Videogame stories, until recently, were an afterthought. No one bothered postulating why Pac-man was eating dots and fleeing phantasms. It was simply assumed that someone came along periodically to empty the arcade cabinet's coinbox, and that money went to pay the people who made it - that was the entire impetus for the game's internal progress. Story wasn't an issue when the game only asked for a few minutes of your life. Arcade cabinets were a vending machine. Coins in, refreshment out.
When game consoles began to appear in homes, however, game developers realized that they could make games longer. If there was no need to feed quarters into a machine, they were free to ask more time of the player. But with that ability came a problem. In order to engage an audience for more than a few minutes, they would need a goal. Thus, Mario gained his Princess and his arch-nemesis Bowser. The game could have been about surviving enemies from starting point to flagpole, but now players had a goal.
As games evolved, so did the stories. While the classic "rescue the princess" story doesn't lend itself to any particular insight (except for a feminist analysis, but that's a topic for another paper), when games started reaching lengths in the tens of hours, game developers realized they could make a game based on a story instead of the traditional opposite. With this increase in storytelling, more complex stories began to appear, and those stories began to deal with more complex issues. Final Fantasy IV showcased the struggle of a dark knight dealing with the horrible acts he had committed. Beyond Good and Evil featured a nature photographer uncovering a government conspiracy. Unarguably, the best story in gaming history was found in Planescape: Torment, in which a nameless hero faced the immortality, questions of memory, and what it takes to change a man.
So it stands to reason that if game stories are approaching levels typically reserved for literature, they are capable of making the same kind of rhetorical arguments. In this case, what sort of arguments might they make, and how convincingly do they do so?
Obviously, just as any given book might make an argument better than some other, it is so with games. I've chosen to showcase Capcom's Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter for the Playstation 2, as it uses the affordances of this new medium well and addresses some very relevant issues. The game starts with a young man (who has no name, but historically the canonical name in the series has been Ryu) who works as a ranger in a strict caste system. He is a "Low-D", a character who has very little "dragon" blood, the mark of societal power. This is manifest in the game world by a ratio, Ryu's is 1/8192, while the "Regents" that control this world have ratio 1/4 - they are a quarter dragon. The only job available to Low-D's is fighting monsters in the lowest levels of the game's subterranean setting.
The game's world takes place entirely underground. The story goes such that thousands of years ago, mankind so polluted the earth that it had to be destroyed by dragons (this is an example of literary "hand-waving" element, dragons actually play a remarkably small role despite the game's title), forcing mankind to dig deep caverns beneath the surface. In fact, the various zones in the game are denoted by their depth measured in kilometers from the surface. But in recent years, mankind's pollution has accumulated underground, as well, making the rain and air dangerous. During the early events of the game, Ryu meets Nina, a young mute girl and is ordered by his superior officers to destroy her. Various flashbacks in the game explain that she is a product of genetic experimentation. Her lungs were modified to breath the sub-surface pollution, but it was discovered there was no way to get rid of the accumulated toxins and she was discarded as a failed experiment, despite the fact that she was human. Ryu takes it upon himself to challenge his orders and take Nina to the now clean air of the surface world or die trying, even though the "sky" is a myth, long forgotten by subterrestrian mankind.
The themes presented in the Dragon Quarter do an excellent job of arguing against genetic experimentation on humans and for environmental stewardship. Nina is represented as a game character by a small, waif-like girl. She is stick thin, her only covering is a simple, ragged dress. Scenes that explore her history use sparse, emotional music to emphasize the loneliness and despair of being abandoned. The first time the gamer sees her, she is being attacked by a large monster, and must be rescued in a difficult battle. When the player's group later meets her creator, his continuing refusal to treat her like a person drives a visibly enraged Ryu, shaking with anger, so send the scientist sprawling with a punch to the face. Scenes like this are only possible in the multimodal medium of the video game. While movies may recreate scenes in a cinematic form, some elements just can't be captured without input from the player. For example, when fighting enemies, Nina has a much lower ability to take damage than her companions, and every time she is struck, you hear a girlish gasp of pain - the only sound she is capable of making. This makes it clear to the game-playing audience that she needs to be protected.
