08.3

INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DESIGN Volume 9, Number 4, April 1996 Interactive Entertainment Design 5251 Sierra Road San Jose, CA 95132 published six times/year, $36 year, $50 outside US (((Chris Crawford is a computer game designer and industry activist, author of "Balance of Power" and other works, and founder of the Computer Game Developers' Conference. I have long thought that Crawford's home-published "Interactive Entertainment Design" is the best theoretical zine held together with staples. In the latest issue Crawford develops the daring thesis that the multi-zillion-dollar computer gaming medium has lost its way and is doomed to perish. I feel that his detailed speculations on the forthcoming death of his medium are worthy of close study from Dead Media devotees, so I have asked and received permission from Mr Crawford to run his essay on the DMML. The essay will be run in its entirety, but divided into four parts. Part One follows. (((A personal note: my second daughter, Laura Ivy Sterling, was born on April 12, 1996. Mother and child are doing fine -- Bruce Sterling))) Computer Games Are Dead Chris Crawford Death is an intense word. We associate it with evil, oblivion, finality. We can think of death in its narrowest meaning, the moment of the termination of life. The throat rattles, the heart stops beating, and we say that death has come. But is death confined to that instant of actualization? For a person whose kidneys have failed, and medical intervention is unavailable, death is inevitable. The terminal cancer patient will surely die. The suicide in mid-plummet is just as certain of death as the victim of a major stroke. Thus, the clean line we seek to draw between life and death is often blurred by the complexities of causality. "Where there's life, there's hope" == this is one of the adages preserved by Erasmus. I propose to turn the adage around: where there's hope, there's life. When the causal factors are sufficient to give us reasonable hope of future adaptive change, then we say that the organism is alive. When those causal factors give us no reasonable hope of future adaptation, then the organism is as good as dead. A magnificent oak tree whose roots have been infected with root fungus may linger on for years, but the arborist will tell you that it's dead. Where there's no hope, there is [|death]. This is the definition that I will use in arguing my prognosis for the computer games field. Is there hope of future adaptive change? I think not; therefore, I conclude that computer games are dead. When I speak of "computer games", I refer to a complex organism. It's not just a collection of shrink-wrapped boxes sitting on some store shelf. Nor is it encompassed by so many terabytes of code, video, imagery, text, and sound. "Computer games" are an entire field, an industry, a community. I prefer to think of it as an organism composed of a variety of subsystems, each of which contributes to the overall health of the organism. In living creatures, the process of death is a collective collapse of all the constituent subsystems. Indeed, most deaths are attributable not to any single subsystem failure but rather to a collective synergistic failure of all the subsystems. As the kidneys grow weaker, the concentration of poisons in the blood increases, reducing overall system efficiency. Metabolism slows down and the heart pumps less. Appetite is reduced, thereby reducing the supply of nutrients with which to repair damaged cells. Resistance to infection falls, and opportunistic infections arise in the lungs. The creature grows lethargic, and in this lethargic state blood flow to limbs and musculature is reduced, further reducing recuperative capabilities in these regions. The whole system grinds downward towards a collapse. I believe that much the same thing is happening with computer games, although I do not anticipate a complete collapse of the organism. Instead, I see it reaching a state of moribund stasis. The computer games industry is here to stay, but it could well spend its future in a coma, without hope of future adaptive growth: technically alive but dead in every meaningful dimension. An example of my meaning is provided by the coin-op industry. I remember, back in the late 70s and early 80s, when coin-op was the leading edge of electronic game design. The brightest and most talented designers worked in the coin-op field, because it was the field with all the creative energy. All the great games were originally designed in the coin-op arena, and were then translated to the videogame and computer game fields. Do you remember Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Centipede, BattleZone, Tempest, and those other coin-op classics? Those were heady times. But look at coin-op now. Yes, the industry is still here. They continue to ship products and make money. But where is the creative ferment? Where is the excitement of those earlier days? Who pays attention to their work? Coin-op has become a backwater, a comatose field marking time. Like old men sitting on the porch, reminiscing of the good old days, coin-op is just marking time until it dies. When it does, its passing will attract as much attention as the death of the ticker-tape machine or the [|telegraph]; few will notice and none will care. Videogames are moving along the same track, although their decrepit state is not so obvious. Like a dying oak, they still sprout new leaves every spring. But like the oak, you can only see the trend if you've been watching for a long time. The old-timer notes how, with each passing year, the new foliage is sparser and less exuberant. The youngster sees only the mighty trunk and the bright green colors, and does not understand the old-timer's sad shaking of his head. So it is with videogames. Yes, we continue to see new games each year, but they are ever-more pathetic echoes of past design greatness. Mario's children abound, but as heirs made feckless by easy wealth, they lack the drive and energy of their great ancestor. Videogames have been dead for years. And now computer games are dead. The dying has been a long time coming, but it's here now. Yes, I realize that you don't see the indicators as clearly as I think I do; a cursory examination shows an apparently healthy patient. But let me show you how to look more closely at the organism, how to smell the ketotic breath, the asymmetric iris that are sure signs of inevitable death.
 * Dead medium: Computer Games Are Dead (Part 1)**
 * From: ChrisCr@aol.com Chris Crawford**