Metal Gear Solid Act I: Liquid Snake

NOTE: As always, there's a standing spoiler alert for any game I discuss on this blog. Here, I will be talking about Metal Gear Solid for the first PlayStation. Most of the discussion will focus on and spoil only that storyline, but because the five games that comprise the saga (as of this writing, with MGS: Portable Ops taking a necessary place) are linked, it's important to know that some things may get spoiled if you haven't played everything.

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On Liquid

In a certain sense, Metal Gear Solid is Liquid's game. Ever one to want to emulate the Patriots--albeit a type of radical, hate-twisted emulation, similar to the one that he has for Big Boss--Liquid takes it upon himself to manipulate, control, and twist Snake's progress. If anyone controls Snake, it should be Liquid, not the gamer. The controller in the hands of the audience is happenstance, for the entire ballet of Shadow Moses is conducted beneath the baton of Liquid. From the commencement of the game, when he first makes an appearance on the elevator, Liquid's shadow darkens all of the remote Alaskan island.

The master of the game, Liquid's motives are simultaneously ennobling and perverse, a wicked sense of humanity's worth. A charismatic, dynamic, powerfully motivated character, he stands as the perfect opposite to the purposefully-empty Snake. The greatest of villains always stand at the polar end to the heroes, and Liquid does so in almost every significant way. He is eloquent, erudite, and smug. Like his brother, he adapts, but his adaptations are causal, rather than reactionary. He creates a better situation perpetually. Every set back is used to his advantage. Even his deception as McDonell Miller had been taken into account. Upon the death of the real DARPA chief, Miller was killed in his home, meaning that Liquid's plan to infiltrate Snake's camp as stealthily as Snake would infiltrate Shadow Moses commenced long before Snake even hit the frozen Arctic waters.

Would Liquid have attempted to usurp the Patriot's control at Shadow Moses had Solid Snake been the one sent in? Doubtful. Knowing of his twin brother, their freakish conception, and the fratricide on the part of Snake, Liquid probably knew his plan would lure in his opposite. Snake had already had a couple of 'run-ins' with Metal Gear; it would be logical that Snake would arrive to 'save the day.' Each is the other's Moby-Dick, and Ahab would never set sail if he didn't think the white whale would one day be visible.

Despite his brilliance, Liquid missed part of high school biology: a gene's dominant (or recessive) qualities are neither superior nor inferior to other genes. They are simply more or less likely to be expressed. A child with blue eyes is not suffering from inferior recessive genes (if those genes responsible for the eye color were, indeed, recessive). Similarly, the twist at the end that Liquid is the one laden with Big Boss' dominant genes helps to show why his hair is blonde instead of brown (apparently, Naked Snake's hair color--and all of his physiology, even down to the voice--is a recessive gene, meaning Solid Snake's identical look to Big Boss comes from the recessive--though not necessarily superior--side). As noted in Metal Gear Solid 4, Solid and Liquid Snakes have a very small genetic difference in them--a matter of only a couple percentage points. Very small differences at one point can lead to drastically different ends.

This distortion of reality works well for furthering Liquid as a character, for not only is he more capable than Snake in almost every way, but he is a well-rounded character from a narratological stand point. He is flawed in his reasoning, just like many other people are. Despite his fantastic ability to think, he still misses small details. Similarly, Liquid provides the necessary contrast to Solid by being hot, rash, bombastic, and self-aggrandizing in posture, speech, and assumptions. Snake, when asked about the death of his father, is remorseless and cool. Liquid, on the other hand, holds the grudge of patricide against Snake for all of the wrong reasons. He feels cheated that Snake was able to become Big Boss' murderer.

There is more to Liquid than there is to Snake, at least at the beginning. He is a more capable fighter, a faster thinker, and more adept manipulator. In fact, it is traitorous genetics--the one thing that he fought longest to control, yet never could--that killed him, not one of Snake's well aimed missiles or punches. The gamer never can kill Liquid, just like the gamer never can kill Vamp; they are both impervious to the manipulations of the gamer. They both are free of any sort of control; they are exactly what the Patriots hate.

