Video Games Will Never Be Timeless, Akin To Classic Cinema Or Literature

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It’s only natural to feel a strong nostalgic resonance with a piece of artwork. Look at literary works such as Huckleberry Finn or Dante’s Inferno that only seem to gain popularity as the slow weather of time imprints their narratives into the deepest psyches of our mind. So why then do the classic games of our time fall short as the years slowly wear them away?

To examine this phenomenon, we must first acknowledge the superficial nature that lies within us all. Text in classic literature is uniform to today’s books, however not so with movies or games. Could this be the definitive factor as to why literature can be truly timeless — in the way a movie or game cannot?

The answer may lie in the technical pretenses of the medium. A piece of literature never pretends to be flashy or visually appealing. However with audio/visual media, technical prowess often serves to be the death of any sub-par graphically rendered piece of modern art.

So why then, does cinema have its classics that keep viewers entranced for generations? The answer again lies with technical marvel; works such as Star Wars or the Alien films have all been remade with the modern movie watcher in mind. Each of these has seen its fair share of remakes to enhance visual quality in order to be taken seriously, even by the snobbiest of A/V buffs.

The summation could be made that classic video games need to be remade, as seen by Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, and Tomb Raider: Anniversary, but to what end? Video games are a cumulative medium, drawing on the strengths and weeding out the flaws of each previous generation of titles.

In that sense, video game development draws on a sort of Darwinistic Philosophy, where only the strong survive. So what makes a game weak enough to be left behind by natural selection? Again, it comes back to our superficial nature—the medium is meant to submerse our minds into the game world, and it becomes nigh impossible to do this when the technical hurdles placed before us serve to deter our classics at every corner.

So what then are we to do? Will the games we’ve played and loved; the games which have changed our life, be forever buried by the sands of time? The question has already been answered– you played and cherished them so much that they have impacted your life, so whether or not the game gets remade is irrelevant.

In other words, it’s still a classic that belongs to you, and belongs to all of us. We, as gamers, are the backbone of modern media. Books and movies can continue to dwell on their successes, we are constantly at the forefront of something new, the future is ours for a price–Our past.

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  • http://www.poop.com poop master

    Three Words: Super Mario Bros.

    One word: Pong

  • http://julianhainsworth.co.uk Julian Hainsworth

    I disagree, there are an extremely low amount of games that can be timeless, but they do exist. An obvious first one to mention is ‘Mario’, or ‘super smash bros’ the originals will always be remembered, even by those who no long play games.
    Or ‘Ocarina of Time’ despite that its is almost a decade old, it still remains on almost every top 100 (or in many cases top 10) games ever lists. Similar can be said for games like ‘Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee’ despite being over a decade old now, it remains warm in our hearts and cold in our pockets, as if you are lucky enough to find a copy in a retail shop, its still pushing a £10 price tag!

  • Adam

    Chad, I loved this. Do you know why? Because it made me think. Anything that makes fans of videogames take a step back and really examine the medium is pretty great.

    I must apologise, though, because my thinking has led me to disagree with you.

    Gaming’s own “art” is buried in its agency; it’s the unique ability to influence that makes it stand out on its own. What makes a true enduring classic is something close to the perfection of agency.

    Tetris is one example of a timeless game; I, and the world, replay it constantly. And not in remakes, to truly see how addictive Tetris is you should play it on the Gameboy — the greatest incarnation of the series.

    Someone on Digg’s mentioned Super Mario Bros. Mario has always had near-perfect controls. It doesn’t matter that the graphics age, or the sound ages, because what matters is that the graphics, sounds, and whatever works — letting the gameplay work. I can still play Super Mario Bros relentlessly today (which can be said for most of the core Mario series).

    I’m writing an essay here, and could go on longer, but i’ll cut myself off to a paragraph or two more.

    There’s also timeless film that hasn’t been remade, but instead re-released onto the new formats such as DVD. Why? Because people will always want to see them.

    So that’s my thoughts, and, admittedlly, I know i’m making a general sweep (some games have merit outside control) but I need to so I don’t spam up your column with a huge comment. If you’re making people think with your writing then you’re doing pretty well; I’d like to see more of this.

