"We're obliged to do what other media don't" - Warren Spector on games (but could be eBooks)

Today I went back to the very first episode of Leo Laporte and Tom Merritt's great Triangulations series. The opening episode was an interview with game industry legend Warren Spector. They never really leave the theme, but the first fifteen minutes or so capture a great conversation on games as an artistic medium. I love the eagerness to really think about new media as new, rather than simply a way to further existing publishing successes. In fact, it's not even eagerness but a sense of artistic integrity that seems to drive this view.

In the interview Spector relates how his graduate studies in film inform his work as a game designer. This gives him an informed stance on games vs. movies. In fact, he argues that games as the next kind of movie is not a useful idea. Instead, Spector calls them "dangerously similar".

But although much "needs to be unlearned" he has an interesting stance on one common distinction made between games and movies-- linear vs. free narrative. Although he agrees that games are non-linear he also adds, "We give the player the minute to minute, but games definitely have a narrative arc." He further notes that three act structures and common character progressions have worked very well in many games.

Example common movie tropes that are absent from games include parallel and off-screen plot developments and irony. Irony is absent, he thinks, because currently games focus on first person in-the-moment immersion. Regarding parallel development, I can see this working its way into the medium. Consider the use of different-time Spidermen in the time travel game "Spiderman: Edge of Time".

Another interesting point is that great graphics alone aren't enough to create the immersion games aspire to. There's a great history-informed thread on the cultural experience of discovering 8-bit games that elaborates.

Admittedly, his arguments are not new to this interview. He began the thread at least as early as 2010.

But what really catches me is the sense of moral obligation to think about these things. I meet far too many print veterans who want to "create an immersive book experience in eBook format" (actual quote). The easy retorts fall along the lines of, "immersive books exist, the adjective is engrossing" and "eBooks are new medium, not a trim size".

But laziness is worse than cluelessness. And it is lazy to define constrain the new in terms of the old. "book experience" is a poor adjective and poorer aspiration for what new media can offer. As Spector puts it, "If you're going to be working in an entirely new medium, why would you do stuff that other media already do." I couldn't agree more.

For publishers, "eBook" is like "horseless carriage" and we are morally obligated to get over it and on to what interactive content can really be.