One of the many things that differentiates MGS from other stealth/war genre games is the overt anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons message that powers the narrative. Death, in fact, is often a subject of conversation. Liquid rightly surmises, "We were accomplices in murder before the day we were even born," when explaining the fact that six (well, five, though Liquid didn't know of Solidus) other fetuses were originally in their mother's womb. These potential snakes were all aborted to encourage stronger fetal growth for the three remaining clones. This overture of death is important to Snake, but is something that Liquid seems to relish (yet another difference between the two). Liquid's idea of utopia is one of endless war, an Outer Heaven in which soldiers always have a place. Implicit in that dream is that a soldier's place only exists to exterminate another's. Though Liquid was an accomplice in murder before birth, his is the goal of continued death and destruction. Nuclear proliferation, for Liquid, is only one possible way toward death proliferation, his true goal. In the purest (and most distorted) Machiavellian form, Liquid seeks freedom from the Patriots' control in order to do lead others to do what he loves most: killing.

For the gamer, this is the greatest irony, the harshest reality that the unreality can create. Summed up in the shouted accusation, "You enjoy all the killing!" This is not just something Snake has to face; it is what the gamer is forced to recognize. The game is just a game (supposed to be fun) and it fulfills its digital destiny at the expense of endless digital deaths. The game is not sold on the pretense of being a look at the perils of nuclear proliferation; nor is it sold on the grounds of high quality voice acting; nor is it sold as a fantastic character study of conflicting philosophies, purviews, and experiences, though it is all of that and more. The game is marketed as "Tactical Espionage Action," a game of strategic spying, interspersed with the sugar-coated noun for violence: action. Prima facie, this game is not tactile beyond the controller (despite excellent DualShock progaming), and the spying is an orchestration by Liquid--Snake's presence has been noted almost immediately, and nothing was given to him that was not deemed permissible; hardly a very good spy. No, the game is touted as action, though in this, as in almost all design choices, the action itself is subverted. The guards are not supposed to be harmed. They are not supposed to die. They are supposed to be avoided, distracted, and fled from. Yet there are many deaths throughout the game that come--it is unavoidable; it is the reason for the game.

This should be more distressing to the gamer, but the unreality of fiction has wrapped up the minds observing this fascinating spectacle, shielding the gamer from the guilt of simulated murder with the thin veil of plastic and glass. This same phrase, echoing through Old Snake's memory in MGS4 causes a violent reaction in Old Snake, causing him to retch and lose Psyche. "You enjoy all the killing!" is the very reason the game--specifically and generally--is a success.

In the end, Liquid dies of FOXDIE, an appropriate end to the leader of FOX-HOUND. His genius, however, at encouraging others by participating in his philosophy of 'those who can, should' remains, a spore of an infected hatred for the world that is, in a twisted, sad way, his victory. His desire for the Outer Heaven of Big Boss' dreams only comes to fruition in the millions of hands that manipulate the puppet he most wants to control (and never can): Solid Snake.

Death of the Avatar

NOTE: This one is best read as a follow up to the one about violence and the one about the next level of gaming. I am, admittedly, rather disappointed in this particular essay, but I want to see what others think before I scrap it entirely. Particularly the end—it smacks of being too preachy. You tell me. Also, there is a footnote. Just FYI.

Death of the Avatar

Roland Barthes in 'Death of the Author': “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (Image, Music, Text, 1977). Replace 'writing' with 'gaming', and we have a new instance of death within video games--indeed, may very well be the only death within video games that matters. “[Gaming] is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body [gaming].”

Much has been said about the almost irrelevance of dying within a game. At most, the gamer loses an hour or two of play time--but what, really, has been lost? Time spent in the forum of entertainment is, by some counts, a zero-sum game anyway. To the noncritical gamer, it certainly seems worse: full perdition of digital goods, experience, attainments. Catastrophic loss, perhaps, of a corpse that wasn't looted soon enough, as though the unreal has full bearing on the real. (Perhaps that's the line of where unreality and reality truly converge; when one cares enough to emote over the unreality, it has become a type of reality...even one of worth?) Even critical gamers suffer frustration, irritation, and disdain for 'wasted' time in the game when the avatar's death damns the progress, despite knowing that the original intent of the game was to do what so many poorly-trained apologists and conversation stoppers claim its purpose is: “It's only a game. It's for fun.” (A trite phrase that effaces importance and gives a false sense of purpose and completeness; in reality it does nothing but provide saccharine-coated justifications.) On the earliest level of meaning, the video game is for fun. And on that same level, death is designed to be a minor setback to the goals of the gamer.

