Blood, gore, and breasts do not mean maturity.

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"Maturity" in Games

It's funny, in the last four or five years many people have been rattling their sabers claiming that the games industry has become so mature. Hell, that's why we have so many people in their late twenties or early thirties playing games, or so we've been told. Apparently the wealth of games to be released from the 32-bit era onward have been of such an immense level of "maturity" that it's turned a whole new demographic onto games. Sadly, to say that gaming has matured is quite laughable. Has there been a substantial increase in aesthetics, both aural and visual, over the last four or five years? Yup, but when we say that is maturing, we're really using the word "mature" to replace the phrase "technological advancement". Have games become more stylish? You bet, but this is yet another superficial enhancement as developers incorporate aspects of film with more varied cinematography. When we use the word "mature", when referring to these new mature games, what we're really talking about is mental growth, our ability to process information that comes our way and react to it in a thoughtful, measured manner (at least ideally). "Mature" does not mean guns, breasts, and bombs, all packed in a slick 60 FPS, dynamically lit, high-poly package, as seems to be much of the game industry's preferred definition of mature. If games ever want to truly be considered mature in the grand scheme of things, then this maturity of the mind must manifest itself in its subject matter.

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When gamers say that games are more mature these days their is this unspoken understanding that they mean that games have taken in some of this heady subject matter. To help with this argument, let's use the film industry to draw some analogies. When we look at movies that are considered to be mature, titles such as Dr. Strange Love, Seven Samurai, Schindler's List, and Das Boot instantly spring to mind. When gamers spout off recent

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titles to validate this increase in maturity in games we hear the likes of Metal Gear Solid, Half Life, and Conker's Bad Fur Day among others. Now let's get serious for a minute folks. Do these games seriously hold a flame to what almost any other entertainment medium would consider to be mature. Hardly, these titles have far more to do with The Terminator, Hellraiser, and The Man Show than any of the aforementioned films. Not to say that this is a bad thing, reflecting the spirit of such movies and television programs, but to hold these games up as some sort of standard bearer in the Gaming Maturity Revolution is just wrong. One would likely be laughed out of the room for trying to argue that Total Recall is brimming with maturity, yet Metal Gear Solid is used as one of the penultimate examples of how maturity has begun to flourish in gaming? Puh-lease.

The real question, though, is whether or not developers will gain the backbone to bring truly sophisticated subject matter into their games. As it stands the bulk of the plots in gaming entail "Epic Battles Between Good and Evil!!!!!" as gamers try and stop the latest megalomaniacal dictator with an eye for conquest, or rescue the main character's significant other, or solving the mystery of why the town/military instillation/space station's population has inexplicably been wiped out. Yes, there are exceptions, but by and large we're seeing the same overall plots as we've seen for the last ten years, only peppered with increased character interaction in order to shake things up. It's really more comparable to comic book melodrama than anything else. But do we see games tackle religion, or politics, or incorporate satire? Only on the rarest of occasion. Many of the best films of all time have had situations where the viewer will find themselves thinking "What would I do if I were in their shoes?" when the protagonist gets into a predicament. It's a truly introspective experience as we're suddenly forced to address, and possibly re-evaluate or beliefs and value system. Now we have an interactive medium where we could be in those shoes and would be force to not only think about what we would do, but act in these situations. Yet developers almost never tap into this potential, and when they do it is often in a trite, superficial manner. This is the sort of stuff that will really make strives in allowing gaming to achieve true maturity, in terms of the currently implied meaning of the word.

The simple fact of the matter is that games are nowhere near as mature as one might think listening to gamers and industry pundits. At this point in time games certainly do not "make us laugh, but also make us think", but it certainly makes me laugh to think that people think that.

- Mr. Nash


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