Books > Video Games, Reason #156

Yet another reason why books are better than video games can be summed up in three words: memory card corruption.

The fact that you can lose a save state on a video game doesn't amount to a whole lot in this crazy world. There are real tragedies out there...but that perhaps makes disappointment in our leisure time all the more telling. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

Anyway, before Isabel bought me The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina in Time, I had been merrily playing through Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (it's very rare I play a game that is less than six year's old). The call of Hyrule overpowered me, so I abandoned my game of R&C and played Zelda through. I'm sure you will all be thrilled to know that I vanquished the evil Ganondorf and restored peace to the land (although the time traveling element of the game left me very confused by its conclusion). During a break from planning paper topics the next day, I thought I'd finish off R&C before starting anything new...only to discover the game won't recognize the save state on the memory card. I even tried swapping the file to another memory card, but it was to no avail. The file is still on the memory card, the game just won't recognize it. I'm assuming this means it is corrupted somehow.

I would approximate that I logged somewhere between 15-20 hours of game play before the file stopped being readable.

Now, lest I turn the blog into some kind of help desk, my point here is the interaction between technology and leisure--and to prove that books are in fact a superior form of entertainment in this case.

First, a book's data is simply more secure. Words on a page don't become unreadable overnight (maybe over decades or centuries, but I'm pretty sure the same can be said for video games). Besides, the books "save state" really isn't the book at all. It's in my head...or possibly the result of a dog-eared page, post-it note, or other bookmark. Even if the bookmark is misplaced of forgotten, I don't have to start reading the whole book over again to find out where I left off (unless it's been a very long time since I last picked the thing up). Even so, even if I can't remember the last page I read, there is absolutely nothing to prevent me from just picking an arbitrary page and picking up from there. Not so in a typical video game. And this is part of what makes games so devious--they are almost all forced marches, a self-enslavement to the narrative will of the game designers.

You can skip pages in books. You can fast-forward DVDs. You can jump to different tracks on a CD.

The video game, however, is one of the few forms of digital entertainment that requires you to meet certain conditions--consume a designated amount of media--before it will allow you to consume the next helping. You can't have your pudding until you eat your meat. For most games, this really just involves a very long easter egg hunt of finding keys to unlock gates (although games usually dress the keys and gates up to look like something very un-key-like just for variety).

For whatever reason, gamers like it that way. They derive a sense of satisfaction for having accomplished the tasks that the programmers lay before them. And for what? Most games don't even have that much to show for all of your effort--usually just rolling credits of Japanese names that I can't pronounce. (The only exception I can think to this are the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus games, each of with are the closest I've come to experiencing bona fide catharsis in a game--particularly Ico).

Both books and video games can be challenging for different reasons. I suppose the gamer can boast of the physical dexterity it requires to beat a particularly nasty miniboss (this has become harder for me as age takes its toll on my artist's hands). Few games, however, challenge the player to have the same mental dexterity of even reading light fiction. Sure there are riddle-type games of the Maniac Mansion variety, but even these usually are simply a matter of juxtaposing disguised keys and locks.

Books have their keys and locks as well. They are usually even more hidden than those in video games...but the keys and locks in text are usually relate to longitude rather than latitude. That is, the keys and locks in a video game bar you from accessing the linear narrative. The keys and locks in a book bar you access not from linear narrative but from depth of meaning.

There really is nothing to stop you from reading a book of reasonable length all of the way through (heck, you can read a book in a foreign language all the way through if you wanted--you just might not get that much out of it). But to understand the book is a different matter. This requires an interpretive skill set that allows you to descend into the books structures, patterns, form, and metaphors.

I suspect that most video games lack the depth of text. Sure, their plots are becoming more complicated. Their themes may become more dramatic and "mature." But, for the most part, video games have yet to match the complexity of literary works (unless, of course, I'm just as bad at finding that as I am at beating mini-bosses).

Fortunately, I only spent ten bucks on Ratchet & Clank...and I guess twenty-hours of button-mashing entertainment is worth ten bucks. I guess I'll cut my losses and move on to Marvel Ultimate Alliance...or maybe Metroid Prime...

Comments

[Peter Terp]

I'm afraid I might have spoken too soon...I've spent the last forty-five minutes tearing my house apart trying to find my copy of Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey to no avail. The book just disappeared.
It's like my house is being assaulted by information gremlins.

[Peter Terp]

And it looks like I spoke to soon...again...
My memory card totally vapped last night. Fortunately, it was a fresh one, so I only lost a couple of games. Oddly enough, Marvel vs. Capcom was still able to read its memory even though the browser couldn't detect it...so I made a back-up copy. I was not looking forward to unlocking all of those characters again. I guess St. Isidore must have been having a slow night...