Other articles and thoughts about gaming as a design concept have belabored the point of death being a difficult part of the game creation process. When looking at the tripartite theory of Stephen Dinehart and dramatic play, it becomes apparent that there is a need to consider death on all three levels:

• Narratologically: The death of the avatar is/is not an aspect of the narrative. Generally, this is frowned upon, as the death of the avatar results in the end of the gaming structure, and the (sometimes too) well-known 'Game Over' screen breaks over the gamer. Metal Gear Solid 4 manages to allow the screen to be a recapitulation (in the form of brief screenshots) of aspects of the recent narrative, though the end result is the same. The hero dies; the story ends tragically.
• Ludologically: The death of the avatar is/is not included in the way of play. Generally, it is what should be avoided, an obstacle that ought to be eschewed. Occasionally, a game will allow a restoration through mini-games (Prey, Batman: Arkham Asylum), animations (Prince of Persia), or respawn points (BioShock) obviating the nuisance of the 'Game Over' screen. The hero dies; perhaps this can be fun? More often, it's a punishment for a failure on the part of the gamer.
• Schediologically: The death of the avatar is/is not designed as integral. Beyond the 'Game Over' screen, the death is little more than a brief step to the GUI urging a reload. Many RPGs and action games (Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Fallout 3) suffer from limited schediological intent, sometimes giving scant seconds of 'death animation' before allowing the gamer to select the desired load slot or reloading the last checkpoint.

On just the surface, then, death has an impact on the gamer that is likewise superficial. Taken in context of Dinehart's tripartite theory, it could be argued that dying may be a crucial hurdle that must be overcome before a game can truly be overcome.*

Heidegger and Death

German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time, argues that death is intensely personal--the most personal thing, since one can only die once. But the avatar can argue differently, since the death is not only immaterial to an avatar, but even more temporary than its existence--the precise opposite of the gamer holding the controller, whose brief existence will inevitably end in a permanent death (depending on one's religious beliefs). The ontological crisis of the avatar is dissimilar from the ontological crisis of the gamer. For the former, the greatest annihilation stems from the power switch, the permanent ejection of the disc. That is the most permanent of an avatar's temporary death (resurrection can occur with the flick of the selfsame switch, or be permanently instilled by loss of the disc or outright ignoring of the avatar by the gamer).

Example: By the second act of Metal Gear Solid 4, Old Snake has gained an additional expert on the other side of the codec--Rosemary, a character who first debuted in Metal Gear Solid 2. Rosemary can be contacted whenever the gamer needs additional information about how to best survive the trying circumstances that the aged Snake has to endure. Of particular interest here is a dialogue, rendered after dying and continuing without leaving the game in between. Snake opens up the conversation by saying that he has this feeling, like he has 'died once already.' Depending on the mode of death (gunshot, explosion), the dialogue will vary a little. The same approach comes from the analysis that Rosemary puts on the experience, chalking it up to Snake's instincts trying to preserve him in the battlefield. She even points at the distinct connection between the gamer and the avatar, asking Snake what he would do if he saw a teammate acting recklessly. “I'd tell him not to get himself--or me--killed.” She insists that “There's another 'you' inside your subconscious...” (or, more accurately, inside a living room) that doesn't want Snake to die. Again. In another conversation, Snake comes to the conclusion that his 'dreams of death' that have been plaguing him of late are showing him being shot, and he should be careful not to repeat the same mistakes that got him killed in his 'dream.'

