Welcome to the latest installment of Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza created by bs angel and coordinated by Game Couch. Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
Q: Are there any video games that possess a timeless appeal? Games that, despite constant advances in technology, retain a game engine or narrative that will forever be relevant. If so, why?
The idea of the timeless video game is something I’ve been asking myself for a long time now. In a medium where every new iteration of a console or technology creates new opportunities for the developer to further refine the intangibles we love about gaming, it’s easy to stay rooted in the contemporary. It’s even easier to therefore support the idea that titles from generations passed are merely a foundation for the most important games of today. We look at titles such as Resident Evil and System Shock as the grandparents to the likes of Dead Space or BioShock, but we don’t hold the former up to the latter and contest that those classics play a better game than their successors, because it simply is not true. But then it begs the question: are there any grandparents that do give their children’s children a decent run?
Timeless appeal, and the idea of the constantly relevant video game boils down to factors that remain timeless, and those factors are not audio or visual. With the constant advances in graphics processors and 380.1 omni-surround sound (probably) a few years away, they could never be timeless. Instead it is the fundamental aspects of any creative project, its vision, purpose, and execution, that hold up throughout decades.
It seems it’s always the most simple ideas that invigorate the hearts and minds of gamers. Portal relied on one idea: teleportation, and built an entire game around the use of one gun that had a couple of functions. It’s revered as one of the best games of 2008. Braid was also built around a single concept: the ability to reverse time. Its use of this mechanic, paired with its deceptively deep story attracted people in drones (even Soulja Boy). Games which access these simple, visionary concepts are, at their peak, revolutionary. But not timeless.
I’ve dwelled on the idea a lot these passed few days, but I’ve reached the understanding that no idea is truly timeless. Both Portal and Braid are two recent examples of games that could be considered as such, but somewhere in the future a developer will take the concept of a Portal or a Braid, and they will evolve it. Pong, Super Marios Bros., Wolfenstein 3D, these were all incredible games, but they’ve long since passed the torch to endless streams of reiterations, and thus become artifacts. Notes in history that we games could, and SHOULD look back on and link with the elite of the current gaming crop.
Evolution is a part of existence. As much as I admire my caveman bretherin, stumbling one day across the concept of the wheel and soiling their collective, beast-skinned undergarments with excitement, I don’t want to go back there. As such, gaming must follow the same path, and that’s not a bad thing. There are no timeless games, just timeless ideas.
PARTICIPANTS:
CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Timeless appeal of Homeworld
Lou vs. Video Games, FIGHT!: Defining the Truly Classic Video Game
Silvercublogger: Lost & Found
Hawty McBloggy: Much Like Your Mom
Game Couch: Finding Citizen Kane
Delayed Responsibility: Oldies but Goodies?
