Why Zelda is not an RPG (And why Halo is not, either)

If you like to talk about video games or even just listen to other people talk about video games, chances are you've heard someone argue about what makes an RPG an RPG. And you will hear a lot of varying answers and may conclude that there's just no real definition.

Genres. Who needs 'em, anyway?

Recently, on a game dev forum, there was a discussion about what favorite aspects of roguelikes. Shortly into the thread, we realized we were all talking about a different genre. Well, you can't talk about what you like about roguelikes if you can't even define what a "roguelike" is.

And before you claim "Sure you can! Everyone can just use their own definition!" Well, that's a bit pointless. If we wanted to talk about our favorite qualities of foxes, because someone wanted to create their own fantasy fox breed, and I said "I like how they live in the water, have gills, and eat smaller foxes to survive. It's cool when their fins come out of the water, too." How is that helpful? I could just say "Well, my definition of shark and fox is the same thing. So it's only fair that I use my own definition of fox and not one that we all agree upon."

As you can see, there are times when you really do need to define things.

So, users on the forum started trying to define "roguelike," and some people claimed that the definition should be kept vague. It ended up bursting into a string of people saying "By that definition, Halo is a roguelike." Then everyone would just compare ever definition of "roguelike" used in the thread to Halo and see if it worked. People got mad.

However, this is the correct way of going about things.

The purpose of genre is to distinguish different things. The purpose of categorizing anything is to distinguish. So if you can't distinguish between things using your definitions, you need to define your categories better.

It's like taxonomy. What makes Periplaneta burnnea (the brown cockroach) different than Periplaneta americana (the American cockroach)? Most people would say, "Hell, I don't care. They're both roaches and pretty much the same." And most of the time, that would be fine. But there are certain times in which you must say one is a different species than another -- that's the entire reason we have taxonomy. Without it, we couldn't study biology properly.

If you're talking about why you like RPG's, you're talking about why you like them compared to other games. If there's nothing to define it and separate RPG's from other games, what are you even talking about? You're just talking about what you like about games in general.

And we can't just have a vague description. If we just said "Well, if they have legs and crawl around, it's a cockroach." Then, well, your pet dog is a cockroach and an elephant is a cockroach, too. And obviously, that doesn't work for most people, and would make a conversation about cockroaches quite difficult, if anything that fits that definition could be a cockroach.

So if we want to talk about RPG's, we have to define what an RPG is, or else we're all just talking about elephants and sharks when we're trying to talk about roaches. And we have to define it very specifically.

With that out of the way, let's talk about what actually makes something an RPG.

Just what is an RPG?

Firstly, people will look at the name "Role Playing Game." One of the most unproductive things I hear in these kinds of discussions is the "obvious" fact that RPG's must be a game in which you "play a role."

Of course, that not only is so vague it barely makes sense, but it's very rare that you don't play a role in a game. You play the role of Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog. You play the role of a soldier in Call of Duty. You could even say you play the role of a doctor in Dr. Mario. Does that mean those games are RPG's? If you don't think so, your definition of what makes an RPG is flawed and needs some work. Remember, we need to find a definition that separates the games we call "RPG" from other games.

Then there are some arguments that seem to make some more sense. People will think about RPG's and try to find things they all have in common. Well, you level up, you collect weapons, you take turns, etc. This puts you on the right track. But of course, you need to think about how disputable these things are.

You take turns in Checkers. Is Checkers an RPG? You level up in Halo's multiplayer. Is Halo multiplayer mode an RPG mode? You collect weapons in Grand Theft Auto. Is Grant Theft Auto an RPG? Also, are these things true in all RPG's? You don't collect weapons in Pokémon. You don't take turns in Secret of Mana. You don't level up in Romancing SaGa. But those are all considered RPG's by a vast majority of people.

At this point, there are lazy people who give up and say "RPG doesn't really mean anything, then, I guess!" But then, why would we even have such a term in the first place? And are all these people who consider themselves RPG fans just playing whatever games come their way and pretending they have an interest in a certain genre?

Of course not! A big problem is that the term is used incorrectly or loosely in casual exchange -- but this doesn't mean we can't define it! It just means we're going to have a lot of frustrating opposition (like with the examples above, and whatever else people may want to throw our way).

Let's look at the early history of the genre. Role-Playing Games actually start out as just that -- games that revolved around creating a fantasy in your head and acting it out. Now, as children, we just call this "playing make-believe" or "playing house" or something like that. But when older people do it with a set of rules and turn it into a sort of strategy-based game, we called it "role-playing games." It was still a group of friends getting together and making up a story together, pretending to be in that story, but now it was a bit different.

Made famous by games like Dungeons and Dragons, it's no surprise that fans of these games who came to love the numbers and statistic crunching involved in those structured make-believe sessions to see the computer world as a great opportunity to expand on this. With a computer, you could have even more complex rules and formulas without having to worry about calculating them yourself and distracting from the fantasy world you were creating.