Example: In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Prince can--and often does, depending on the skill of the gamer--make a fatal mistake. One of the schediological imperatives of the game is the capacity to rewind time, to redo and make accommodations to rectify any mistakes that lead to the demise of the Prince. If, however, too much of the time-warping sand is used, the Prince will meet a more final death. The narrative intersects with this nicely, because the voice over that comes on the continue screen reports a number of variations on the same theme: “That wasn't what I meant. Let me try again.” The avatar reasserts itself as the narrator of the game, explaining away the mistake not as an error on the part of the gamer whose skills have failed, but instead by asserting a narratological explanation--that the Prince, who is narrating the game, accidentally made up a story in which he dies.

These two examples are rare exceptions to the idea of how the avatar responds to death, and though they are interesting counterpoints to the general movement of death, there is another avenue that should be explored.

Violence and Death

My thoughts on violence within the game already partially explained, I want to push the overarching theme of games as the ideal that Wark proposes in Gamer Theory as a deeper exploration of what death may mean.

Herein lies another aspect of appeal that the game has within an entertainment-industrial complex (and Wark's military-entertainment complex being another tone on the same topic) such as the one that video games enjoy. Heidegger argues that death 'limits possibilities', a type of curtailing of what could be--and that, he posits, is what we hate and fear of death. But in the game, that limit is erased. There is almost endless possibilities, if not in a single game, then certainly within the genre as a whole. Possibility after possibility, each one being a new quasi-life, a new chance at rectifying past mistakes. This is the ideal into which the gamer wishes to tap, the recycling not of lives (though there is that, too), but of life, that the avatar can overcome what has only been beaten by the greatest of gods and heroes before. Perhaps that is why the Hero's Journey is such a predominant theme within the game, for it is taking Homer's Odyssey and letting each person participate as Odysseus, rather than simply hearing of him. When Odysseus crosses the river Styx in an attempt to learn how to return home, he journeys to the underworld--a place, almost by definition, the quickened cannot enter--before coming back to the living. This impossibility is made possible by the narration, and so for the gamer it is made possible vicariously through the game. There could be no leaders on the leaderboards were each death a permanent strike against the avatar. The perpetual respawning of avatars, particularly in FPSs, allows a perfection at a secular resurrection that is participatory and superficially permanent--though, in reality, it never lasts longer than the time of the match.

Death is cheapened (in both its positivity and its negativity) in games. There is a deterritorialization between the living analog and the 'living' digital, and the gap is never greater than when the latter shows its unkillableness--and, perhaps, superiority--over the former.

Death's Power

The last concept stems from this same idea, but on the inverse. The power that comes from being able to take away the 'life' of another is one that is rightly forbidden in society, yet arrives as the purpose of play within games. Michel Foucault is not alone in noting the ways that power becomes the very motivation for everything that humans strive for: power in work, in home, in conversation...and in play. The idea of being able to participate in the 'harmless violence' of the game, while simultaneously imbibing on the nectar of greater power (and significance?) is simultaneously addicting and eroding. The gamer needs more power (and thus levels up or somehow sharpens the necessary skills), all with the danger of letting what occurs become desensitizing, demoralizing, and devaluing. If anything, a recognition of the power of taking life should be a prerequisite for understanding the game.

*Not all games require death, just like how not all games require violence. However, the concept of a success/fail binary is locked within games. It is this binary that has to be the focus of the decisions on the game. What happens to a Sim in Sims 3 if food and sanitary conditions are refused? What happens to a Nintendog that is neglected? What happens to the avatar when the proposed objective fails? Those questions are the same that are explicit in the most basic concept of death in video games.

Virtual Unreality

There's a gap, somewhere, as necessary as a space between words, yet perplexing all the same. Video games are unique in many ways, but the most important here is the unreality of the experience, connected via a tiny umbilical cord (now wireless) streaming from the participant to the spectacle. This is not 'naïve realism' versus 'representative realism' or any other philosophical thought experiment. Instead, this is the real experiment of what can constitute definitions of reality, but placed inside of a virtual realm.

