrased it. The fact that Wii Music looks ridiculous to anyone over the age of 6 has resulted in this use of the word “toy” to have all sorts of negative connotations, implying that games which can be categorized as toys have all of a sudden become plunked in the domain of children.