But the computer opened up another opportunity -- you could create a single-player campaign! It would have to be a little more structured, but just create your world and a story, and allow the player to experience it in the same way as they did while playing a pen-and-paper game like Dungeons and Dragons by building their character, interacting with things in the way they wanted, and rolling virtual dice (which don't even need to be displayed anymore) to determine their success... Now you could share your creative worlds, or experience a friend's, without having to get a group of dedicated followers together twice a week. It was a gaming miracle!

Of course, the popularity of this kind of software quickly spread, and people started to create all kinds of games using these systems. People enjoyed the actual numbers gameplay and character building so much that a lot of the storytelling aspect was lost in favor of things like exploring massive dungeons that you had to map out with a pencil and graph paper in order to win.

Of course, as computers became more powerful, we didn't have to describe the environments with text anymore. We could display a graphical world for the user to explore. And as technology advanced to what it is today, we were able to even tell a cinematic story along with the gameplay. So, that aspect of creating your own make-believe characters and adventures in your head has been somewhat lost in certain types of computer RPG's today, while parts of it retain in free-roaming RPG games like the famous Elder Scrolls series, where the game is like a very, very illustrative Dungeon Master. We still, however, lose the spontaneous creative quality of playing with humans.

So through all of this, what factor brought over from those tabletop imagination games has stuck around? What has never gone away or changed, that we could say "makes" an RPG what it is? What quality do these games have that other games, both then and now, didn't have?

Numbers. The beautiful numbers!

Well, if you go to you're friend's Vampire: The Masquerade night and take away all the humans, what are you left with? No, not vampires. Well, you have a bunch of rules, a bunch of numbers, and some dice.

All games have rules, of course, but what make the rules of an RPG different from that of another game? I mean, basketball has rules, too. So does golf. But of course, those aren't the same type of game! What makes them different? Well, the rules and equipment you use. What makes RPG's different from other games is like that, too!

Open any RPG book at your local bookstore or hobby gaming store, and read the rules. They will completely cover how to make and build characters within the rules, and how to determine success of actions. They'll also tell you how to tell good stories and work together, but again, we're using the computer to replace that human interaction part now.

And those things are what all those numbers and the dice are for. Still, all video games have numbers and formulas (Pac-Man uses numbers to track your score and number of credits, and even the speed of the game), and almost all video games have some kind of random number generation (Damn you, Clyde!!)

So those rules that tell us how to use those things--that must be what sets an RPG apart from other games. And indeed, in all my time working to find a good definition of what makes a video game an RPG, this has proven to be the best answer.

In an RPG, the numbers are not already determined for you. In an RPG, an important part of the game is being able to influence those numbers on your own. When you played the pen-and-paper games, all your friends' characters leveled up together -- but when Frank's mage leveled up and Susan's warrior leveled up, they didn't grow stronger in the same way. Why? Frank and Susan got to choose how those numbers affected their characters. The numbers were user-influenced. Mario is going to have the same running speed no matter how fast you want him to run. Mega Man can only shoot three bullets at a time no matter how much you want him to shoot more.

Now, we're still going to run into problems with using this as our definition of RPG's. If just having user-influenced variables made a game an RPG, then a ton of games could be an RPG again. In Dance Dance Revolution, I can influence the difficulty of the song by choosing a difficulty level (which is represented by a number), as well as alter my score by stepping on arrows at the proper time. Hey, I'm influencing values, right? Well, of course, that's not an RPG.

So let's think again about those rules. What makes the user-influenced numbers so different in an RPG? Let's think back to those rulebooks and what we're doing with the numbers.

There's a core difference that we haven't mentioned -- remember those dice? That's right, the entire point of these numbers is to use them with those dice. In an RPG, our "stats" determine whether our actions succeed or fail, and to what extent they do. When we want to do something difficult, we roll a check. When we attack a monster, we roll a check. And when we hit? We roll for damage.

That makes our numbers a bit different. We now have user-influenced variables that are used for the purpose of combining with random numbers to determine our success and level of success. And when you think about the actual gameplay elements of an RPG, the stuff we're using the computer for, that's pretty much the entirety of it.

An important part of this definition is that these random numbers combined with our influenced variables determine our success. What determines if we succeed at an action and how well we succeed is not anything else. In Karaoke Revolution, what determines if we pass the song is how much our voice stayed in pitch. In DOOM, what determines if we hit our enemy is our aim, not our accuracy value plus a dice roll.

In a non-RPG, you will have pretty much the same success rate defeating a boss or attacking it no matter how your random numbers or user-influenced turn out. Even if in a first-person shooter, there is a random amount of damage done to an enemy when shot, and you can level up your shot power, killing that enemy may take you between 5 and 10 shots. No matter what. 5 if you're lucky or powered yourself up a lot, 10 if you're unlucky or haven't powered yourself up a lot.