The game is flat, despite having 3D graphics (or the redundant title of 'stereoscopic vision' being added to give the illusion of dimensional depth to games). The game is silent, despite having 7.1 Dolby Digital sound pumping through the speakers. The game is independent, despite being a console attached to a wall attached to a TV attached to a gamer. Perhaps in a quasi-Buddhist way, we could ask, “If no one is around to play the game, is it still played?”

We can ask 'What is real?' for eons (as philosophers already have) and still come up with only partial answers and glimpses of potential subjective truth, but let's look at it from a more physical standpoint. We sense ourselves, we sense the couch beneath us, we sense the controller in our hands (for now). We can see the screen, hear the fans whir as the game loads, the click of the buttons as we impatiently wait to begin the next step in Petitor's adventure. If we take this sense (everything the mind gives us, from the level of hunger in our bellies to the amount of irritation we have at the boss to the other things we're ignoring to play the game) as real, as the benchmark, as the first level, what happens when almost everything else is pushed aside for the unreality of the game?

Level One: The game is real in terms of visibility: The screen changes from black to blinding, high definition white, filling the room with a paleness akin to death. The colors change and flicker, refreshing themselves 60 times per second, playing the player a simple play of who designed the play itself, the producers, the distributors, the creators, the self-advertisements sliding past as fast as the Start Button is pressed. The game is real in terms of touch: Tactile senses are limited to that of the controller, regardless of Force Feedback or Motion Sensors, but still real for the input. Even games that don't use such gimmicks are relegated to the sensation of the rubber analog sticks and plastic buttons beneath the thumbs. The game is real in terms of sound: The chimes as the cursor slides from 'New Game' to 'Load Game', the click as the depressed button is released, the sound effect as the game acknowledges the selection. The game is real in terms of these three senses, leaving out the senses of smell and taste (for now).

But the gap persists. There is something within the game that cannot be extended outwards, a boundary that is as much an algorithm as the mathematics dictating the way the game starts. Petitor cannot break free of his square prison, cannot turn about to face an outward reality, a focus only on the internal reality that Petitor can perceive. Here is the world where creatures attack him; he is compelled by the X Button to respond with violence. The digital world celebrates the vanquishing of the digital creature, none of which is real to the gamer, all of which is real to the game. This dichotomy of 'our real' versus 'his real' only exists in level one.

Level Two: The game is unreal in terms of visibility: The screen puts up a veneer, a facade, a fiction that is then believed by the player to be the game. Here we have Plato's Allegory of the Cave in a traditional sense, of the shadows on the wall being taken as real, perceived as real, but in reality are completely unreal. (This is the pun, that the game's graphical fidelity to the fiction of the game's own world is rendered by an engine of the same name.) The game is unreal in terms of touch: Forever distant, the only connection between the gamer and the game is molded plastic, clasped in sweaty hands and sometimes receiving the fury of a mistimed jump or the superior skills of an opponent. The weight of Petitor's sword does not numb our arms after hours of violent swinging. Heat reflecting from the sands of a vast yellow desert does not prickle our brows to sweat. The crunch of the gravel road is not felt beneath our feet. The game is unreal in terms of sound: Recorded at time apart from the experience, every sound is like the image--pure digital. There cannot be the sound of a wagon wheel creaking in front of Petitor, for no such wheel exists. The foley artists (true artists in their craft) deceive with simplicity--what sounds to be a broken bone is really a rent stalk of celery; what sounds like a footstep in a roofed amphitheater is but a footstep in a darkened room, perfectly recorded.

This world of Petitor's seems real to him, and we lie to ourselves to say that it seems real to us. The thin, transparent material that divides his world from ours is only semipermeable, and then it's such only one way. We can control him. In Level Two, he cannot control us.

Level Three: The game is real again: The console is turned off. The screen has gone black. The controller is put away. The speakers fall silent. Within us lurks Petitor. We can see him, as Hamlet does of his late father, 'in [our] mind's eye', an avatar of what once was and is now dead. Petitor's experiences become ours; his memories one with our own. The experienced recollection of the game has replaced the action of the game. As in Coriolanus, 'For in such business/action is elegance', an elegance that has extended backward through the game and into the gamer, whose very business is action. Thus the gamer is rescued from lack of the real upon reversal and reflection. Petitor becomes a second-generation control, one that harnesses the gamers' mind and thus indirectly manipulates those who thought they were controlling him. The unreal becomes real as the reverse asserts itself.

