Bruce Sterling - Essays. Catscan Columns

His Rihla will be little known until the nineteenth century, when European scholars discover it with astonishment and wonder.

"It's the crystallization of a community!" the organizer exulted. He was a skinny, manic, handwaving guy, with a glittering eye and a sly toothy grin. He wore slacks, a zippered shirt of a color not found in nature, and a two-foot-tall novelty cowboy-hat, of bright purple felt, with a polka-dot hatband.

The "community" in question were computer game designers, swarming in a big roadside hotel in Silicon Valley, for four days in March 1991. There were close to four hundred of them. Time once again for "Computer Game Developers' Conference." This was the Fifth Annual gig, and the biggest one yet for "gaming professionals," and the best yet, maybe even the richest yet -- but, according to what I heard over the wine and cheese, it was somewhat less weird than the earlier ones. Almost dignified by contrast, almost professional. Some side-effect of all that "crystallization," presumably....

Five brief years ago, the very first such game-design conference had been conjoined in Chris Crawford's living room, and with room to spare. Mr. Crawford was the gentleman in the purple twenty-gallon hat.

I recognized the funny-hat syndrome. Made me feel right at home. When I first met Damon Knight, at Clarion, this legendary SF critic, editor and organizer had shown up with a big white bushel-basket beard, half-a-dozen hollow plastic baseball bats, and great bounding bag full of rubber superballs, which he proceeded to fling into the hallways and whack with vim. Damon Knight, as a turbo-weirdo, a veritable ne plus ultra of cracked genre loon, does not even have to try to pass for normal. And neither does Chris Crawford. This is pretty much what genuine "power" and "influence" look like, in a milieu of creative lunatics.

Chris Crawford is founder of the gaming conference, author of three books and thirteen computer games, and the premier critic, theorist, and analyst for THE JOURNAL OF COMPUTER GAME DESIGN: "The finest periodical dedicated to computer game design -- the longest-running periodical dedicated to computer game design -- the ONLY periodical dedicated to computer game design!"

Computer gaming, like science fiction, has old roots; they even share a common ancestor in H.G. Wells, a great player of simulation war-games. But as a conscious profession, "computer game design" is only five years old. Science fiction writing as a conscious profession dates back to Knight's founding of the Milford Conference in 1956, followed, almost ten leisurely years later, by his establishment of the SFWA. The metabolism of computer gaming is very swift. Science fiction writers are to computer game designers as mosasaurs are to dolphins.

So, I had arrived in San Jose at the functional equivalent of a SFWA gig. A neatly desktop-published programme announced, on page one, "Our Goals for the Conference: * to foster information exchange among professionals in the computer game development industry, * to strengthen the network of personal relationships in the computer game development community, * to increase artistic and financial recognition for computer game developers, and * to enhance the quality of entertainment software."

Instantly recognizable SFWA committeespeak -- people trying hard to sound like serious professionals. Let's hear those goals again, in actual English: * to hang out and gossip; * to meet old friends again; * to try to figure out some way to make more money and fame from obstreperous publishers, crooked distributors, and other powerful sons-of-bitches; and, (last and conspicuously least) * to kind of try and do a better job artistically. Pretty much the same priorities as any Nebula gig.

The attendees were younger, different demographics than the SFWA, but then their pursuit is younger, too. They looked a little different: still mostly white guys, still mostly male, still mostly myopic, but much more of that weird computer-person vibe: the fuzzy Herman Melville beards, the middle-aged desk-spread that comes from punching deck sixty hours a week, whilst swilling endless Mountain Dews and Jolt Colas, in open console- cowboy contempt of mere human flesh and its metabolic need for exercise and nutrition... There were a few more bent engineers, more techies gone seriously dingo, than you'd see at any SFWA gig. And a faint but definite flavor of Hollywood: here and there, a few genuinely charismatic operators, hustlers, guys in sharp designer suits, and career gals who jog, and send faxes, and have carphones.

As a group, they're busily recapitulating arguments that SF had decades ago. The number one ideological struggle of CGDC '91 -- an actual panel debate, the best-attended and the liveliest -- concerned "depth of play versus presentation." Which is more important -- the fun of a game, its inherent qualities of play -- or, the grooviness of its graphics and sound, its production values? This debate is the local evolutionary equivalent of "Sense of Wonder" versus "Literary Excellence" and is just about as likely to be resolved.

And then there's the ever-popular struggle over terminology and definition. ("What Is Science Fiction?") What is a "computer-game?" Not just "videogames" certainly -- that's kid stuff ("sci-fi"). Even "Computer Games" is starting to sound rather musty and declasse', especially as the scope of our artistic effort is widening, so that games look less and less like "games," and more and more like rock videos or digitized short films. Maybe the industry would be better off if we forgot all about "games," and suavely referred to our efforts as "computer entertainment" ("speculative fiction").

And then there are the slogans and the artistic rules-of-thumb. "Simple, Hot, and Deep." A game should be "simple": easy to learn, without excess moving parts and irrelevant furbelows to burden the player's comprehension. It should be "hot" -- things should happen, the pace should not lag, it should avoid dead spots, and maintain interest of all players at all times. And it should be "deep" -- it should be able to absorb as much strategic ingenuity as the player is willing to invest; there should be layer after layer of subtlety; it should repay serious adult attention. "An hour to learn, a lifetime to master."

And: "Throw the first one away." Game design is an iterative process. Games should be hammered into shape, tested, hammered again, tested again. The final product may bear as little relation to the original "idea" as the average Hollywood film does to the shooting script. Good game-testers can be as vital and useful as good editors in fiction; probably more so.

There are other issues of artistic expression. There is, for instance, censorship, both external, and self-imposed. Young kids like computer games; even quite sophisticated games end up in the hands of little kids, and are designed accordingly. The game "Maniac Mansion" was pulled from the shelves of the Toys-R-Us chain because (horror) it had the word "lust" on the box!

"Hidden Agenda" is a very innovative and highly politicized simulation game, in which the player must take the role of President of a small and turbulent Central American country, menaced by internal violence and Cold War geopolitics. "Hidden Agenda" is universally admired, but had a hard time finding a publisher.

There was an earnest panel on ethics in graphic violence. When a villain is shot in a game, should the designer incorporate digitized blood and guts in the scene? Some game designers feel quite disturbed about "the Nintendo War" in the Gulf, in much the way that some SF writers felt, some years back, about the advent of Reagan's "Star Wars." "Space exploration" had seemed a noble thing, until the prospective advent of orbital x-ray laser fortresses. Was this what all our shiny rocket ships were supposed to be about, in the end? Now game designers feel a similar sneaking guilt and a similar sense of betrayal, suspecting that videogames have in fact cheapened violence, and made inflicting death-by-computer seem a fine occupation for American youth. It seems perfectly fine to kill "enemies" with cybernetic air-strikes, as long as their blood doesn't actually splatter the VDT screen...