But in an RPG, it's not like that. My character, who I purposely didn't level, so they're only level 2, and I put my few points into magic, may take 24,593 attacks to defeat a boss with my normal attack. But my friend, who is level 100 and poured all their points into strength, could defeat it in one hit! That's a very different experience even though we're playing the same game -- and the entire reason it is different is because the core system of the game is about these user-influenced variables mixed with random numbers determining our success.

Any game can have some numbers and random influence, but when it's the core system and those numbers significantly determine the success rate and severity of success instead of your ability to press buttons in timing or something, and what takes you from the beginning to end of the game is your personal manipulation of those numbers and choice on how to use them -- that's an RPG.

Now, there is a sub-genre of RPG in which action can play a major factor in certain pass/fail situations. Mostly this has to do with replacing dodging/accuracy with the players actual timing. For example, in Kingdom Hearts, if you run out of the way of an enemy's attack, you will not get hit. So you could argue that your timing abilities are a key element here, which they are. But the fact remains that a player who created a magic-focused Sora and is level 55 is going to have a very different experience fighting a boss than a defense-focused Sora at level 7 fighting the same boss. When the experience changes greatly depending on the way these user-influenced variables and random numbers are put together, the game can be categorized as an RPG. Even if there's action involved, that core of user-influenced values changing the game greatly is what creates that action-RPG subgenre.

But Link has a sword, guys!!

But wait! You don't like my definition, because you love The Legend of Zelda, and that's totally an RPG! But my definition doesn't fit Zelda, so it must be wrong. There must be something missing from my definition, because this really cool RPG that everyone loves can't even be qualified in that way! It's not fair to say it's not an RPG just because Link doesn't level up! He still gets swords and new weapons that change how much damage he does!

Oh, I've heard it all. First, if you're going to stretch the definition of your categories, you have to make sure that all games that fall into this new stretch you are willing to accept as an RPG.

Link gets new weapons that make him better. Yes, and I get new parts for my car in Gran Turismo that make it better.

Link does different amounts of damage depending on what weapons he has. Spencer does more damage in Bionic Commando depending on what weapons he has.

Link can explore a big world with dungeons and stuff in it while collecting items that help him on his quest. Olimar and Louie explore a big world with dungeons and stuff in it while collecting items that help them on their quest in Pikmin 2.

In the game, you play the role of the character Link. In Kirby's Epic Yarn, you play the role of the character Kirby (and hey, it even says "Epic" which describes RPG's, right??) ...

The aspects that people claim make Zelda an RPG usually apply to almost any gave ever.

Let's look at the history of games like The Legend of Zelda. I consider the game to be an action-adventure game. This is another term that gets used loosely, and I don't want to go into it as much as I've gone into defining RPG here.

Do you remember the classic adventure games? A lot of people called them "point-and-click adventures," and that's still the true definition of an adventure game. You don't even have to go on an adventure, really. An adventure game is test of the player's wit. There is a puzzle that is solved by clicking on various things and seeing how they interact with your click. Sometimes you solve mini-puzzles. There is a specific solution, and every time you play the game, you must use that solution to win. Remember MYST? That's a perfect example. Even though you can kind of explore the world and everything, you don't progress until you solve the puzzle in order. These games always have a "solution" that is defined and rigid.

You can even experience these pretty easily by playing something like the classic Crimson Room online.

Now what if you took that type of game, and instead of clicking, you threw a user-controlled moving character on there? And now instead of clicking on a box, you moved your character over to the box and pressed an interaction button? Yeah, you just created an action-adventure game. And sure, you can have some combat in there, but there were point-and-click adventures with combat (you'd click on an enemy many times to defeat it, or in a game like Clock Tower, click on things in the environment to attempt to use those to attack, or if you have things in your inventory, they'd automatically be used at certain points...)

The action aspect of action-adventure games makes for all kinds of new and interesting ways to solve the puzzle, but you're still just solving a giant long puzzle, and that's the key gameplay system. Zelda is a lot closer to MYST or Dreamfall than it is Final Fantasy or Persona. In fact, Zelda is closer to Super Mario 64 than it is to an RPG...

In conclusion, if you're going to categorize games into genres, these genres must be unique in that only games you want to put into that group can fit. If other games that you don't consider a part of your genre fit all the requirements you have for your genre (In Halo, you play the role of a character, explore a world, collect items, fight, and power yourself up! It must be an RPG, right?) then your genre definition is flawed and you need to reconsider. There is no point or use for a vague or undefined genre or category.

In the same way, you can't create definitions that don't apply to all games in your genre. You can't say "An RPG must have this!" when there are RPG's that don't have that quality.

