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The Freedom of Simple Games

"Putting such simple games on next-gen consoles would be a waste of their power."


The epitome of a simple game. Graphics here are just window-dressing. This is, of course, UNO on Xbox Live! Arcade.

A seemingly widely-held belief about new game systems, it's something that also is observable in market trends (which games sell, which don't). But, interestingly enough, it is less prevalent in the realm of PC gaming, which goes to show, there's nothing wrong with simple-in fact, there aren't enough simple games, I think. People have grown to expect triple-A graphics in every game they play on a console.

Back in the middle ages, the pinnacle of the art of painting was considered to be accurately and perfectly capturing an image. When the great painters of the Impressionist movement first appeared (Renoir, Monet, and other impressionists--The Art Institute of ChicagoŽ), they were largely seen as second-rate, even though their method of painting light, and their vibrant color, not to mention overall composition were markedly superior to the realistic-style that was sought-after by Renaissance painters--The Art Institute of ChicagoŽ. Good graphics are not technologically-advanced graphics, nor are they realistic graphics, but they are graphics that are aesthetically pleasing.


Renoir was not heavy on details. His work emphasized the gestalt.

However, that is only secondary to the main issue of increasing detail. This is where I would like to introduce a concept I call the "Fantastic." This is a quality inherent in fantasy (not just swords and sorcery, but any highly imaginative form) that is exceedingly difficult to pin down. It is like humor: the more you define it, the less it is observable. Once a joke is explained, it is no longer funny, just as once a Fantastic element is revealed as such, it is only mundane.

However, the following characteristics are usually associated with the Fantastic:

And it is that Fantastic element missing from many of today's games because they define the world in such detail, yet only give small areas of exploration. This leads us to perceive that the entire world is like the small portion we visit, instead of the more wonderful (as in wonderment) and Fantastic notions like: what if I move left in Super Mario Bros.? Where is everyone in Zelda 1? Or, What if I could move into or out of the frame in Mario? Granted, there are other applications of the Fantastic in these games. Pointing it out would detract from the experience. Sure we have some games like that now, but they are few and far between. In Ico, you are constantly teased by the view of the world outside the castle. What is over there?


The outside world is still an unatainable vista; the gates are open, but the drawbridge has not been extended.

In Zelda 64, every area in the game is bounded by walls. There is no area in which the edges are unreachable (except the desert, but even that is bounded by endless sand, and not a small span of water stretching to the edge of the screen and perhaps much farther) and so the world seems exceedingly small. When the view was top-down, you could not see the edges of the world, merely the edges of the playable area. When I finally got to peer towards the horizon (in OoT) and saw only a wall of poorly illustrated trees, I was disappointed indeed. I was not disappointed by the technology in the game, but by the scope of the land. It was no longer as epic.


What's over there?


Oh, a wall.

The sparseness of the old games was something intangible that was removed in the newer games for the purpose of being realistic. The problem is that as the in-game world feels more realistic, we are more familiar with it. Thus that world is like a place we know very well. We are therefore adults in the gaming world merely because the games allow us to be. If we were lost in a cavern on Zebes with no map and a weirdly populated passageway in front of us--particularly with only a partial understanding of the world we are in and limited interaction with it, we are mere children, new to the world around us. Thus the sense of wonder is preserved.

The point of this is not that new games are worse, but only that they are familiar worlds (lots of sequels) built on familiar mechanics (lots of genre conformists) with ever-increasing detail in the same amount of space (lack of detail can often suggest more than over-abundance of it). Sure, there are really great games coming out now, but there is a lack of truly Fantastic games among them.

Older style games-that is, simpler games-are in many ways fundamentally different from games today. Where are the new sidescrolling platformers? I mean, other than indie breakouts like Alien Hominid. Not that every other game NEEDS to be a sidescroller, because then we're in the same situation as we are now, only today it's FPSes.


Medal of Honor Pacific Assault. Another World War II themed shooter. Isn't it pretty?

While a less graphically technical game will probably never command as high a price as the latest cutting edge title, their relevance is not to be discounted. In fact, it may be that with the advent of Xbox Live Arcade and the Nintendo Virtual Console service, games painted on a smaller canvas will be more profitable. But, for a true revolution in the industry, we would have to see real innovation in some of these games. Not just updates or ports of classic games, nor even original games of smaller scope like Geometry Wars or Uno. But, those services still retain the unusually large barriers to entry common to consoles. The PC, which is wide-open, still suffers from the lack of a major hub of independent games, however. That is, at least until Manifesto Games comes along

Let's imagine, for example, a 3D shooter that looks little better than Quake (that is, Quake one) coming out for the PlayStation 3. Now, instead of letting the system sit mostly idle, what if the designers used all the extra processor time and memory saved (from doing simple geometry and collision detection) and instead put it to work creating AI for the enemies that could react in truly surprising ways?

Or, what if you had an RPG with a dizzying amount of content-monsters, items, places to explore-that was all sprite based, so it took a fraction of the time to create, and much less space to store?

So the idea that prettier, or more complex games are the only thing to put on a new console really makes little sense-especially when you consider rising development costs. I remarked that simpler games (whether in scope, in style, or just in visuals) wouldn't command as high a price as their prettier, bigger, more complicated counterparts, they also have the potential to be big sellers. Logic dictates that one could potentially sell more copies of a cheaper game than a more expensive one. It doesn't always happen for a variety of reasons (perception of lower price meaning lower quality, or smaller distribution area due to not being as high a profit-margin-to-shelf-space ratio, or other such factors).

But, the thing is, I, average Joe consumer can buy more games new if they are priced lower. That's a good thing, definitely, because developers don't make extra money off of used game sales, and console manufacturers get more licensing money for each unit of software sold. And then there's online distribution, which works much better with smaller file sizes, and lets developers cut distribution costs, packaging costs, etc, and pass the savings along to the consumer, or use the extra revenue to fund a big-budget title (or, alternatively, hoard all the extra profits for themselves and get fat, lazy and rich).


Cave Story is not an NES game. It is, however, an incredible independent game that was released as freeware on Windows.

But really, I don't buy games for the developers. I buy them because they are the games that interest me, that I want to play, and that my friends enjoy as well. So, the more choice I have, the better. Really, that goes for the entire market. The "long tail" holds more total revenue potential than the top ten or even top 100 sellers, usually. So, why limit developers to making only games that fully utilize the system's hardware? Console makers and consumers don't demand that every button on the controller do something, nor do they demand that all the features of a system be implemented. Marketers focus too much on the features of a game because bullet points are an easy "wow" factor. But as the game market expands beyond kids and computer geeks, a feature list won't do as much for selling a game.

As with art, creating a huge canvas and demanding that the artist fill it is not giving the artist creative control, and indeed limits the scope of the work. It limits it to HUGE.
Not everyone needs a Sistine Chapel ceiling, or a mural on their wall. Likewise in games, simple games deserve to sit beside Front Mission and Zelda. They can do things complex games can't-evoke the Fantastic by limiting the scope of interaction or exploration, they can free up an advanced processor for other things, like AI, or huge game worlds, and their nature as cheap-to-produce, and cheap-to-buy means developers can get more creative, and consumers get more variety. Obviously, that's not to say I don't like complex games, but just because we have more processing power doesn't mean we need to *use* it. Simple games are not dead, and with services like Xbox Live! Arcade, and the upcoming Nintendo Virtual Console consoles seem to be acknowledging this, and letting go of these silly notions. Waste of power indeed!