The Artful Gamer

For the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting a three-part series of articles based on several conversations I’ve had with Mr. Joe Garrity, curator of the The Origin Museum. You might remember Joe as the mastermind behind the scenes of a massive video game archival operation that took place earlier this summer at Mythic Studios, where 1 Terabyte of artifacts, source code, artwork, FMV, and design documents were salvaged from Electronic Arts’ archives of the defunct Origin Systems Inc. In this series of articles Joe tells us some of the stories behind artifacts recovered from Origin Systems (the creators of the Ultima and Wing Commander series). In our first part of the series, Joe reveals some (until now) unseen artwork by Dan Bourbonnais – an artist that worked during Origin’s “Age of Enlightenment”, and shows us some of the painstaking artistic work that goes into game production.

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Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has me thinking again. His latest two provocative posts concern how we think about games – a child’s fancy or an adult’s pursuit. Ultimately, Michael and the great majority of commenters seem to side with the ‘games are serious business’ camp.. which I am no doubt sympathetic towards (why else would I write here!). After all, every morning for the last month I’ve spent 30 minutes on the train playing the original Final Fantasy VII on my PSP, nervously avoiding the glances of curious riders. It does feel exposing playing games in front of other adults.

For me, however, something’s missing. I don’t play games because they’re serious business. Sure, I can defend why they’re serious to other adults – but when I play them that’s not what I have in mind. And I even research games (ie. follow it through and record some observations, do background reading, etc) … but that’s not playing the games. Playing a game involves something else – a suspension of desire, a willingness to invest oneself in the world and accept it at its face value. In this very short article I want to explore the idea that in order for games to move or grip us, they must remain toys or forms of childish entertainment. Seems counterintuitive?

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