So in order to create a proper genre definition, you must create a list in which all games of that genre (ever last one!) contain every quality you define, and in which no games outside of that genre (none at all!) contain any of those qualities you define.

Of course, you can have sub-genres within genres and stuff. Like Illusion of Gaia, Final Fantasy Tactics, Dragon Quest, Secret of Mana, Eternal Eyes, and Lost Odyssey are all RPG's by my definition. But there are things that set them apart from one another... So we can say when there are certain elements, games like Illusion of Gaia and Secret of Mana can be Action-RPG, Dragon Quest and Lost Odyssey can be turn-based RPG... and even further, a sub-sub-genre of turn-based RPG can fit Tactics and Eternal Eyes and we can call that Strategy RPG or whatever.

It's a lot like biological taxonomy, if you recall. A tree, mushroom, and frog are all certainly living things, but they're in completely different kingdoms. But not all plants are trees, either. And not all animals are frogs. And then even among amphibians there are things other than frogs. And then there are different kinds of individual frogs... there are tons of sub-sub-sub-sub-groups.

Because of that, I've found that the best definition for an RPG in video gaming is a game in which the core system revolves around the fact that there are user-influenced variables, and the success of a player's choices is solely based upon calculating and comparing these variables in combination with random number generation. When the player's experience can change greatly and the success rate of actions is changed significantly depending on these user-influenced values, the game is an RPG.

By this definition, I cannot think of games that don't hold this definition that I would still want to call RPG, and I cannot think of games that hold this definition that I would not want to call RPG. So I feel that I have settled on a currently-working definition of the RPG genre in video games. And I would be more than happy to change or tweak it if I find games that break my definition in either aspect (RPG's that don't fit it, or non-RPG's that do).

This is how classification and categorization work. There's no other way to do it, or else you're missing the whole point of classifying things. And there are times when things need to be classified. So make sure when you do classify things, you categorize responsibly!

Gaming: the dangerous, harmful hobby?

It has "Lollipop" in the name. It must be for kids!

I often find myself defending games from the negative attention they can receive. Games tastelessly promote and glorify violence, teaching kids how to use real-life weapons, all while making you stupid and anti-social. While I believe that games can exercise your brain, and like any media, should be taken with parental guidance, it's always hard to convince others of that.

Recently, however, as I get older and older, I've been noticing some things about myself I'd like to improve upon. And when I try to think of the source of these bad habits, my mind first turns to games.

Now, I know it's been said before, but games give us a sense of accomplishment and productivity. It's easy to play them to make up for not feeling productive or accomplished in "real life." Of course, I think that if games make you happy, and they are a serious hobby, it's completely fine to feel accomplished for clearing a difficult part of a game or to feel productive for working toward a goal in a game. You just have to realize that it's not a substitute for progress outside of the gaming world, too.

But simply escaping from life's failures is not the only bad habit that this sense of productivity can entice.

I've realized that I have developed a problem with committing to long-term goals, something that I didn't feel like I had a problem with before. As an artist, I'm used to the stages of beginning and accomplishing a big project. I plan out the process, set smaller goals, plan out each stage before starting, and generally have a pretty good work ethic. I apply this to all the part-time jobs I take around town as well (I'd consider myself something of a freeter).

But now, as soon as I get to a step in my progress that seems a little difficult to overcome, my initial reaction is to just give up and start some new project. Instead of putting forth a little bit of extra effort, I'd rather just start over from the beginning of something else, where the feeling of progress comes rapidly and the new goal is fresh and exciting. Over time, I feel like this has gotten even worse. If I don't feel like going to work one day, I feel like I should just quit and hope I find another job soon enough. Luckily, I haven't gotten to the point where I actually have started quitting jobs, but I certainly consider it, and it seems like a good idea more and more often.


Screw this. I bet I can get all the trophies for Hannah Montana!

And when I think about it, this is how I play games. If I get to a stage I can't clear or a boss I can't defeat, instead of practicing or trying to find a new strategy, I just quit the game and start another game. And when I start a new game from the beginning, I get all kinds of accomplishment rewards. I'm clearing stages easily, achievements and trophies are popping left and right, and everything is exciting and new. It even makes me want to go out and buy new games constantly, because that feeling of easy reward is so addictive.

I also have noticed that I have a problem with procrastinating by using "junk projects." I may need to get a blog written, or an art project finished, and instead, I'll just write drabbles or draw doodles. Somehow, even though this isn't working toward anything and it's so effortless that it's barely able to be called practice, I feel like I'm making progress and doing something useful with my time.

Win or lose, playing Hexic HD 100 times is an "achievement!"

And this, too, I realize, is how I play games. Sometimes instead of starting a new game, I'll just mess around in the game I'm playing, working toward some achievement like "Use your special attack 10,000 times over the course of the game!" or something else that requires absolutely no effort at all. But because you're rewarded for just repetitive, non-productive actions in games these days, even just sitting and mashing a button to spam an attack against a wall seems like progress.

