Killtacular

Nicholson Baker's feature in the August 9 issue of The New Yorker, "Painkiller Deathstreak," doesn't add anything terribly new to the ever-growing body of think pieces on video gaming, but it's an enjoyable read all the same. Baker, who by his own admission had never picked up a game controller until recently, is especially good on the culture shock experienced by the newbie who suddenly finds himself in the violent world of Grand Theft Auto or Halo:

... the first thing I learned is that video games—especially the vivid, violent ones—are ridiculously hard to play. They’re humbling. They break you down. They kill you over and over ... To begin with, you must master the controller. On the Xbox 360 controller, which looks like a catamaran, there are seventeen possible points of contact ... In order to run, crouch, aim, fire, pause, leap, speak, stab, grab, kick, dismember, unlock, climb, crawl, parry, roll, or resuscitate a fallen comrade, you must press or nudge or woggle these various buttons singly or in combination, performing tiny feats of exactitude that are different for each game. It’s a little like playing “Blue Rondo à la Turk” on the clarinet, then switching to the tenor sax, then the oboe, then back to the clarinet.

The second thing I learned about video games is that they are long. So, so long. Playing one game is not like watching one ninety-minute movie; it’s like watching one whole season of a TV show—and like watching it in a state of staring, jaw-clenched concentration.

You can listen to a podcast of Nicholson Baker talking about his video game experiences here.

Baker's writing for an audience that probably doesn't know much about gaming, and he makes no claims to expertise. He approaches gaming with an open but critical mind, and a novelist's keen eye for detail. Most important, he engages with the medium on its own terms, rather than taking games to task for all the things they're not. He understands what's good (Uncharted 2) and what's not (God of War III) and makes an honest if ultimately unsuccessful attempt to fathom the unfathomable (online multiplayer).

The article doesn't bother to address the tiresome and ultimately irrelevant question of whether video games are -- or can ever be -- "art." I know there are deep thinkers who share Roger Ebert's view on this, and many passionate gamers and game creators who believe Ebert is full of shit. My own thoughtful, carefully considered position on the issue is: who cares? If you think games are art -- and if thinking that makes you feel better about spending all weekend playing Red Dead Redemption -- then fine, games are art.

The more important question to be asking, at this point in the medium's evolution, is: how can games be better -- not just technically, but in terms of narrative, characterization, and emotional engagement. That's why I'm glad to see a Serious Writer like Baker immersing himself in the gaming world -- and why I hope more novelists, filmmakers and television creators start to take games seriously. Wouldn't you want to play a game scripted by Joss Whedon? Or Jonathan Lethem?

Which leads us, finally, to today's skill-testing question. True or False: Novelist Martin Amis once wrote a book about video games.

True.