Why I Can't Shut Up About Video Games: A More Precise Explanation

First off, I'll make myself perfectly clear: I love where I go to school. Wesleyan is a great university, with amazing professor and classes and even more amazing fellow students. I couldn't be more happy that I get  to spend four years of my life here.

That said, I'm going to try to explain why I've talked about pretty much only video games in this blog, beyond the reasons I outlined previously (In short: They're so awesome you guys, like you don't even know). Isn't there something else I could be discussing? Something else to blog about so it doesn't seem like my time at Wesleyan is simply divided up between schoolwork and playing video games?

The simple answer is, I actually can't think of anything else. Put another way, the rigors of university life just aren't for me. While I recognize the value in academia and scholarly work, I've also had just about enough of it, which is a shame because I still have just over a year more of it in store.

I've learned a lot of things at college, and one of the most important things is that college probably isn't the best place for me. I've learned some really cool things and met tons of awesome people, but the meat of the work drives me insane. Quick example: I'm a government major, and this entails a lot of reading. I'm a pretty fast reader so ordinarily this isn't a problem, but that only works when I'm reading something particularly interesting. And as interested as I am in the topics we cover in government classes, the readings on them bore me to tears.

Every government reading I've done for each of the classes I've taken reads exactly the same. They're all very dry, very rote, and very boring. The classes themselves are great; the professors know how to get conversations going, and the reason I chose the major in the first place is because the topics covered, at their core, are all about people. A discussion of environmental politics in Japan can boil down to "Really, nobody wants to live next to a nuclear reactor." When the class comes up with fairly simple sounding solutions to American foreign policy conundrums, the next question is "Why haven't these been implemented by the people whose job it is to come up with these solutions?", and that's where things get interesting. But all the readings we had to do to lead into these discussions remind you why this area of study is so often referred to as "political science."

My point is that some of the things I've become most passionate about at Wesleyan are video games and movies. If you just heard a shriek, that's my mom or dad about to call me and ask why they've been paying such outrageous tuition just for me to come to that conclusion. But before that happens, I need to clarify: my passion derives from an intense need to create. It's why I keep this blog. I simply don't have time or energy at college to write the full-fledged works I've always wanted to. I realize that might sound like something of a cop out, and there's very little chance I'll have even more free time after I leave school, but the way I see it, I'm here first and foremost to be a student. I knew very early on that if I pursued a major in English or Film, I'd be even more prone to bouts of intense aggravation and frustration than I am now.

I took an English class my sophomore year, and it went the way pretty much every other English class I've ever taken went. I started out really excited, because stories are cool, so talking about them with a bunch of people should be even more cool. But I can't analyze literature nonstop for months at a time without getting bored. It's not that I think it's an inherently boring activity, I just don't see the point in endlessly discussing what the work could mean. I prefer to come to those conclusions myself and then move on without making a big deal about it.

That's really what it comes down to for me. College makes me antsy. The routine of academic life and constant analysis just isn't for me. I took another course sophomore year called The Past on Film, taught by our university's president Michael Roth. It turned out to be a philosophy course, which I totally wasn't prepared for, and ended up being the formula I've outlined above taken to its extreme. The result was incomprehensible readings and great lectures delivered by one of the most energetic academic figures I've ever seen. But all the concepts he talked about were so alien and esoteric that I always walked away unsure if I'd even learned anything. The only bit of the course that really stuck with me was the last philosopher we discussed. Emerson's response to Hegel and Kant and Freud? "Up again, old heart!" We don't find out anything about the world or ourselves by sitting around and talking, we find out by doing.
At least, I know I do.

Journey: Great Game or Greatest Game?

I tend to be pretty predictable with my choices in entertainment. 95% of the games I own involve you shooting bad guys, or at least stabbing them or hitting them over the head. I'm not one for teleology, but I firmly believe that all of cinema was engineered so that we could arrive at Die Hard. If I'm going to read and enjoy a book, it better have a sense of humor about itself, or at least about the story it's telling.

But occasionally there are outliers. When I told my dad about how I got into Minecraft, he was perplexed, because it doesn't have any guns in it at all, yet I found myself drawn to its simple graphics and its ability to let the player creatively work within a system. Once I mentally prepared myself, I was able to watch A Separation and be drawn into the machinations of the characters, marveling at how so many people could be both right and wrong at the same time.

Which brings us to Journey. Released this year, it's a game made by Thatgamecompany, a developer with only one other game on its resume, Flower. From the first time I heard about it, I was intrigued. Its premise is as simple as you can get: you play a robed wanderer in a nameless desert, and you are tasked with reaching the summit of a far off mountain, visible after you crest the first dune. The game is devoid of all dialogue and there's no text save for the title and the credits at the end. This is why it works.

Journey is a game that's deceptively simple, and it's this stark aesthetic that makes it memorable. The visuals are evocative without being overwhelming, and the score is beautiful and helps to set the scene without intruding on the meditative state that most of the game lulls the player into. The game works as art because of this simplicity. It can remain focused on delivering an experience rather than attempting constantly to wow players with set-pieces or flashy graphics.

Journey is a game that is heavily imbued with meaning, but it never forces what that meaning is onto the player. There's no moral or message here beyond what you take away from it. Of the several reviews I've read of the game, they describe it as an exercise in solitude vs. companionship. For me, it came across as a commentary on the cyclical nature of history. As I learned more about the ruins I was exploring and the role I was supposed to play, I began to question what exactly I was trying to do here. Without getting into too many spoilers, at a certain point you learn that your character's task may have been pre-ordained long ago, or perhaps has already been completed before. It doesn't help any that the trophy awarded for completing the game is titled "Rebirth".

As an artistic piece, Journey is intriguing, offering implications of significance without ever explicitly stating what it all means, which in my mind is a hallmark of many great works of literature. As a game, Journey is timeless and unforgettable. There are plenty of games that I think everyone should play, but when I say that about Journey, I don't mean it in the sense of "everyone who likes video games should try this game." I mean everyone, as in pretty much every person I know. The controls are simple enough that anyone can work their way through it, but more importantly, the tale it tells is universal enough that everyone can take away something unique from the experience.