Vanderbilt University Press, 2008
296 pages
I'm going to go out on a limb and say everyone reading this probably knows what a video game is, and most of you probably have some experience with video games; whether you've played the latest Playstation 3 game, or played a single round of Bejeweled on your phone.<
Over the last 30 years video games have become ingrained in popular culture, but often we fail to consider the intellectual interpretations of video games. Many people are willing to dismiss games as culturally insignificant, not even considering them a form of art.
In the last decade there has been a growing movement towards academia on the subject of video games. Playing the Past: History and nostalgia in Video Games is an excellent example of what an academic look at video games can be.
Playing the Past is a collected volume of essays approaching the subject matter of how nostalgia is viewed through the lens of video games; from the original plug-in-and-play "classic" games, to the massively popular World War II shooters in style today. The book explores the differences in memory narrative created by plug-in-and-play games and the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) communities online.
Plug-in-and-play games consist of a single controller that is hooked up to your TV. The unit contains a selection of classic games programmed into it; Pac-man; PONG; Space Invaders; Defender; Asteroids; even Mortal Kombat. In typical marketing fashion the ads for many of these games proclaim them to be the ultimate experience in classic gaming, and the definitive form of play. In the MAME communities, where people can download and play many of the same arcade classics, they are able to create their own "definitive" collections.
Other themes the book deals with are the ideas of the interactive museum -- such as Salem Plantation in Massachusetts -- as a form of gaming, and 'documentary' games -- such as JFK: Reloaded (which puts the player in the shoes of Lee Harvey Oswald as he attempts to assassinate President Kennedy,) and Kuma Games recreation of the mission that earned John Kerry his Purple Heart. These games either have a blatant message built into them, demonstrate an action, or help people relive a moment in history.
One of the most fascinating areas the book explores is the subject of the alienation, and the process of man behaving as robot in the modern post-industrial world; most explicitly shown in the games Syberia and Syberia II. These point-and-click style adventure games feature a New York lawyer, Kate Walker, sent to take over a factory in France following the death of the previous owner. The factory produces automatons, and Kate must attempt to help the child-minded brother of the former owner find Syberia; a mystical island somewhere beyond Russia. As her quest goes on, Kate begins to behave in an increasingly disconnected manner. She begins to more closely resemble an automaton herself.
Games like this can lead the player to examine his or her relationship with the game itself. Sometimes (especially during a particularly grueling, difficult, or redundant section of a game,) playing a video game can feel more like a chore. The player can feel as if they have lost a sense of self, as if they had become transfixed, hypnotically focused on a single, repetitive task; as if the players themselves had become the automaton.
The book is a marvelous read, fascinating from cover to cover. Perceptions of how we view the real world, and how that effects our experience in the digital world, are woven together to create a unique lens through which to view our collective, electronic past. This book changed the way I think about video games and how I look at the world. If nothing else, it made me more aware of the rose-colored glasses that we all sometimes wear when thinking of the past.