Junot Díaz (whom I did suspect was a bit of a gamer) has an essay on Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wall Street Journal today: ‘Grand,’ but No ‘Godfather.
Sharply:
Rockstar Games could have had a field day with Niko as immigrant, Niko as veteran from a war that was screwed up from the start, with Niko as aspirer to an American Dream that might never have existed in the first place. It wouldn’t have taken much to have made some plot alterations, to have had Niko ducking ICE special agents, to have had him actually struggling to get the girlfriend of his dreams, robbing, stealing, killing in order to dress up to local standards, or to end the game with Niko being deported back to Europe. Any one of these narrative additions would have made Niko’s journey and his successes all the more poignant, all the more surprising — would have put a face, a very real, hard face on the American Dream, which for many aspiring Americans, throughout our country’s long checkered history, is a nightmare.
I briefly appear in the sidebar on video game studies to mention that I am working on a book about casual games:
Conventional wisdom has it that gamers are predominately young men and boys. “That is a huge misunderstanding,” says MIT researcher Jesper Juul. For example, the category of “casual games,” including digital puzzles and word games, is largely fueled by female players. For an upcoming book, Mr. Juul is digging into history for more evidence. He traces videogame stereotypes back to views about card games like solitaire, which in the late 19th century was widely perceived as a pursuit for “idle ladies.”
I think the old “patience games” moniker for solitaire speaks volumes.
So he wanted more story, me too, but it was a long game.
I second the critique of GTAIV’s narrative design, which I happened to be playing earlier today. It kind of meanders into various unrelated social circles, with implicit but extremely (perhaps too much so) understated ethnic themes to each, and then concludes on this revenge thing. The closest it gets to tapping the full capacity of it’s social context is in some of the radio stuff, and a few of the missions. Same length, better narrative design, fewer wasted opportunities. It doesn’t really cost anything except whatever is involved in having someone more talented involved. Everyone should be tapping into these things, the business angle from added press is alone worth it, and I don’t think the core segment is going to be offput by more daring subtexts, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the gameplay.