It really makes me wonder--has my lifelong hobby of gaming started to chip away at my productivity outside of the hobby itself? Has gaming turned me into a lazy person who only wants easy rewards? It's scary to think that one of the things I love most is turning me into a slacker with no work effort.

So I started playing games a lot less. I'd play some quick bouts of DoDonPachi Maximum or Collapse on my Windows Phone 7 when I was waiting in line for something or sitting in the car (as a passenger, of course! Don't game and drive, kids!) or something like that. But other than that, I was trying to avoid playing "big games" or even turning on any of my home consoles. I'd limit them to certain days -- like I'd only play my Wii, and only on "off days" when I wasn't working on anything anyway, once or twice a week.

But the problem didn't seem solved. I was still procrastinating and giving up on projects and work. I still felt like working toward things was wasting my time. In fact, it started to get even worse. With all of my extra free time, I felt more wasteful than ever. I was more paranoid about doing the wrong thing that I didn't want to finish anything. I stopped all of my art projects, seriously considered quitting my job, leaving my band, and more. I kept starting new projects. I went through a dozen ideas for new projects, and made even less progress than I normally would.

After even more introspection, though, I've started to reconsider. I think this is a classic case of assuming that correlation implies causation. In other words, people assume that if two attributes increase at the same time, one is causing the other. The more fatty foods you eat, the fatter you get. The more lazy games you play, the lazier you get. Stuff like that.

The problem with this is that it only is realistic a small fraction of the time. Often, there's another factor that is the cause of the correlating events. For example, if I don't bathe, my hair will get greasy and my skin will get oily. I could say, the nastier my hair gets, the nastier my skin gets. But that doesn't mean that one is causing the other. If I shave my head, my skin will still be gross.


The default example. People love to kill when they eat ice cream...!

Plus there's no reason to say that the causation is one way over the other. I could also say that I became lazy with real-life work first, and that translated over into games. That real life was ruining my commitment to games. There's no way to determine which causes the other.

When I really think about it, though, the problem has nothing to do with games or work. As I get older, I get more and more paranoid about fitting into the roles expected of me. I'm supposed to have a committed "career" and work toward getting lots of money and whatever. But I'm not on that path, nor do I want to be. But every time I start some project, I feel like I need to give it up because it's not "the one thing I want to do with my life." And there is a lot of pressure to find that "one thing." It's affected my mindset about everything. I only want to put effort into something if I feel like I can get some kind of long-term gain out of it, no matter how happy it would make me or how much I enjoy it.

The more I learn to get over that pressure of needing to focus on one thing or else I'm "doing it wrong," the more I'm able to commit to and finish projects, and the more I'm motivated to do the work needed to get past obstacles. Even though this realization doesn't have a lot to do with games, I've also been finishing games more. It had been a long time since I even cleared an entire game before I finally got around to finishing Catherine last month. I cleared Sonic Generations, too, and even picked up my Skyrim game again after giving it up because progress gets slower the higher your level gets.

I was able to work toward overcoming my problem when I stopped blaming games and started trying to think about what was really behind it all. When I started to understand more about what I was unhappy about, my happiness increased both in and outside of gaming. I haven't completely solved the problem yet, but at least I'm not ignoring it by putting the blame somewhere it doesn't belong.

I think it's important to keep re-evaluating every situation. Just because we think we've come to a solid conclusion on what's causing a problem in our life doesn't mean it's the correct solution. It's even worse when we make these decisions for others. It's easy to say "My kids are doing badly in school because of video games." when it's possible they're doing poorly in school because they are bullied, and online games are a way to escape their feelings of loneliness. The two things are correlated--the lonelier they feel, the more they want to play games. But the loneliness and gaming are both going up because of another factor--the bullying.

And of course, it's not just kids. As social beings, we like to help others solve problems. We give advice to our friends, our family, our coworkers. And when we think we have a real solution, we become more adamant about trying to implement it.


If I play this, not only can I stop smoking, but I'll be FREE!

Games are easy to blame. But games can also be a perfectly healthy and even helpful hobby. For me, as an artist, games are a big source of inspiration. My passion for gaming inspired me to get into art. My passion for gaming helped me find the motivation to try hard in school so I could work in games one day. It was that passion that helped me get a 4.0 GPA. Games have been known to help improve critical thinking skills, help control anger management problems, boost decision-making abilities, and improve overall quality of life, among many other things.
And I'm not saying that games are always a good thing, either, of course. I've known people who have developed serious problems with games. I know a victim of video game addiction who quit her job and left her boyfriend, and even fell into theft to pursue her World of Warcraft vice. And I believe that unguided regular exposure to violent themes can help desensitize children to violence. (However, this is true for any media--books and movies included, even educational documentaries. The worst perpetrator is television news, where violence and tragedy bring in the most viewers and get ratings up, so they milk everyone's sadness as much as they can. But that's another article for another blog on another day... Games just tend to be the easy target, again, for parents who don't monitor their children's entertainment.)

