Pull quote:

“…they wouldn’t let us play with them when we were kids. And so we went off and created our own games and played amongst ourselves. Why should we give up our games, to go play theirs, now? I prefer our games. I find their games boring.”

http://tsuibhne.net/2008/03/15/real-art/

I don’t think Maus could have gotten the reception it did if its characters had been drawn as superheroes and supervillains; it had to reach further back in the conventions of comics, to “funny” animals, which wasn’t really the dominant genre of the comic book anymore (but still comments enough on comics’ history to be recognizable to readers). And I don’t think it would’ve worked as an action story, even if it had been focusing on escaping from concentration camps or whatever; it had to be an emotionally complicated biography/memoir. And the result that at least one reviewer proclaimed, “Maus is not a comic book,” because they couldn’t wrap their brain around the idea that this was the same form they had already discounted.

“Mainstream” comics and games for “hardcore” audiences have tried to become mature by tucking “adult” themes into traditional, action-packed genres. Ken Levine was pretty clear and unapologetic about this on Bioshock because they needed it to sell. But this is not what will reach critics.

Wii/Guitar Hero have departed from the controller scheme to popularize the idea that games aren’t necessarily exclusionary and antisocial, which is great, but not exactly the same thing as saying that games are sophisticated. When that “adult”/”sophisticated” moment comes for games, I think people will feel a little anxiety about even using the term “game.”

Rosebud was a sleigh (with runners–not a tobaggan, which explains the domain’s availability.)

Thanks for crushing my dreams.

Thinking on it further, it’s interesting that “Citizen Kane” is the instant go-to for Best Film Of All Time. It probably got that as much because of the promise that Orson Wells held, as it’s actual merits (and we were disappointed later–I’d say that’s another reason Marathon is the CK of games, except that it’s missing the critical reception that cemented CK in popular culture. Also, no sleds.)

Gaming is interesting because the formal structure is, like comics, all over the place. The CK of games could be a Marathon decendent, or Guitar Hero, or a Wii game where you *finally* get a light saber. I suspect the first catagory has an edge with critics, but half of them are younger than I, these days, so who knows?

SPOILER ALERT:

Rosebud was a sleigh (with runners–not a tobaggan, which explains the domain’s availability.)

Absolutely NO google results (yet!) for the search term “Tobogganman.” Greatest game ever, here we come!

Er, Maus IS the Citizen Kane of comics.

The trick with a medium’s “CK moment” is that it requires a critical infrastructure that’s ready to acknowledge it. There were plenty of cinematic CKs before (and after) Citizen Kane. But Kane was there when there was a *serious* audience ready for it.

Video games have a way to go. As I’ve said before, I think Marathon was *a* CK game, but it doesn’t seem to be *the* one. Commercial forces pushed Bungie into doing Halo, which is Marthon-lite. The tide will ebb and flow, the stars will align, and eventually someone will come up with *the* CK game when there’s a *serious* audience waiting for it. It will then be dubbed the Greatest Game Of All Time, even though the final boss is a fraking sled…