Trigger warning: feels

I thought I’d write something about Tale of Tales’s decision to quit video games but then I found out that this article already exists: http://www.theastronauts.com/2015/06/what-really-happened-to-tale-of-tales-sunset/

It’s quite good and saves me the bother of having to analyse the reasons of ToT’s demise, the bitter tone of their farewell post or the subpar quality of Sunset. I don’t even have to talk about the awful financial reality of being an artist in any field. I can even steal the best screenshot from the article for my own.

Now that I’m liberated, I can quickly write a few thoughts about the the thing I find interesting about this. It’s the conflict that keeps happening at the borders and intersections between the territories of people who identify strongly with their favourite type of pastime.

There’s a contingent of games developers who are keen to expand video games beyond the challenge- and conflict-oriented territory games have almost exclusively dwelled in since their conception. The forays outside of this space have mostly been small experiments, art projects and very indie, like the entirety of ToT’s oeuvre. ToT claimed they wanted to depart from this and make Sunset a “game for gamers”, but evidently had no idea what that means.

Because gamers, especially the fundamentalist faction of gamers who are the natural enemy of the abovementioned group, feel that a tin should contain what the label promises. A video game should be a game, a thing of fun and challenge. A vaguely interactive art experience isn’t a game, right? And gamers seem to think of notgames that audaciously pose as games are a thing that should be derided and shunned. Even borderline cases are kinda suspicious. Gamers just want to have fun, man.

Elsewhere, video games themselves struggle with a similar problem. Competitive gaming coined the term “esports” to describe itself, in part to gain more legitimacy for the cyberathletes. Some traditional sports fans are resistant to the idea of teens tapping keyboard buttons at the speed of light being called a sport, as can be seen in the hilarious Twitter feedback to American sports media giant ESPN’s recent esports features. These people are the hardcore gamers of sports audience, people whose self-identity ties into the identity of the thing they’re an audience of. When something foreign threatens to invade the territory of their favourite thing, it also threatens them. They are afraid that redefining their favourite thing dilutes its purity.

Does it?

I used to be tangled in a border conflict of my own. Years ago I wrestled with the classification of visual novels. What are they? Visual novels are at the intersection of many other media (including literature, comics, theatre and games), without really belonging mostly to any one of them. Most people seem to be on either side of the “video game” fence. Ultimately, I don’t think VNs are games, but I also make no value judgment about it. Whether they are or not has no actual consequence to me. I continue to make a conscious effort to use the verb “read” when talking about VNs, but whenever I accidentally say “play” somewhere, I don’t correct myself. It’s not sacrilege. I’ve seen more than one heated argument about the place of visual novels in gaming forums. Should they be discussed in gaming forums or games media? Clearly some people are quite invested in this question, as are the people who fight over whether sports media should cover esports and the people who think it’s an abomination that Gone Home was on some Game of the Year lists.

Being territorial and acting concerned about any perceived threats to whatever you like is very human but also very silly. All these borders are drawn in water and there has always been so much overlap, grey area and crossing over between the various media that even pretending your favourite thing is pure is ridiculous, whether it’s sports, literature of video games. Because the way of these things is that they all are shameless hussies who flirt with each other and every other thing every chance they get.