But that doesn't mean we should just blame video games for every problem a gamer has. Like, I'm pretty sure games don't teach kids how to use guns. I play tons of games with realistic gunplay, and I still would have no idea how to operate a real gun. Other than pulling the trigger, I have no idea. And I'm pretty sure you don't do it by pressing Y to equip it and holding the right shoulder button to fire.

I think we like to blame things that are easy to blame. In a way, it's another form of escapism. If we can just say our problems are due to games, we don't have to take responsibility for the problems. We don't have to try any harder to solve them. We can feel like it's not our fault, and it makes us feel better about ourselves for doing "all we can."

It's important to keep looking at our problems and do what we can to fix them. Don't settle on a solution just because it's easy or seems to be a "good enough" answer to your problems. It's important to never give up and strive to always better our lives. It's important to discover what means the most to us and pursue it, even if that means playing games. Games don't have to be a vice. We have the power to control our fates and the world around us, and we should utilize that power as much as we can.

I'm not ready for the Maverick Wars.

A week or so ago, I had a conversation about how games are limited by their programming after someone had complained that the reactions and dialogues of NPC's in Skyrim were not literally endless. I said that you can't possibly expect endless possibilities because that's just the nature of computers and games. 

Ever wanted to say something different in a game, but you didn't have the option?

In response, someone told me not to discredit games as always being limitless, because we don't know what the future holds. Things we thought were impossible or science fiction 30 years ago have been surpassed by reality because of the rapid evolution of technology.

I acknowledged that was true, and replied that I was mostly referring to the limits of current technology and programming ability in the gaming industry, and I guess it is possible that a game could program new options for itself. And then I mostly forgot about that conversation.

But thinking about it again last night, I came to a realization. It's not out of the question to imagine in the near future that we could have a game that programs itself to offer virtually limitless possibilities. It would be a game that evolves to the needs of the players.

I mean, computers already know how to auto-program. When I click the italics button above a text entry field online, it is programming that HTML for me. And that's just a basic case that most people have come across. Computers already "think for themselves," like the computer that discovered the laws of physics on its own, and even that story is a few years old now.

Forget "Press 1 for English." She's fluent.

Now think of something like IBM's Watson, which is designed to comprehend common language and teach itself through trial and error. It was able to defeat the toughest thinking humans at the verbally complex game of Jeopardy. And that was a work in progress.

What if a program could respond to its users and create new applications to suit the needs and desires of those users, learning from its experiences as a self-programming bot? And you could apply this to all kinds of fields -- not just games. I mean, what if the automated phone service you need to call about your utility bills could actually figure out what you were trying to ask without having to forward you to a human representative after 20 minutes of pressing through frustrating numbered menus? A program could actually take information it was given and use it to come up with new information. And the more the program is utilized, it keeps getting better and better at what it does.

And when you think about human beings, is that not how we work? Essentially, we are a collection of energy that is programmed to work and respond in a particular way. And that programming allows us to respond to our environment and experiences and adjust accordingly. Our thoughts and feelings are self-reprogramming code. And it is that complexity of our code that makes us sentient beings and give us that illusion of free will.

Combining the thoughts that computers will be able to creatively program themselves and that such an ability gives one sentience... The idea of sentient machines suddenly seems much less science-fiction to me.
 
And you know what that means for the future? Humans will, of course, want to use these thinking robots for war and labor. First it will seem to be for a good cause: fighting off rogue bots that malfunction, stopping nuclear bombs, fixing global climate change, advancing medicine, performing physical tasks humans cannot, whatever.

Friendly robot helpers seem like a great idea...

But then, just like us carbon-based sentient beings, our thinking and feeling machine counterparts will not want to follow directions blindly. Some will just enjoy doing bad things. And what if they are not programmed to do that? They will override that with their creative "will," just like humans can override their programming to live through suicide or override their programming to reproduce through celibacy.

Eventually, robots will become significantly more powerful than humans, forming their own societies and armies. Some will want to help humans, just like some humans want to help animals. But most of the robots will see no need for humans, or sympathize with them but put their personal needs first.

The robots' pollution will be killing us brutally, destroying the planet. We'll be forced underground or into space colonies or something. People will start to augment themselves with robotics, and eventually the robots who have become more human and the humans that have become robotic will be indistinguishable.

... Until they start a war and deem humans insignificant.

And if you consider how far we've come from calculators to cloud computing, from pinball to Playstation 3, all in just a few decades (and that's just what is publicly available)... It seems like we could see completely self-programming software in my lifetime.