The game itself is gamer-less, yet gamer-contingent for perception. The same can be argued for ourselves; that the world itself is without us to perceive it, yet us-contingent for perception. The opposite can be argued, too: The game itself is only real when perceived by the gamer (the world itself is only real when perceived by humans).

Petitor doesn't know the difference. The creatures he fights are real to him, no matter what the Man Behind the Controller would say. Hence Raiden is correct (to an extent) when he yells at the Colonel in Metal Gear Solid 2: “We're out here, we bleed, we die!” To Petitor, reality is what is in front of him, all digital, all binary, all yeses and nos. He is compelled at all times--that is part of his reality. When the game is off, he does not perceive, he does not dream, he does not exist, he does not suffer. He is in the same status as when the game was saved. He is not real, not only because his game has not been (nor, indeed, can be) made, but because the digital manifestation of him is unreal.

Bonus Level: The game is unreal again: This is a different type of unreal, one that is called such not because it does not exist, but because it is the anti-real--hyperreal, a type of real that has become much more (and, paradoxically, much less) than the real itself. It is the currency of our times. Baudrillard would say that the hyperreal is “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality” (1). Is this not the game, then? 'Models of a real' person, such as any 'realistic' avatar (Petitor), who is without both origin (the gamer can give an address, but what about Petitor--or any avatar, for that matter. Where is he located? Where on the disc can one point and say, “There, there is Petitor, in all his potential!”? Scattered over the reflective plastic, the only traceable, significant locus for a character is inside the gamer, in Level Three) and reality.

The hyperreal is the evolution of reality in modernity. Symbols and signs argue for significance, an argument that stifles itself with its own bombast and ferocity. Within the game, comes the ideal once more, the idea that what matters in the world of the game is noticeable above all other signs. This impossibility in the 'real world' is easily and frequently invoked in the 'game world.' Keys sparkle, healing items shimmer, important documents are the only readable areas of the desk, arrows point the way to the next destination. Would that such a convenience existed in the 'real world'!

Thus the hyperreal of the video games reterritorializes what has been subsumed in the hyperreal of modernity, a standing against oversaturation of symbolism by limiting significance into the confines of the game. Little wonder, then, that morality within the game is limited, too.

Moving away from the theory, a question is raised by Petitor, who has just killed his father (a common enough motif in a game). Now is the chance for the narrative to assert itself, to make Petitor seem real as only fiction can be. Now is the chance for the avatar to wonder what he has become, who he truly is, why he does what he does. Instead, Petitor grabs the sword his father wielded and hurries away, not a backward glance, for the gamer wants to get some more orbs in order to level up.

Why is there no ontological crisis of reality in most games? Why do most games avoid the question of selfhood, the duplicity of potential reality, the wonder at existence? Games aspire to hide behind natural human desires--of violence, destruction, sexuality, creation--yet cannot come to grips with what it is--or is not? Perhaps this is why MGS2 is so important and difficult a text. Perhaps this is why the ending of Resident Evil 5 is simultaneously correct (Chris comes to an answer that has plagued him throughout the game) and erroneous (Chris fails to realize the price that must be paid for the thousands of human lives he and Sheva have snuffed out). Until the game is brave enough to consider the repercussions of the dark side of the human soul, instead of just its outward forms of violence and depravity, the genre as a whole will be unable to step into and accept the very hyperreality that it embraces--one in which signs are one more thing under human control.

Next Level

Games As Narrative or Play?

Narratology versus ludology, an old question in a new medium of theory, has become stale and stalemate. Wark plays on this in Gamer Theory (67):

But where gamer theory gets stuck is in the tension between thinking games through the forms of the past and the desire to found a--somewhat hasty--claim to a new 'field' or 'topic' of scholarship around some 'new media.' Is the game about story or play? Is the authoritative method 'narratology' or 'ludology'? Questions too ill-framed to answer.

