I’m writing this as the streaming equivalent of E3 is playing on a second monitor, a never ending parade of AAA videogame titles and a few indies, that mostly leave me cold (there are some exceptions, though). Look, I’m older, I’ve seen a lot of games already, so it’s hard to impress me. I’m also academic, so I can be very annoying and and maybe come up with an example of a game that 10, 20, 30 years ago that already did what these trailers are teasing, but with worse graphics, or just text.
A lot of the games featured in the announcements focus on combat and blowing things up, which is fine and can be very satisfying in itself. I like blowing things up too! But a lot of these games are soulless. The description of each game lists the genre, usually some combination of tactical-RPG-third-person-stealth-shooter or whatever string of words marketing has come up with. Why should I care? I’m not much impressed by graphics any more.
Where is the soul?
A lot of these games don’t have soul because they have been made in a soulless industry. They’re products that devours and spits the people who make them. In the last year, 20,000 people have lost their jobs in the games industry, because a bunch of executives who’ve never stepped in a game studio think that all the talent, all the experience, is inexhaustible and replaceable by bright-eyed yourng people, although really games can probably be made by AI in a few years anyways. (Joke’s on them.) Games as factory products that conceal the fact that they need people with specialized knowledge, who often make a lot of personal sacrifices while doing their job. All the efforts of so many goes into making works that become personally meaningful to millions of people. But in the era of late capitalism, the human factor is left out, erased. The HD graphics, the over-complex game systems, the sprawling narratives, the elaborate sound effects and the sophisticated and fashionable AI is all pretty, made by very talented people but end up wrapped in an empty husk, because those behind them had little soul left by the time they finished the game.
The industry has taken a huge human toll in the last year – the professionals who have already left and who had the knowledge and experience to make great things can hardly be replaced. My hope is that those who will remain may still have some spark left, and will join the ranks of indie developers who make games that have a personal motivation. Games with a soul. In a way, it will be an exciting time for indie games as a player, because there may be many of them to choose and play. Perhaps way too many. For developers, the abundance of titles is going to make it even harder to make one’s games visible. It is not going to get easier, more people will leave games for good. But it may also bring change.
This is the dawning of the age of hand-made games.
It is the time where worthy games are almost artisanal, where the imprint of their makers is on every pixel, where each interaction has been lovingly designed, where we can show what human designers can achieve and what badly conceived generative AI can only shallowly reproduce. We need games made by people who care so we care about them too, games that mean something to the people who made them, because that is the humanity that we connect with. This is not new – there are many examples already. What we really need is players who learn appreciate that human care, the bit of soul that goes in those games (and can also pay for them so people can make a living).
The genius of a game like Zelda is that it was originally conceived as a way to incarnate what it feels feeling small in a daunting world, and then grow up and be braver and tackle scarier challenges. In a world rife with conflict and uncertainty, creators can imagine futures that we can all aspire to live in. Game makers can make games about their worlds so that players can learn about life experiences that are unlike their own, or for others to connect and find kindred spirits by seeing that their experience can also be worthy to others. But for that, we need game makers who have the energy to cherish their craft and have a soul left to make these games come to life. Those games can be about anything – even blowing things up. The important thing is that they are games made by talented creators who have the room and emotional energy to actually care about what they do.
Vagrant Cursor 