Blips: Death From Above

Source: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, David Theurer
Author: Alex Rubens
Site: Polygon

We talk about "expressive games" like they're a new thing, evolved from the simple time-wasting past of the early years of video games. In a recent profile of Missile Command creator, David Theurer by Alex Rubens for Polygon, this perception is given a counter argument. Missile Command is not a complicated game to understand: bombs rain from the sky, intent on destroying the cities and military bases at the bottom of the screen, and players must launch their own missiles to destroy the bombs in mid-air before they hit the ground. As Rubens points out, this is a game about defense, where most games, even today, are about taking the offensive. Also, ultimately the game ends when players fail to protect their cities and everything blows up. The destruction is inevitable, which was meant to reflect the prescient notion that once nuclear war had been initiated, there were no real winners.

Missile Command was produced in the 80s during the Cold War, and, as a sidebar in the article mentions, was originally titled Armageddon. While Missile Command was built to be a fun game, Theurer also speaks of its "message" –a cautionary tale about the then-constant doomsday threat. Theurer's nightmares about nuclear war actually inspired the game. Fear, then, was a driving emotion in its creation. For Missile Command, Theurer even substituted the typical "game over" message for "the end," as a means of drawing more parallels to the real world conflict and the finality of nuclear destruction.

I love hearing new perspective on older games like this, since I can better appreciate where they're coming from. It's amazing how much some of the earliest video games have in common with more recent titles, with similarly small teams.

Blips: Grunge Games

Source: Grunge, Grrrls and Video Games: Turning the dial for a more meaningful culture
Author: Leigh Alexander
Site: Gamasutra

"Gamer culture" is nothing if not off-putting, and I like video games, so I have to imagine there's not much incentive for those disinterested in the medium to want to join in. In a recent piece by Leigh Alexander, she states that the culture that surrounds video games needs to change if it's going to be a culture worth remembering. The parallel she draws is the grunge music counter-culture of the early 90s which was a reaction to the glam and excess of the 80s and hair bands in particular. Alexander speaks of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against The Machine, but also of Riot Grrrl bands like Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill, and how the spirit of that movement is carried on in the feminist DIY game scene: perhaps the medium's first true counter-culture.

Though grunge music and personal games have their share of differences, not the least of which is the change in environment from mainstream monoculture to the fragmented subsets of specialized niches we have now, there's an "against the grain" tone in both. I firmly agree with Alexander that this counter-culture is the most interesting thing happening in the games space right now, and it's disheartening the degree to which young people would rather in-fight over corporate loyalty than embrace the rebellious element.

In my opinion, this comes down to what's cool, and what's not. Grunge music was cool, but in a way that youth latched onto and adults largely repelled. For a long time, games in of themselves fulfilled the same purpose. Adults didn't understand them, and though they weren't cool in the high school clique sense, they were cool within the circle of people that appreciated them. Now, even though the grunge fad has passed, games haven't changed all that much, except for how they look and a refinement of mechanics. In games, instead of each new generation growing up with their own unique counter-culture like grunge, punk, goth, metal, or dare I say dubstep, they each get their own iteration of Mario Kart. In music, these movements are driven by youth and ambition, which stagnated in games around the time of grunge. There is an alternative scene in games right now though, and it's one worth championing.