  • jack

    this article was …pointless

  • CousinSal

    I think for one it’s a little early to say that no game will ever be timeless. The age of these two types of media alone makes this discussion kind of pointless at this time. Video games are but an infant in comparison to books and even movies. It takes one main thing before something can be considered timeless … time. Being that we are only about 25 years into the age of video games, we need to be patient.

    And the reason that movies have become timeless much easier than video games is not so much the visual advancements, but instead it is the human attachment to story. Movies have a strong advantage in the form of human characters. Watching Luke Skywalker find out that Darth Vader is his father or seeing Michael Corleone transform into a man before our eyes is more effective when we watch it happen to a real person and not a computerized avatar. In time, as video games begin to cross the uncanny valley and developers begin to weave intricate stories that match those of the literary and film classics, we will see video games compared to these other forms of media in terms of their lasting impact on society.

  • Nigel

    There are essentially two things that determine whether something is preserved: Values and Technology/Ability.

    Values determine what we attempt to preserve. If a society in general values a unit of culture then it will naturally be preserved through reproduction, either physically, electronically, orally, whatever.

    Ability is the crux of the matter. If a society desires the unit of culture yet doesn’t have the ability to reproduce it sufficiently then it will fall into history. This is often the case involving things with proprietary formats and things which are not readily reproduced.

    For example, right now science is generating a huge amount of data, data which is very useful and really ought to be preserved. However, the amount of data is astoundingly large; in the range of thousands of terabytes. This means the data will not be preserved just because we don’t have the ability.

    Another example is Literature. Particular instances will never survive forever just because of the nature of materials. Eventually things will disintegrate. The same goes for ideas, eventually they will become irrelevant and left behind. Literature will also change over time as languages evolve; the finer points of connotation being lost little by little.

    As well, as paper becomes more scarce a commodity there will be choices made as to which pieces of literature are reproduced. Those other pieces will dissolve into history.

    So, while your argument is interesting, I don’t think it gets to the heart of the matter in that values and ability truly determine what will and will not be preserved, and that ultimately, everything we know and love and value now, will eventually turn to dust as the world around us changes.

  • Treleus

    Dude, I think you’re missing the point of videogames. If you’re expecting them to give you the same kind of experience that books, art, and movies have given in their illustrious and socially impacting history, then you’re going to be disappointed and think that, “This will never last. It’s meaningless.” They’re just violent videogames about killing stuff, right? Well, you’re half right: that’s the point. If it’s fun, it can be anything. That is the essence of a videogame, but the beauty of this bizarre young beast is that it can take any form that imagination can conjure.

    The point you’re missing is that games are a whole new animal: interactive visual/audio storytelling adventures. They don’t need to be some kind of sophisticated, subjectively and philosophically evocative piece of art or literature. They’re videogames. They tell their own stories, and people react to the stories as they play, even become attached to the characters, the stories, or the world for whatever appeal they may hold to the player. Others don’t, and simply want a fun interactive experience, i.e. they don’t give a shit about cutscenes, story, or even the character. And yes, many games may have an absent or sub-par story, but not all, and people may still care about them on a heartfelt level. People hated Sonic Unleashed, but I liked it, and I enjoyed its story because it was pleasant and entertaining. Bam.

    You know how people don’t like a certain painting (or book or movie) while others think its a fascinating expression of human emotion? Guess what: the same happens with videogames, and now is the time where a trend of cynicism has manifested itself in [internet] society, where the hardcore gamers will argue back and forth on the quality of certain games, or lack thereof. What happened to enjoying them? When did we start caring about “games as art forms”? Wasn’t that implicit when you started liking the characters and the worlds enough as they evolved in their respective storylines and franchises? So now we’re trying to justify and evaluate the quality of videogames based on other already accepted forms of entertainment, art or not. Before ‘art’ can be ‘art’, they need to grab your attention, and if no one cares to look at it, then it fails to be anything.

    Games are like art. They’re up to the eye of the beholder, for the most part, but they ought to be fun to play. The experience of fun is a little more universal than artistic taste, although both can complement each other.

    You know what? Fuck art: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArt