The Same Old Genres 1:Into The Realms of Fantasy
Games are fantasies, it is their nature, but why are some fantasies more prevalent than others? Why do we seem to gravitate to specific genres of story when we play our games? Swords and sorcery, post-apocalyptica, laser guns and robots, orcs and elves. These are all staples of the gaming universe in one form or another. In this series of articles I will endeavour to give a potted history of these genres and why they catch our imagination.
That games are a form of escapism goes without saying, we play them to get away from our humdrum and workaday lives into realms of fantasy in which what we do has no effect on reality. That we seem to choose to escape to the same places, the same realms, is something that developers and publishers have used to their advantage as the templates for various settings are there, ready made, for their use. These clichéd, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, realities have been with us for some time, the fantasy paradigm being by far the oldest.
The creatures of the fantasy realm have been with us since time immemorial. Elves, fairies, goblins, ogres and trolls were embodiments of different aspects of nature, a way to explain the unexplainable. The current image of these fantasy figures is not actually that old, being brought to popular awareness by J.R.R. Tolkien in the middle of last century. He was merely building on a mythology (mostly German and Norse) which is centuries old. Since Lord of the Rings these races have become synonymous with the fantasy genre, no matter the medium. We now associate the various fantasy races with particular sides in the struggle of good versus evil, stereotypes which also date from Tolkien and in no way reflect their original roles in our mythology. These associations have becmome convenient ways to differentiate between the two sides, which are much harder to distinguish in reality. We are beginning to see the fantasy game break from these conventions, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion being the most recent example.
Magic is another of the ingredients of fantasy games which the many worlds offer just as many explanations for. Magic is usually included in games to either bestow upon the player the power to break the rules of reality or as something to be fought against, more often than not it is present as both of these things. Magical power is never limitless though and has its own rules which the player must follow in order to be able to use the magic. But, I hear you ask, if games are meant to be pure escapism, why limit the player’s power? The rules are there for a reason, the game wouldn’t be any fun without them. If, for example, you were able to beat the big bad boss at the end of the game without having to play the rest of it, learning the rules as you go, you wouldn’t be able to have any fun. It is a fine balance of risk and reward that the game must keep to if it is to be any fun. Too hard and you get frustrated and its no fun, too easy and you don’t feel that you’ve achieved anything.
At it’s heart the fantasy genre is about nostalgia for a past that never was, a past where the lines between good and evil were clearly marked. Those with green skin were the bad guys and the hero had a magical sword. It harks back to an age when people actually believed that goblins and elves tended the forests, the old wise woman of the village who brewed potions was a witch, and the bloke in the cave who did the same was a wizard. Heroes who were pure of heart always got the girl and saved the day. This is changing however, fantasy is beginning to be influenced by the complex and ever shifting morality of the real world, though the inspiration for the setting remains the same.
The fantasy genre is beginning to break away from the old clichés, orcs are not necessarily always the bad guys, and it is becoming technologically possible to build worlds where magic is only limited by the player’s imagination. This has been happening in other, older media for some time with novels tackling the deeper problems we face in reality and film doing the same to some extent. They are still about the conflict between good and evil, though the delineation is not as clear as ‘Orc = evil, Elf = Good’ In recent games instead of being told which side you’re on from the beginning the player is now being given the choice of which path to follow. As gaming has developed and come of age the moral ladscape is becoming more and more complex and the differences between good and evil more subtle. Rather than judge a characters alignment by their appearance, we are now getting games where a character’s motives have to be judged on what they say and do.
The fantasy setting has a rich history, even though the incarnation we know it by today is only a few decades old, and the struggle it depicts is as old as man himself. With the myriad of other media making use of the setting, I don’t see it disappearing from our screens any time soon. That is not to say that it will remain the same, it will always reflect the aspirations and morality of the time it was made. As with any realm of the imagination, fantasy gives us a channel through which we may understand the complexities of the world we live in. With the added bonus of orcs.
Next week: Apocalypse When?
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Posted on April 16, 2007 by Mandrill | Filed Under News
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[...] genres most prevalent in the games that we play. In the preceding articles we’ve looked at fantasy, the post-apocalyptic, and space opera, this week we will delve into the dark heart of gaming. [...]