Well, it’s been a while. A month, I think? In an unsurprising turn of events, life got in the way of this whole “blog” thing, but Waypoint Radio today reminded me to keep writing and stay focused. So welcome to Fried Flounder, my vaguely-scheduled attempts at critical writing.

A few weeks ago my game development club had the opportunity to speak with a resident doctoral student on the subject of her dissertation- “the effect of serious games on player behaviour regarding environmental consciousness and climate change.” I’m not going to name this student, though, because while I have a problem with her analyses as a whole, this isn’t a review of still-developing research, nor is it an evaluation of games about climate change. The strange part is the idea of “serious games,” a perspective I had seen as obsolete, not unlike the games-as-art questions that seemed contemporary to releases like Limbo (2010) and certain Bioshock (2007) critiques.

For context, the introduction to her thesis was asking examples of serious games from the others present. Killbox, a game about drone warfare in Northern Pakistan, was referred to multiple times. With that introduction out of the way we carried on into the bulk of her actual research, but the discussion of so-called serious games has been lingering on me far more. What was the operational definition of Serious Game? Does that definition render all other games Unserious? The questions have been pestering, and telling of a divide between games criticism and development that I had assumed but never personally experienced.

To start from the beginning, though, what is a Serious Game? Based on the games floated in the introduction, I’d first say that a better term is Political Game- a game with a specific, primary intent to provoke political thought. Not necessarily to manipulate opinions or behaviour, mind you, just provoke thought. Unfortunately, the term used wasn’t Political Game; it was Serious Game. And furthermore, Serious Games spent the duration of the talk on a pedestal- helping to better the world while “other games” serve primarily to distract from or “escape” the world. This dichotomy may very well be true for the researcher, but personal anecdotes are scarcely fact. The capacity for players, the audience, to extrapolate social or political commentary from Unserious Games. Yes, some games, like Killbox, are more explicit about worldly concerns. But does that mean a (admittedly heavy-handed) game like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided discusses the essence of humanity in the pursuit of escape? Is Deus Ex a Serious Game? A question like this could have spent our talks spiraling, with dissenters using too many anecdotes to debate the Seriousness of Deus Ex. A similar argument over the seriousness of Flower (2009) actually did happen. Every one of them was profoundly missing the point: Who cares? Who cares if Flower and Deus Ex are Serious? What does that accolade do for anyone? Nothing.

It became painfully clear to me that the budding game developers I work with are just that- developers. When we talk together we talk about lerping and why Player 2 loses three lives when they die. Every discussion is about problem-solving and systems. I later told the group that the quality of games is a measure of their seriousness, regardless of what the developers are taking seriously, be it the morality of drone warfare or how good it feels to run on a wall. They halfheartedly agreed, before one argued that Killbox and Titanfall 2 (2016) “are still different.” I asked how they were different, and received “I mean…” and a shrug. The rest of the day was devoted to getting a main menu’s camera’s lerping feeling good.

I get the feeling that this series of events has weighed on me more than my compatriots, but I strongly believe that excellence in game development mandates a capacity to discuss games and game development critically, and, at least in my circles, this capacity seems lacking. As I’ve said above, though, personal anecdotes alone aren’t enough. Am I overreacting? Do game developers interact with and participate in games criticism enough (and vice versa)? I’d greatly appreciate responses.