After watching “Get Lamp” I immediately thought it would have been better to watch it first and then spend the frustrated hours playing the IF games with at least some background knowledge and preparation. I guess I’ll just have to go back to the games again and bring what I’ve learned.
I found the documentary fascinating and full of great quotes which I think really beautifully explain the genre, what it’s all about, it’s strengths and it’s shortcomings.
Let me call a couple of those to attention. Maybe they will spark some thought in other posts.
- “Only pictures are in your mind, which are the best ones”
- “No matter how far graphics go they will always take you back to text”
- “Art forms are never replaced, they are only added to.”
One thing I noticed about IF which may come as a surprise or it may not, is that perhaps the biggest drawback to the genre, or at least what will likely keep it from any future commercial success (in my opinion) is also what I’d consider the genre’s greatest strength, that being the great amount of responsibility it places on the gamer.
Obviously the reading is one thing — anyone who doesn’t enjoy reading is going to gravitate towards the graphics, but the problem solving and mapping involved in the games, particularly the longer originals, seemed to be quite extensive. I don’t think the majority of popular graphics-based games force the player to be nearly as methodical. In a weird way, it reminded me a bit of our annotation of House of Leaves. Really the process and motivation is the same: Leaving ourselves hints and clues and networks to try and make sense of what’s in front of us. Annotation is not something I was used to or fully comfortable with and I sense I would experience the same struggle with IF, at least initially.
This will probably sound as an excuse in some way, maybe it is, but I think there is a generational aspect to why this is the case for me. I know by the time I was old enough to do any kind of serious gaming, it was at the cusp of 3D graphics gaming. I liked and still like to play games that are visually stimulating, fast-moving and don’t necessarily call for a lot of puzzle-solving. Then again, I’ve never been huge on crossword puzzles either. In my reading and gaming, I have been mostly used to linear, fast-paced, minimal effort storytelling. I think this sets me back when trying to jump on board with IF. I can’t come to IF the same way I come to a book or a video game. It’s more the mindset of approaching a puzzle or math equation.
There also seems to be a noticeable intellectual privilege to anyone within the genre, gamers and creators alike. We hear more about this late in the film when it talks about modern IF authors and a sense that many are writing games for themselves and not the audience. This is, in part, I suppose a result of the genre becoming more artistic and less mass-produced but was also true at the beginning of IF when people began hearing about the games in magazines and in computer tech professional circles. While the genre spread and occupied a large demographic for a period of time, it started and exists today as a sort of fringe intellectual community. I had a hard time relating to the genre’s inventors and enthusiasts who seem to be mostly MIT grads and people prone to spending days, weeks and months solving the games.