Theory cannot answer the question of which is better; the medium, though new, is touching upon a long-held understanding of both concepts. We have never been without play. We have never been without story. The melding of the two is not new, nor is it novel. For fear of sounding tautological: What it is, it is. The game rests on three pillars, as Stephen Dinehart explains. In his article "Dramatic Play," he explores the three areas that meld into the dramatic play that encapsulates gaming excellence, adding a crucial third criterion to this debate. Beyond narrative and ludic properties is also the game design, which touches upon the other two in separate aspects. Where the three converge, argues Dinehart, is 'interactive narrative design.' In other words, the ludological, narratological, and schediological (taken from the Greek word for 'design') confluence.

Game Design as a Criterion

Why add this, and how does schediological influence differ from ludological? After all, the ludic elements are how the gamer interacts with the medium, the play of it all. But the play itself is barren in a video game, as any who has been caught by a part of the gameplay mechanic yet left ultimately unfulfilled knows. Konami's Rock Revolution provides a great example of the ludic existing in a familiar format--game simulation of playing music, a la Rock Band and the Guitar Hero franchises--yet being ignored by consumers and panned by critics. Rock Revolution lacked the narrative as a matter of course (even with Guitar Hero: World Tour's attempt at a storyline taken into account, the genre as a whole is essentially narratively empty), contained a ludic element of play, yet failed to capitalize on either with its schediological approach.

Stephen Dinehart: "Dramatic play systems invite the player to co-create a plot through a world that is influenced, if not shaped, by their actions. In this role play, the question is begged of the player 'what kind of character do you want to be?' Begetting the formation of a particular desire in the player, a desire to be. By actively pursuing that desire, the player becomes an active protagonist." Therein lies another avenue of power, another tapping into the ideal, another drug in the addiction. This is where the play becomes limpid and the story becomes intrinsic and the design becomes seamless. When all three mesh, each one complements the other.

Examples, Please?

The examples appear to be few. Large blockbuster sellers like Halo, Gears of War, and Metal Gear Solid fail to fully achieve it. For Halo, the story itself is overwhelmed by the ludic aspect of the multiplayer component. Particularly in the first game, the schediological component, while flawless on the graphics and the controls, failed on level design. Duplication of textures and uninteresting maps mar the effort. For Gears of War, the design was executed flawlessly, and even the ludic aspect of the game worked on multiple levels. Yet, from a narrative point of view, the game was satisfied with stereotypes and cliches to power what should have been a phenomenal science fiction epic. The premise of the story--and the power that it could have derived from it--got lost behind the glitz and the gore. For Metal Gear Solid, the schediological, the ludological, and the narratological components all shined appropriately, but the balance of them became muddled. MGS4 as proof: Too much narrative at certain points, letting the play lapse. The excellence of the design of the levels lead to exploration, but caused a greater disconnect when the narrative asserted itself. The fun became frustration when a perceived unfairness in the final fight lead to hours of repetitive gameplay.

So where can we turn for a perfect mix of all three? Independent games often shine with two of the three criteria: Flower and echocrome both have fantastic design, intuitive controls, but little to no story. Castle Crashers and other games like them suffer from similar problems. Even a game like Siren: Blood Curse attempts to create a credible storyline, but ends up repeating levels and/or missions (poor schedology) or having lackluster and uninspiring control schemes (poor ludology).

Perhaps this is the key to where we should hope to get to. There is no Citizen Kane of the digital interactive medium because there is no one who has thought through all three criteria. Those classically trained storytellers (David Cage springs readily to mind; Hideo Kojima fits this, too) are stuck in certain types of expression that derive from passive visual media and passive textual media, though they can handle schediological approaches well. Those trained in powerful ludological avenues (Masahiro Sakurai) do not fully grip narrative expression, despite possible schediological capacity. Those who capitalize on schediological excellence (Cliff Blezinski) often fail to integrate narrative and, sometimes, even ludological importance.

In order to get the greatest game ever, there must be a perfect balance and harmony: A story of lasting significance, a gaming experience of pure entertainment, and a game design of perfect clarity.

Who's up to it?