The Great Gaming Moment
Everyone can name their favourite piece of music, their favourite scene from a movie, or their favourite passage from a book. Some, not all, can tell you about the colour and composition of their favourite painting, or the way light picks out the details of their favourite sculpture. Fewer still can tell you of the moment in their life when they realised that video games are art, the moment when a game reached into their subconscious and pulled, eliciting the same responses as other great works of art. The moment when their intellect and emotions both danced to the tune of the game. The reason there are so few of us is because gaming as an art form is still young, as I mentioned before we are the first generation to grow up with artistic games, with games that are more than moving a pixel around a screen avoiding the other pixels. We are the first to have experience of , and a love of The Great Gaming Moment.
This isn’t the place to go into the history of the video game, that subject is for a later date. What I want to do here is define The Great Gaming Moment (or simply ‘The Moment’ for brevity’s sake), to give a basis to judge whether a game achieves that in future. I don’t want to define it terms of games I’ve played either, because a game is a work of art and as such is totally subjective. What I say is a great gaming moment may be a complete let down to someone else. The Moment should be something that transcends personal taste, an FPS player’s moment will not be the same as an RTS player’s moment, and neither will be the same as a hardcore MMOG player’s moment. The game is not the same, but The Moment is.
As I mentioned above, The Moment is when the game pushes all the right emotional buttons and immerses you in its universe. This does not mean that you lose touch with reality, if you don’t know that you’re playing a game then you can’t truly appreciate The Moment. You are feeling what the game tells you to feel but you are thinking “Wow, what a great game!” You are not thinking about anything else, this doesn’t mean that you think the game is real, it means that you know that you are playing a game and are appreciating the emotional ride. Just because you cry at a movie (and yes, I have, and I’m not ashamed of it) doesn’t mean you think the movie is real. The Moment is when the game interacts with both the conscious and subconscious parts of your psyche. I probably haven’t explained that very well, but then I’m no psychologist.
The Moment isn’t about skill, you shouldn’t need to be the best player of the game for you to achieve it. Its more about a confluence of story, gameplay, interface, graphics and entertainment. Its the point where all these meet, like the point where script, directing, acting, editing, effects and characterisation converge to produce The Great Movie Moment. The Moment should be something that is built into the game for everyone who appreciates that kind of game to find, regardless of ability.
Great Gaming Moments are not made by accountants. If a game has been made purely to make money, and is constrained by the whims of the bean counters the probability that it will contain The Moment drops dramatically. This is why I, personally, avoid movie licenses and (some) franchises (yes EA, I am looking at you). A Moment, no matter if it is filmic, musical, or in a game, is something born of love. If the creator of the game does it out of a love of their art then the chances of their bringing forth The Moment are greater than if the game is made by a sweatshop of overworked programmers.
The Moment is never formulaic, it defies definition except in the vaguest of terms. It cannot be pinned down to a certain scheme of level design or forms of gameplay. If a Moment occurs in a game, the chances of it being there in the sequel to that game are minimal, unless it is a different game which just happens to have the same scenery and characters. Because The Moment is born from a combination of things which there are no formulae for it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to replicate. There are only vague guidelines, which may be ignored, and there are no hard and fast rules.
These are my guidelines for finding The Great Gaming Moment, they’re not rules, so I can’t say that you’re wrong if you disagree. As with any art form you define what makes The Moment, and every art lover seeks their own.
Tags: Art, beyond gaming, Culture, Gaming, hardcore, opinion
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Posted on April 10, 2007 by Mandrill | Filed Under Features
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[...] term readers might remember my essay a while back about ‘The Great Gaming Moment‘, well in an upcoming interview in the UK edition of PC Zone. Gabe Newell, Head bod and chief [...]