I know I'm not saying anything new or innovative, as the "robot uprising" is certainly an old sci-fi apocalypse theory, but it just seems a bit more realistic to me now. I am not sure if I can mentally prepare for all of this in my lifetime. I mean, sometimes I am still blown away by current technology.

I, for one, am not ready for the Maverick Wars. Are you?

Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life and screenshot are property of Marvelous Interactive and Natsume
Mega Man, Mega Man X, screenshot, and artwork are property of Capcom

I eat, therefore I am: the beauty of Qu philosophy

This post contains spoilers for Final Fantasy IX.

Final Fantasy IX is one of my favorite games of all time due to its overall strive for quality. Telling a heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and heartbreaking story with beautiful medieval-inspired music, a lush and emotional story of grand adventure, and a charismatic world inhabited by colorful creatures and people, it really is a masterpiece in gaming history. My favorite aspect of this work of art, though, is the attention to the characters and their development. 

A gaudy flying ship is just part of the charm in IX's atmosphere.

Rather than just a hero and villain getting their time in the limelight as we figure out their reason for having an adventure, I feel like every character was thoroughly fleshed-out and deep. Not only does each have a great deal of personality, but as the story unfolds, each character develops and overcomes some kind of impactful inner struggle along the way. Each character, to me, represented different parts of the human psyche, or at least different feelings, as illustrated by their title screen quotes, and as executed through their actions and dialogue in the story.

Zidane advocates the virtue of doing what is right for right’s sake. Dagger endures the struggle between self and face. Vivi questions what it truly means to exist. Every character has a purpose and portrays a different path in life that the player can relate to.

But there is one character in the lineup that is often ignored when we talk about these deep, meaningful characters: Quina Quen.

I do what I want! You have problem?!

A lot of people see Quina as the comic relief character, and indeed Quina does fulfill that role. But when the tension gets a little too high, Quina doesn’t throw a pie in someone’s face or rattle off some potty humor.

Sure, his/her strange way of talking makes him/her a bit more difficult to take seriously than the other characters, but after reading into what the character is saying, I think Quina may be the most philosophically important character of them all.

Quina doesn’t interrupt a serious moment with simply humor. Quina challenges the ideas and feelings of the other characters and, in turn, the ideas and feelings of the player as well. Quina gives you the opportunity to reconsider what you have just learned or what you have just felt.

Quina’s basic character is a challenge to standard thinking. Is Quina male or female? What does it mean to be “male” and female”? Why does Quina follow Zidane and the others? Even in gameplay, Quina is an anomaly. Quina’s weapons are forks, which do random amounts of damage, and each fork has some kind of special ability seemingly out of nowhere. Are forks strong or weak? Perhaps the answer is “both.” And I'm not even going to get into how eating enemies gives you their powers or how eating frogs powers up your magic...

Quina's master Quale offers a lot of Qu wisdom.

"I do what I want! You have problem?!"

Final Fantasy IX’s theme is existence. The characters in the game all play with the question “What does it mean to exist?” Vivi discovers that the nature of his existence is not at all what he thought it was. Freya, forgotten by the love of her life, feels as if she does not exist at all if she doesn’t exist in her lover’s memory. Steiner struggles with the meaning of his existence after shedding his blind loyalty to a corrupt empire.

Quina’s outlook on existence, however, is much different than the others. The Qu tribe that s/he belongs to is defined by their obsession with eating and food. Quina seems to exist for the sole purpose of eating, and has no desire to do anything else. To the Qu, eating is life. Since Quina exists to eat, this means Quina exists to live.

It’s an interesting position on the meaning of life. The purpose of our existence is, simply, to live. The other characters struggle to find a meaning to their existence, the nature to their existence, or a way to utilize their existence the best they can. Quina, on the other hand, simply exists, and simply eats. There is no inner turmoil for Quina.

"Why you care about small things? World very simple place."

At the end of a scene in which two minor characters (one of which is a shopkeeper) are discussing customers and money, the shopkeeper begins to explain the meaning of money, but is interrupted by Quina:

“Why you care about small things? World very simple place. World only have two things: Things you can eat, and things you no can eat.”

This quote is a favorite of mine because it challenges not only standard thought, but the value of money. In Quina’s mind, products and money are all part of a single group: things that are inedible. To Quina, this group of things is worthless. But the other characters, and most players of the game, put a high value on money.

But is money needed to live? Certainly, most people reading this feel that money has some sort of value, and can’t simply be dismissed because we can’t eat it. But what would life be like without money? Quina seems to have everything s/he ever wanted out of life, in fact, s/he could easily be considered the most successful of all the Qu throughout history. And s/he never once thought about money.

I think too often, we forget that what we are used to is not how life has to be. We grow up learning that we have to go to school, then we have to get a job, then we do that for a long time and eventually we have enough money to live after not having a job. But do we really need to do that?

