by Adam Harshberger
During World War 2, a group of Polish underground fighters resisted the Nazi occupation of their homeland, and later, the communist regime of Poland. They fought and died defending what was theirs.
On the last day of PAX East I took the silver line bus alone to the World Trade Center Station, a permanent monument to the victims of 9/11, besides being a normal transit stop. From there, all you have to do is go around the corner and up the stairs, then across a bridge, and you’ll find yourself face to face with the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
It was on this bridge that I saw that weekend’s most achingly beautiful thing. Writing this now, more than a month removed from PAX East, it appears in my mind more saliently than any videogames I played that weekend. It was a statue, by artist Andrew Pitynski, called ”The Partisans.”
Elongated and sinewy, it depicts five Polish freedom fighters, mounted and forlorn, but purposeful. They could be heading home, or trudging exhausted into another battle – either way, it stopped me in my tracks. When you look at it, you can feel not only the pain of their struggle, but also just how far they were willing to fight for what they believed in. I stood there in the Boston morning, staring, and unbuttoned my flannel shirt to expose the ratty tee underneath, letting the ocean-tinted breeze try and wash the hangover from my clammy skin.
I walked around it a few times. No one else was there, save the PAX-goers plunging on towards the convention. I read the plaque that sits beside it. I felt butterflies in my stomach. It’s a moving thing, this statue, and grimly pretty. You should see it, if you ever go.
After some time, I walked away, looking back one last time.
Sculpture is a highly sophisticated medium, and one that’s been around for thousands of years. As I walked away from The Partisans , I considered videogames. Like sculpture, videogames are a medium, but an unsophisticated and young one.
I tried to compare videogames to The Partisans . I thought about Roger Ebert. That sculpture made me momentarily forget my plans, and I had no choice but to stop and examine it. That’s what great art should do, I think: punch you in the gut, somehow. Fascinate you, make you stare, make you not give a shit if you’re late to an appointment. I looked at it and I thought about the PAX show floor – had anything stopped me in such an arresting way? I knew the answer, but it was hard to admit: no .
But here’s the thing: I believe they can. I believe that videogames can communicate the same immutable, intrinsic, universal things about what it means to be a human being as The Partisans does. In fact, I think some already have, but not as completely, as brutally and saliently, as The Partisans .
But how do we get to the point where videogames of the same ilk as The Partisans are commonplace? No one on the planet would question that sculpture’s validity as a work of art. How do we get to the point where videogames are not only on the same level as other art forms, but also recognized as such? After all, even as online games criticism blossoms and thrives, the mainstream perspective still views videogames as overblown toys that make mass murderers out of us all.
I think that we are going to have to fight for those things to happen.
We, the people I met at PAX East, and countless others – those of us who believe in what videogames can do – will have to do our part. What we are witnessing is the maturation of a medium, the awkward adolescence of an art form. This is something that not every generation gets to see, and it’s up those of us who give a shit to make sure games grow up the right way.
The good news is, from what I saw at PAX East, the fate of videogames is in good hands.
Videogames are young, having been around less than a century. Compare that to sculpture, which is so old it’s almost impossible to give it a starting date. The unfortunate thing about videogames, though, is that we started thinking about them the wrong way from the beginning.
On my first day at PAX East, I listened to freelancer writer Dennis Scimeca discuss the origins of games criticism. He talked about how games were originally looked at not as games – or texts, if you will – but as products. Like toasters. And so we began judging them on a different scale than we would art.
That’s why you see reviews broken down into their infamous sections. That’s why we’re obsessed with things being “worth our money,” or with “replayability.” It could even be why we consider 15 hours – 15 fucking hours – to be too short. We cared about graphics superficially – how awesome they looked, not what they communicated. That’s why we’re obsessed with fun – according to the old school, what else would you want from a game?
The discussion, for a long time, was primed in the wrong way. But things are changing. I saw the signs everywhere at PAX East. Scimeca hosting a panel dedicated to games criticism, for example. Kotaku’s Jason Schreier and a panel of developers spending an hour discussing the interplay and challenges of plot and play – this one was so full of people that I couldn’t even get in. And these things happened at PAX East – a public, open, and rampantly popular games convention.
Commonly, the image of a videogame fan is someone who only cares about graphics and shootin’ shit. Certainly, those people exist. But they’re just one group, like how some people only go to the movies when Jason Statham is involved. The videogame fans you don’t always hear about, especially in the mainstream media, are the thoughtful ones. The ones who have a deep interest in how their games are made, how they make them feel, the stories they tell, and everything about them. These fans are everywhere at PAX East.
When you walk around, when you play games next to people, when you just listen for a second, you don’t hear people talk about boobs and explosions: they’re talking about mechanics, and technology, and the plotlines of games, and how it made them feel. They demonstrate a deep understanding of games, and a more well-informed appreciation of what makes a game good than your average moviegoer or reader, I’d wager.
The journalists and critics I met, too, displayed a fiery passion for their subjects. I spent the wee hours of Sunday morning screaming my throat raw with my colleagues over Ben Kuchera and the Penny Arcade Report, and whether or not what he’s doing is what games journalism needs at the moment. I watched as people furiously scribbled down notes and dug deeper and deeper into their primary sources, seeking a firmer understanding. The stereotypical image of the games journalist, defecating himself over and over, regurgitating press release after press release, certainly exists. You see it on any of the major websites. But the people I saw doing the work at PAX East were not those people. Instead, I encountered a smart, energetic group, dedicated to furthering what they love through their respective outlets, and loving it, along the way. I felt lucky to count myself among them, even for a weekend.
PAX East also signified my first meeting, that I know of, with some real, honest-to-goodness game developers. I discussed War of the Roses with one of its developers, as I sat and played, and I found myself impressed with the way he watched and analyzed what was happening. He displayed an impressive dedication to mechanical polish, and I could tell he wanted to seize every opportunity to improve it. Likewise, Scott Youngblood, the lead developer on Firefall, talked to me for at least an hour about the storyline behind his game, the intricate ways in which the mechanics of his game intersect to create emotions in the player, and how the classes of the game are designed to promote accessibility for all.
What my first interaction with game developers left me with is this: these people care . For as much as games get tossed around like huge, sagging sacks of profit by publishers, for as much as it seems like developers just want to piss off the players, all I was left with after chatting with these individuals was the sense that these things were inarguably their creations, their children, extensions of themselves in some weird way. Other than The Partisans, my other brightest memory is listening to Youngblood speak as I played Firefall, turning to look at him, and realizing he’s telling me about his game the same I would tell someone about a piece of my writing: proudly, passionately, and with the same tinge of hesitancy and self-consciousness that all creators feel.
I came to PAX East with the knowledge that I, personally, cared deeply about games, and I believed in them. I knew I wasn’t the only one, but I could have never guessed the sentiment would be so rampant. This realization was the only thing that overwhelmed me more than the bombastic show floor. It struck me as funny how we showed off The Partisans outside, in the quiet, nonchalantly, but showed videogames off with the subtly of a roaring tank brigade. It’s part of the industry, I guess, and it’ll never go away. But isn’t the showing off a game in a more thoughtful, sophisticated manner – like they are right now at the Smithsonian – a pleasant thought?
I think it is. I think you think so, too.
The people immortalized in The Partisans fought and died for something important to them.
Game fans aren’t soldiers. All the same, remembering our place in the history of a young medium is important, even if it is relatively small compared to the fate of an entire nation of people. I hope that, someday, someone takes the time to translate our efforts into a work of art – but I want it to be a videogame, not a sculpture. That way, we’ll know our efforts weren’t in vain.
