About a hundred years ago, around the time that our proto-human ancestors slogged out of the mire and hooked webbed thumbs around the first molto grosso frappalattachinos, a previously unseen event of gratuitous consumerism swept the land, catching even the most rational bystanders in the wake of its impulsive fervor.
It turned grandmothers into modern-day, handbag-swinging incarnations of Attila the Hun, and transformed unassuming shoeshine boys into rabid canines of disrepute. In hindsight, it directed a revealing spotlight onto an entire generation that, a few years before, had renounced its grubby flower power poverty and loaned its collective contralto — and disposable income — to a full-throated aria of conspicuous consumption.
When mile-wide polyester lapels and platform heels gave way to tie bars and Capezios, when disco sighed its long-overdue death rattle into the Aqua-Netted tresses of glam-metal, a few of us were there in the delivery room for the birth of the Cabbage Patch Kid. And as a witness to the ensuing insanity, I can testify that never before had such a dimpled tyrant been from its mother’s womb untimely ripped.
Trust me, if you weren’t around then, or were too young to remember 1984 and this particular nightmare of cultural bugshittery, consider yourself as fortunate as those folks who missed the last tub out of Southampton in the spring of 1912. Countless news reports surfaced about people camping out at toy and department stores, fighting over tiny bundles of cloth and vinyl with puckered faces and stringy hair, features which prompted many at the time to question whether Tammy Faye received a royalty for every Kid sold. It was like living in a surreal year-long collaboration between Norman Rockwell and H.R. Giger.
Twenty million Cabbage Patch Kids were sold in 1984 alone. That’s one for every ten residents of the United States at the time, or one for every popular vote by which Ronald Reagan won that year’s Presidential election over Walter Mondale. Twenty million.
By comparison, over the first eighteen months of its release, the Nintendo Wii has sold 24.45 million units worldwide–a fact which proves, if nothing else, that hysteria repeats itself.
Humans are, by and large, gregarious animals. We gravitate to other humans, using evidence of social proof as a means to determine whether a particular experience is desirable, or even safe. (“Hmm, lots of people over there. Must be no cheetahs.”) Unfortunately, as is often the case with social animals, this leads to a diminished capacity to make rational, independent decisions about situations which less discriminating members of the herd consider worthwhile, often in overwhelming numbers. Proof, you say? Vanilla Ice has sold more than seventeen million albums. Let’s move on.
Popularity alone cannot be regarded as the sole barometer of quality because it precludes our most valuable individual faculty, one which trumps even social proof as a survival mechanism: that is, objective judgment. As easy and attractive as it is to be lulled into a stupor by the gently rocking tide of head-up-its-ass emotionalism that forms the basis for every decision we make these days — from where to go on vacation, to what foods we eat, to how we’re supposed to address each other — the ol’ omniscient Eight Ball consistently tells us that those who think well, live well. And whether we like it or not, thought, and therefore life, requires judgment. Good judgment.
Lately, that which passes for good judgment ought to have a smoldering Marlboro tucked neatly into the corner of its mouth before being stood against a fence and shot through the spleen. Twice. With harpoons. Witness the aforementioned popularity of Cabbage Patch Kids, Vanilla Ice, and now the Wii.
In any entertainment medium, and gaming in particular, content is king. No amount of specular, parallax-mapped visual sleight-of-hand or 3D auditory snake oil would be sufficient to render playable such noxious turds as Haze or Alone in the Dark, simply because their content — essentially their gameplay — is so birdshit-abysmal that their presentation becomes irrelevant. Similarly, the film version of Dungeon Siege was not made watchable by the presence of Jason Statham, John Rhys-Davies, and Ron Perlman, all of whom I otherwise like, because its content lived somewhere in the neighborhood between Cheesy Street and Complacent Boulevard. Presentation can certainly slip a few poisoned daggers into an experience (Hayden, my boy, I’m looking at you), but under no circumstances can it resuscitate it.
Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. My mind is going.
While a novel or a film’s content is judged by criteria such as plot, pace, and characterization, games kneel before an entirely different council of masters. Fundamental elements of good gameplay are often a combination of various satisfying mechanics, including — though certainly not limited to — customization, collection, and feedback. World of Warcraft and collectible card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh leap into the fray as examples which offer all three of these mechanics.
So by what criteria, then, can the merit of a game system be judged? By its raw, polygon-pushing graphical might? By its processing power? By its system memory? A developer-friendly architecture? These are all fine and desirable elements of a well-designed game system, but each is simply a facilitator of presentation, mere technological specifications which exert no true influence over the lone indicator of a system’s long-term value in either the marketplace or, where it really matters, in the living room.
A system’s greatest virtue lies in its game library. Or in other words, its content. Yet for most people, buying a Wii is not a rational decision based on the value of its content, but an emotional one, rooted in the need to feel a sense of belonging, acceptance, and social relevance.
What Nintendo has has done so well with the Wii is to obfuscate reality to the point where people rely not on their own judgment to determine its value, but on the judgment of others. It’s by far the most popular console on the market, with demand long outstripping supply, so therefore it must be desirable; twenty-four million people around the world can’t be wrong.
Can’t they?
To date, McDonald’s has more than 31,000 restaurants worldwide, with sales in 2007 totaling over $22 billion.
In 1972, Richard Nixon received over forty-seven million popular votes against Democrat George McGovern. You do the math on how many people can be wrong about something.
Since it was designed around a different goal than most gaming platforms, namely that of bringing people together to play, by its very purpose the Wii must appeal to a much wider demographic than those other consoles. Hence the advent of the non-threatening, TV-style Wii Remote, the purpose of which is to entice Grandma into playing without intimidating her with ten different buttons to press as she constantly glances down at the controller and tries to discern “which one’s B?” If you can move your arm and press one button, you can play play most Wii games. And that’s fine.
What is most unequivocally not fine is that games like Okami and Resident Evil 4 — two rare exceptions to the third-party Wii developer’s practice of shitting in a nice white box and calling it a game — often shoot themselves in the face with what is perhaps the Wii’s most glaring shortcoming: requiring the use of the Wii Remote in games which would be better played with the Classic Controller. In other words, upholding the Wii as an end in itself instead of as a means to an end.
When the purpose of playing any game is no longer the game, but rather the hardware behind the game, that is the death knell for creativity. When game mechanics must be shoehorned into a little white stick in order to fit the console manufacturer’s idea of how games should be played, instead of the console manufacturer acting as a facilitator of creativity by stepping out of the developer’s way, that’s when I raise a cautious, skeptical eyebrow and check the shelter for supplies and a can opener, just to be safe, because the end — so sayeth the prophets – is extremely fucking nigh.
Like anything else designed to appeal to everyone, the Wii does nothing particularly well, offends no one, and certainly makes no pretense to, and no attempt at, greatness. A year and a half into its life cycle, it has no Viewtiful Joe, no Pikmin, no Rogue Leader. It will never see the likes of Oblivion, or BioShock, or Grand Theft Auto IV, games which exist solely as an end unto themselves, and which are free from the persistent requirement of justifying the very existence of the hardware for which they were designed.
In other words, games for gaming’s sake.
Nintendo set out to change the way we play, and that they have certainly accomplished; for the first time in gaming history, content is secondary to context. Marshall McLuhan nailed it; the medium has become the message.
And that message, like it or not, is one we can’t ignore; it’s not about the games anymore.
Welcome to the Wii generation.
Tags: Cabbage Patch, Consumption, Mario, Okami, Stupor, Vanilla Ice, Wii