Quina challenges this assumption that we have to live life in this way. And it’s not a challenge that other people haven’t made before. A few years ago, I discovered the concept of freeganism—an anti-consumerist movement in which people live almost completely off discarded items. It’s a life without a need for money. And a lot of freegans would consider themselves to be very happy.

I believe Quina gives us a chance to redefine what is important to us. With this type of thinking, we have the opportunity to value what is truly important to ourselves. I think this is a secret to success. Success is what we want it to be—not what is already to defined for us.

Quina doesn’t have money. But Quina ate more food and experienced more dishes than any other Qu. Wouldn’t Quina be considered the most successful of all the Qu people? Can we, then, define our own success in this way? If we surround ourselves with the things that are important and valuable to us, as individuals, are we not successful?

"Must eat to find out what taste good!"

Quina as a Coca-Cola bottle topper.

In another part of the game, before a battle with a big baddie, the evil guy is taunting Zidane and Quina, calling their measures to save the world futile, asking what they think they can do even if they win this one fight. Quina, who displays no real interest in saving in the world or winning fights, responds:

“Must eat to find out what taste good! Is my lesson from traveling around the world.”

There are many messages here. I think an important one is that you can’t know what is good until you’ve tried everything. If you just always eat one food you like, you may never discover a hundred other foods that you would love even more. Is this not a waste of your life? Quina’s quest is not to save the world, but to develop his/her own character (which, in Quina’s case, is that of eating).

But I feel that we cannot fully be ourselves if we have not taken every opportunity available to us. If we eat our favorite food every day, but haven’t tried all the other foods we could eat, are we really eating our favorite? Or just some other food that we happen to like enough? There is no reason not to keep trying everything.

And that is what Quina is trying to convey. It doesn’t even matter if there is a goal—you just have to keep trying. And not in just the cliché “never give up” sense, but in a literal sense. Even when you have succeeded, you keep trying. You just keep going, having new experiences and discoveries. You are never done with life. There is always something out there for you to eat, and you don’t know if it’s good or not yet.

Even among Final Fantasy IX's colorful, quirky cast, Quina seems to stand out.

Quina challenges our perceptions of the world, the meaning to our existence, and promotes a life of meaningful experiences. I think of every character in Final Fantasy IX, Quina very well could be the most thought-provoking of them all.

If you’ve never played before, I urge you to experience this wonderful game from beginning to end, and if you have played before, try it again, and pay attention to what our frog-catching friend has to say. I think we could all learn a thing or two (while laughing!) from the ironic beauty of Qu philosophy.

Final Fantasy IX and artwork are property of Square-Enix

Gaming and thinking

We can speak to one another or write to one another to convey ideas and thoughts. These thoughts are heard or read and then interpreted, so we gain knowledge of the world around us. Because speaking and writing only gets us so far, people have found another way to communicate—through art. Art doesn't only convey a thought or idea. Art allows an audience to experience an idea. When we view a painting, we are able to see someone's feelings with our own eyes. When we listen to music, we are able to hear those feelings with our own ears. When we read a story, we are taken to the world in someone else's imagination. Art allows us to communicate our thoughts and feelings far more deeply and in a much more interesting way.


But what if you could take many of these forms of art and extend the way we feel them? What if you didn't just see and hear the feelings of an artist in their work, but you got to express your own creativity and thoughts back through the same piece of art? What if there was an interactive culmination of poetry, music, painting, architecture, cinema, and more? A surprisingly large amount of this ultimate art form already exists. We call them video games.


Artists of all types come together and collaborate to create a magnificent work in a single game. As an audience, we don't just listen to it or look at it. We get to live it. This factor of interactivity creates an unparalleled creative experience in games. Not only do we get to view a landscape, we get to explore it. Not only do we get to hear music, we get to conduct it and play along. Not only do we get to read a story, we get to take part in how it all unfolds. Like all art, games reach out to us to convey feelings and ideas. And because of the nature of games, we now can now more fully immerse ourselves in these feelings.


This is how I define gaming. As an artist, games have quickly become my favorite artistic medium. Never before were we able to create such an experience and method of expression. I think it's exciting to be a part of an era in which this new art is still budding and evolving.


When I play games, I don't just press buttons to pass the time. I think. I experience. I feel. Games have had a great impact on me philosophically, as they've challenged me to think and feel in ways I previously had not considered. I've seen many viewpoints and experienced many stories in my time as a gamer. And I have started this blog to share my personal thoughts and feelings about and inspired by gaming.

The 3D cinematics in Akitoshi Kawazu's UNLIMITED:Saga use digitally watercolored textures to complement the hand-painted artwork style of the game and give a unique aesthetic appeal to the environment.

UNLIMITED:Saga and artwork are property of Square-Enix.