This last weekend, I had one of those once in a lifetime opportunities you get to see your work recognized in public. I got to fly out to Washington, D.C. to see a video game I helped develop as a student project, being displayed in a museum exhibit in the Smithsonian. Another developer, Paul, met up with me there, as well as my brother Tim.
I met Paul outside the S. Dillon Ripley center where the MathAlive exhibit was located. My brother had already gone inside to hunt down Scurvy when Paul arrived and we headed inside. We arrived to see my brother helplessly trying to play the game on the cumbersome keyboard. I had been told by my parents who had visited the week before that the custom-built controller was clunky, but it turned out to be much worse. One of the buttons was not functioning at all. The most important button: the button to shoot Scurvy’s claw. I started to get frustrated, then it happened.
The screen went black. And there was my face on this screen in this exhibit in the Smithsonian. The company that built the exhibit had done a Skype video interview with me a few months prior. I was convinced the interview had gone terribly, and that that it wouldn’t be used in any way in the exhibit. But there it was. Thankfully, they found a way to cut a twenty-minute awkward moment down to about fifteen seconds of interesting sound bytes. Next to my own talking head were the reaffirming words: “Jon Ross – Game Developer.” I was ecstatic.
However, I didn’t fly across the country to see my name on a screen. This wasn’t what I was looking forward to for weeks. Since I first heard that Scurvy was going to be in the MathAlive exhibit, there was one thing I could not wait to see – people enjoying something that I helped create. The look on kids’ faces as they connected with Scurvy the crab and his story. I wanted to see the happiness that he brought them. This comes from my innate desire bring joy to others, something that I believe I’m meant to do in this life. So, to rather see frustration and anger on kids’ faces as they smashed the broken button, hoping that additional force would somehow increase the likelihood of it working, it absolutely killed me. To be so close to something that could give my life more significance, and yet so far away at the same time, was a nightmare.
I stayed positive, quickly seeing how awesome this moment still was. We joked that that Scurvy was in fact a true work of modern art, showing the helplessness of Scurvy trapped in his underwater trash pit, void of his super-crab abilities of stretchy arms and seaweed spitting; and everyone who tried and failed to save him would leave deeply moved with a new sense of environmentalism.
A different exhibit that was currently being featured at the Smithsonian was The Art of Video games exhibit. Very fitting, I know – we had to visit. Right from the start, I was moved by this quote posted on the wall:
Video games combine graphics, sound, story, and interaction to create meaningful and immersive experiences. Imaginative artists and designers use their medium to create worlds and tell their stories. None of this is possible, however, without the participation of the player. Everyone who plays a game puts a little of themselves in that experience, and takes away something that is wholly unique. This conversation among the game, the artist, and the player is critical to understanding the art of video games.
I almost laughed out loud while reading this. It is indeed a conversation. A conversation that can come to abrupt halt when a single button fails to work.
This exhibit was divided into three rooms. In the first one, videos looped with interviews with some of the pioneers of the game industry, reminiscing about the early uncharted days of game development. Back then, hardware engineers would tell the developers and designers what the limitations of the game were. In turn, the designers would push the system the best they could, getting the most out of every pixel and beep of audio. Moving on, I found that the exhibit seemed to conflict with itself, on one hand saying that game development has evolved over the years to allow more visually detailed and immersive stories to be told, but on the other hand saying that this is something that developers have always done regardless of the physical barriers. Either way, everyone agrees that video games are dependent on technology.
The second room was set up like an arcade, and I couldn’t agree more with their choice of games here. Among the classics was my favorite, The Secret of Monkey Island, some of the best story-telling seen on a computer screen. Being the least crowded game in the room, I decided to play it. I noted how difficult it was to navigate Guybrush around with the provided scroll ball and button arrangement. Nevertheless, I was still entertained by the genius of Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.
The final room featured the history and forward progress of the industry, from Atari to PS3. All I could think the whole time was that I had to remember this. That twenty, ten, even five years from now, I’ll look back and laugh at what we considered to be progress compared to the technology that will come. Game development is a new and crude art form, and I was looking at the cave drawings of interactive entertainment. And not only that, but I myself have the opportunity to be a part of this emerging art.
I came to D.C. to see the fruit of my past work. I wanted to sit back and marvel at my accomplishments and at the enjoyment that I was giving people. But instead I would be coming away with a sense that maybe my time has not come yet. Maybe that button was meant to be broken. If I had been given the satisfaction of having produced something great, then what would propel me to keep moving forward? Nothing is more motivating than to be inches away from your dream, close enough to know that this dream is something you are capable of attaining, but not quite able to reach it. Yet. I was hoping to take a shortcut there, and it almost worked, but there is still more road to travel ahead of me. I know now that I must keep moving forward, as a pioneer, as an artist, and as an innovator in this industry.
One final note. In this final room, I also began to have a bit of an existential crisis. Each of the displays featured one game console and four “works of art” created for that console. So of the thousands of games created for the Nintendo 64, someone deemed four of those, Super Mario, Star Fox, Ocarina of Time, and Worms Armageddon, worthy to be preserved in the minds of men. As a gamer who has been moved by so many games, this obviously feels wrong. Which humans made these decisions for the rest of us? While this “atrocity” is so obvious to me for an art form that is so familiar and modern, it’s not quite as obvious at the buildings across the street, the art galleries, the history museums. Who is filtering what we see, deciding what is to be remembered and what is to be lost to the sands of time? What did I do to deserve for my work to be seen and remembered? Nothing really, other than being in the right place at the right time.
Maybe this was my one chance to be remembered. Who is to say that I’ll pass the arbitrary filters of worthiness or relevance in the future. Maybe the game industry will soon die altogether and become a lost art? No. Actually, it won’t. As long as I’m around, it won’t.
No Comments » 
