A new mythology
I hope we don’t lose the icons of the early days of video gaming.
Once I assumed that these were safely sheltered in the balmy lands of retro, there to live out a gentle and dignified existence on the front of t-shirts. But the generations of men are like the gently-falling waves of alien invaders, and before too long I think those who think kindly upon Pong, upon Mario, upon the ascii world of Rogue, will have dwindled.
Or perhaps they belong in the past, slightly legendary. They are good candidates for a new mythology – a digital mythology to populate the distant mist of a digital age.
The punishments set in motion by the Olympian gods of Greece and Rome are nothing, for example, next to the many tasks of Pacman. Haunted by the ghostly sherbet Eumenides, and consumed by a limitless and ravaging hunger, he can fail to invoke pity in no onlooker. Like Tantalus, surrounded by sweet water and overhung with succulent fruits which he can never consume, cherries flicker before our semi-circular hero but he is never sated; like Sisyphus his tasks are never complete, but reset as he nears the summit.
I like the bleakness of these myths – they seem to tally with what a myth should be. And such powerful imagery! The lone man defending blank nothingness against alien invaders; the futile destruction of ever increasing meteors.
Not sure about you classical allusions (though I’m not nearly educated enough to dispute them) but agree that the gaming of yesteryear could have a powerfully focused appeal. I mean – more recent example – but have you ever played a shooter quite like Doom since? Maybe as any medium becomes more sophisticated that loses its simple, mythic iconography
I wonder if the iPhone will become the final form factor for old-school arcade gaming. Instant, mindlessly intense distractions at a whim: seems like a perfect match
Jonathan Theodore
8 Sep 09 at 10.52 PM
I think it’s a really interesting topic. Will it evolve into a system of ‘classics’ like we have in film or in fiction, where archaisms are overlooked once they are acclaimed? Or into something more like TV, where the mark of something good is that it is re-made a decade later and bought up to date? Or something completely different…
Re the mythology: I’ve just realised I’ve missed something huge! Labyrinth, anyone?
Luke
9 Sep 09 at 9.45 AM
I think you’re comparison with TV is more suitable to computer games, where remakes with fancy new graphics are two-for-a-penny (I can’t think of many examples from TV, though a few from cinema) and often IMO lose that classic appeal you talk about. So the question is how obsessed will the games industry be with updating technology and graphics for its only sake.
Traditionally I’d say they live and die by that rule, but maybe the obsession has started to plateau… no one cares that the Wii has has thirt-rate graphics hardware, Sony claim they won’t bring out a new console for five years, and PC games are increasingly just console ports, with all that superior hardware just wasted.
Personally I reckon devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch are the future of classic arcade games, as its such a perfect fit for the devices.
Jonathan Theodore
12 Sep 09 at 12.18 AM
“Maybe as any medium becomes more sophisticated that loses its simple, mythic iconography”
I feel exactly the same way about the original Snake game, compared to the far-too-fancy Snake IX or whatever we’re on now.
Zapf Dingbats
16 Sep 09 at 3.57 PM