The Imagination of the Player

There is a long held belief that film and televisual arts somehow inhibit the imagination of the viewer. It comes from that old cliche that books are better because the reader has to use their imagination to fill in the blanks. This is true of all art, it only becomes art when it is interpreted by the viewer and it will depend on their imagination, coloured by their own experience, memories and subconscious. Video games however are subject to this criticism more than most. Maybe this is because games, even more than films, seek to control every aspect of the world they create. The player must feel in control but is actually just walking a path predetermined by the developer. Or maybe it is just simple prejudice. Regardless of these concerns video games still require a lot of imagination and suspension of disbelief from the player. After all, unlike movies, the characters often don't look like humans even when they are meant to, let alone the environments and objects. All sorts of things can happen to break the illusion of the game world and regularly do. Players learn to be resilient to such intrusions. The preconception would be that this imagination damper is most damaging to kids but I think conversely it is precisely the reason children find it easier to get the most out of games. As children we were best equipped to use our imagination to enhance our experience of the game. As with art, adults seem much more likely to get bogged down in realistic representation and technical limitations.

This is a lot higher resolution than we were playing on, but it conveys the blocky graphics. A style I think has aged well, I looks somewhat like Minecraft.
(Tomb Raider II from www.bestofmultimedia.com)

One of the first games me and my friends played was Tomb Raider 2. I think we played it on a win95 pc so that would mean I was about eleven or twelve. At the time it seemed incredibly realistic and immersive. As players we imbued the crude landscapes with our imagination, we didn't see polygons in green and grey, I remember actually being on the Great Wall of China. Even though it was incredibly simplistic by current standards I simply remember being attacked by ferocious wild animals and looking out over endless wilderness.

Things have moved on but at the time it seemed incredibly realistic. I don't think you can simply put it down to us being easily pleased, we knew the limitations of the medium then, as we do now, but it was important what we bought to it. In short it required just as much imagination as any novel and we filled in the blacks with immersive effect. In the real world we played in fields and dens, had war games and treasure hunts but we bought all of this to the game world as well.

Panzer Dragoon Saga borrows a lot from the films of Hayao Miyazaki but creates a unique world, even with its own language, comparable only to middle earth.

Televisual arts don't stint kids imagination, they just develop them in a different way. Some games of the early 3D era required a lot of blocking in by the player but gave such a well crafted outline it was like filling in a colour by numbers and ending up with the Sistine Chapel. The developers responsible could use almost abstract forms and give them real personality and depth. Metal Gear Solid and Panzer Dragoon Saga used their graphical limitations to give just enough pointers to perfectly convey rich and atmospheric worlds. As a fantasy game Panzer Dragoon may have benefited from the lack of detail. One of the things I hate about a lot of fantasy games is they so obviously borrow from the real world. Detailed textures and objects from our reality cheapen the reality of the game. Panzer Dragoon forced weapons to be lumpy, but they were still elegantly crafted, textures were abstract and hinted at other worldy things, conveying colour and feel. It forced the developer to be extremely creative with their tools and this benifiter the player immensely. It enabled the player to imagine a world far more detached from our own, and as a result richer and more immersive. It was a time I remember with great fondness, the advent of 3d gaming produced works of gaming art which I think will last the test of time. As photo realistic graphics become more common I hope developers will start to turn back to a more abstract visual style.