Likewise, the hazards of a polluted environment are made real by the affordances of the medium. In one area, the air is so toxic that the player's characters continually take damage. In another, disposed waste has given rise to mutated beasts which are more difficult to defeat than normal enemies. All through the game, the gray-brown palette makes the environs seem lifeless and dull - a fact that the ending sharply contrasts. Ryu gives his life in the final battle to get Nina to the surface, and manages to crack the final barrier, causing a shaft of blinding sunlight to fill the chamber they're in. As Nina goes towards the surface, the camera shows a massive expanse of lush green grass, clear air, and blue sky. Two shots chosen specifically to enhance this contrast are a short zoom on a vibrant blue fruit in a tree, and a pan across a pair of healthy, chirping birds.
Of course, this paints a rosy picture of the medium. If every aspect of videogame-as-medium were so superior to literature and film, videogames would replace books and movies on the worlds shelves. So what are the drawbacks of videogames that hinder their ability to make arguments?
They're numerous and important. First, a game is not independent. It requires very specific hardware to experience. If my Playstation 2 were to break, I would be unable to play this game. Of course, this is nothing new - movies have has this problem for years, and we've managed to overcome it. VHS and DVD players are inexpensive and widely available. But a problem that games suffer that films do not is that they, by their nature, require audience input. Not just any input, but usually challenging input. Failure to meet a certain minimum level of skill in a game will usually prevent progress. This problem is so infrequent in books and movies than I'm hard pressed to cite an example without resorting to House of Leaves's byzantine page structures.
The final hurdle for the medium is undeniable - is the game any good? It's entirely possible and remarkably common for a game with a passable story to be terrible. I mentioned Planescape: Torment earlier, and I stand by my argument that it contains the best story ever told in the medium, but the gameplay elements themselves - navigating the world, speaking with people, fighting enemies - are obtuse, archaic, and clunky. Consequently, I do not play it, despite my high opinion of its story.
Dragon Quarter is in an interesting position. It is clearly in the Role Playing Game (RPG henceforth) genre, which means that the characters have hit points, levels, and typically progress is a mix of completing quests, talking to people, and fighting enemies. As an RPG, Dragon Quarter's combat mechanics are immensely fun, but the game's progress mechanisms use conventions of a different genre, limiting healing items, punishing failure far more harshly than most RPGs, and denying the healing balm of the RPG-afficionado, the ability to save the game at different points. Without getting too technical, the point to be made here is that if any given element of the game is perceived as too difficult, not fun, or confusing, the game is less likely to sell well than one that excels in all categories. Sales figures for Dragon Quarter as compared to a blockbuster hit like the ironically titled Final Fantasy XII are not immediately available. However, in the game industry, sales are often commensurate with review scores - in this case 78% and 91%, respectively. It also bears mentioning that game review scores might as well start at 60%, since even terrible games rarely get scores below that point.
And this leads to the final, and possibly biggest problem with the medium as a rhetorical vehicle - cost. Games typically cost $50 new in the United States, and that number is trending upwards. A poorly reviewed book may sell well if published inexpensively in a mass market paperback, but there is no equivalent "lost cost" platform for games that don't intend to compete with A-list releases. At such a high cost, only the games with the best gameplay elements sell, and punishing an otherwise excellent game for a poor story is a game reviewer faux pas.
Videogames are a new form of entertainment, arguably still in their infancy. As technologies evolve, it might become possible for some of these built-in problems to be alleviated. Others might not have a solution, for example the quality of the game's design will always have a bearing on it's ability to argue effectively, but this is nothing new. Many bad books are published every year. But easy and fun games that allow the player to bypass difficult scenarios without penalty might be in the cards for the future.
As a young medium, the efficacy of a game's story to a broad audience is severely limited by technical requirements. But for those that possess the skill, hardware, and desire to see the content as it is intended are able to see some, hear, and play some of the most effective arguments ever made.
Suggested Viewing:
Dragon Quarter Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTSruPWqcHw
Dragon Quarter Ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liy32koZbRA
Aside:
Planescape: Torment is unique in that it allows you to allocate your "stats", essentially sacrificing in some quality to improve another. For example, a character can choose to have an extremely high Wisdom score, which effects a bonus to character advancement and opens new dialog choices. But this also means that there are fewer points to spend on things like Strength or Reflexes.
If you have a sufficiently high Wisdom score, the game's midpoint becomes not a battle of weapons and magic, but a nearly 30 minute long conversation in which you take on the role of rhetor and rhetorician.
Planescape: Torment - Ravel 1 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vneCXW3CWIQ
Planescape: Torment - Ravel 2 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69HAqAwBS_0
Planescape: Torment - Ravel 3 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7Q5iuVIG5Y