Prime Time Replay:
J.C. Herz
author of Joystick Nation
MsgId: *emedia(1)
Date: Mon Nov 3 20:39:44 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
Tonight E-Media welcomes J.C. Herz, author of "JOYSTICK NATION: HOW VIDEO GAMES ATE OUR QUARTERS, WON OUR HEARTS AND REWIRED OUR MINDS." In her book, Herz examines the history of the video game industry as well as the trends in society it both reflects and influences. She examines the genres and conventions of the video game from the days before Atari to today's Internet and CD-ROM games, and argues that playing games has helped generations of young adults prepare for the increasingly frenetic flow of information in today's society.
MsgId: *emedia(2)
Date: Mon Nov 3 20:51:44 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
Hey Dave.
MsgId: *emedia(3)
Date: Mon Nov 3 20:53:12 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
Hi J.C. Good to see you tonight. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to E-Media. I'm Dave Thomer, and I'd like to welcome our guest for this evening, J.C. Herz. Herz's latest book, "JOYSTICK NATION," is an examination of the video game industry and culture.I'd like to remind everyone that the chat room will be opened at about 9:30, at which point your browsers will allow you to post your comments and questions for J.C. Please remember to sign your posts, since the chat software will identify you only as "guest."
J.C., it's great to have you here tonight. I really enjoyed "JOYSTICK NATION," both for the glimpse at the past and the beginnings of the game industry and for the commentary on the state of games today. Where did you get the initial impetus to write a book on this subject?
MsgId: *emedia(7)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:06:50 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
After "Surfing On the Internet," my first book, was published, everyone wanted me to write about "digital media." I looked around, and the web was at that point a big yawn. And then I went home to my folks' house and dug out my old Atari 2600 and realized that videogames were in fact the first digital medium. They were almost 25 years old. I was almost 25 years old. Seemed like a good match.
MsgId: *emedia(8)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:10:29 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
There's an Atari 800 computer with God only knows how many disks of games floating around one of my parents' houses right now, so I definitely understood the nostalgia for the "good old days" of video games you described. But it brings up a question -- obviously, the graphics and the sounds have become so much more sophisticated, but how are games today really different from their predecessors? Or, perhaps, is the sophistication itself -- for good or ill -- really the most important difference?
MsgId: *emedia(10)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:14:56 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
One could argue that the basic game play has not changed since the heyday of the '80s - that there are only so many ways to manipulate light on a screen. Which boils down to the old argument about novels and how there are only 14 stories that have been recycled and retold through the ages. On the other hand, every so often some game comes along that bursts the theory.
MsgId: *emedia(11)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:16:40 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
I wonder if games have become any more involving or any more of a challenge, or if we've just developed bigger and better explosions when the bad guy goes "boom." Then again, maybe I'm just being cynical about simulator games that take up more than 100 MB on my hard drive . . .
MsgId: *emedia(12)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:16:47 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
There's also the issue of whether gaes in the "good old days" were actually better because designers couldn't rely on visual razzle dazzle. They had to innovate because they sure weren't going to get by on production values. There's some truth to that - witness the slew of unoriginal Doom clones with pretty graphics and not much else going for them.
MsgId: *emedia(13)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:19:33 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
On the other hand, even if there are only a finite number of plots (for both traditional stories and games), the best writers seem to be able to wrap those plots in something new, or something which makes a unique connection to the reader or viewer. What sets an excellent game apart from the rest of the dreck on the rack? What makes a Doom or a Myst the game that it is, while all the knock-offs get relegated to the discount bins?
MsgId: *emedia(14)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:19:40 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
In "Joystick Nation" there's a chapter called The Classics, which takes apart this whole business of whether a 15-year-old piece of software can really be called "classic," and all the retro-nostalgia surrounding games like Galaxian, Pac-Man et al. Not surprisingly, people get very emotional about these issues. Videogames - that's their youth. It's like music - the tunes you heard on the radio when you were 14 are always the best, by definition "classic."
MsgId: *emedia(15)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:24:02 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
In college my roommates always swore that the one thing we needed to make the room complete was just one "vintage" arcade machine . . . a bunch of us even went out into New York City at 4 in the morning trying to find someplace that might have an old game or two. (We didn't have much luck.) In a way, it's kind of silly, but on the other hand, this is how we spent our afternoons . . .I guess the bottom-line question is, why? What is it about these games that makes them popular, to the point that kids risk being grounded rather than stop in the middle of a level and adults spend ridiculous sums of money on PCs that can play the latest CD-ROMs?
MsgId: *emedia(17)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:26:52 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Administrator At: 168.100.204.58
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MsgId: *emedia(18)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:27:48 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
Exactly. And those old games take you back. Playing a videogames is a neurochemical state - there are lots of crazy things going on in your bloodstream. It's memorable in a way that other media is not (with the possible exception of music). Not to mention the endless repetion that carves grooves into your brain - those synapses are totally paved by the time you're 16.Fight or flight - it's a drug. Escalating challenge - continuous stream of rewards. Rats pushing the lever for mental stim at the expense of food, etc. In a good way, of course.
MsgId: *emedia(21)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:33:56 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
It's a pretty powerful drug . . . and one that players tend to get absorbed in. The identification between player and avatar . . . sometimes it seems a little frightening, how quick we are to leave our physical space and enter the virtual world. You discuss online gaming several times in your book as creating a virtual social space in addition to the virtual game world. How do you think that will influence future game development? And what impact will it have on the culture of game players, now that we no longer congregate around the console?
MsgId: *emedia(22)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:38:29 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
Well, the trend is definitely toward online gaming - nearly every CD-ROM shipped now has an interactive component. In "Joystick Nation," there's a discussion of this odd sort of inverse history of arcades and the Internet. Arcades were once the dark & skanky places where you found electronic games and rubbed elbows with strangers. Then they were turned into bright, faily-friendly theme parks for boomer larvae. But at the same time, the Internet was growing, and it has supplanted the arcade of yore as the dark, slightly dodgy cave where you play games with weirdos and friends alike.
MsgId: *emedia(23)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:41:37 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
I found the "boomer larvae" comment in the book interesting -- along with the comment that a kid who played Skee-Ball would be no match in a crisis for someone schooled in a more intense video game. How much effect do you think the type of game a child plays has on what kind of responses s/he will have to situations as an adult? And how has the way society has treated video games shaped that?
MsgId: *emedia(24)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:45:04 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
I think toys & games are insanely influential - not so much in a content sense as in a processing sense. They shape your imagination - they provide the conventions you use to make things up, to perceive the world. They way people navigate information has completely changed, not just because of the technology, but because they have been raised with an entirely different set of conventions for envisioning information. They fly through it. Goes back to the old Jesuit thing about "give me a child before he's seven years old and I'll give you the man."
MsgId: *emedia(26)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:49:46 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
And as you point out in the book, the trappings of video games are being used to help train people in handling very specific types of information. In school, they used to use different pseudo-games to try and teach us to type; today the military uses video-game-esque simulators to train pilots and tank drivers. Do these sort of educational or practical uses have much impact on gaming itself? Does the real world just pick up on the R&D that game builders have already done, or are games the spin-off technology?At the same time that games are teaching us to be familiar with technology and to handle information as it comes flying at us from all corners, you state pretty emphatically in the book that playing DOOM and QUAKE does not turn people into homicidal maniacs rampaging through the streets with their own private arsenals. At the same time, more violence and more gore seems to be what so many people are aiming for in the gaming world. What impact do you think that violence and other so-called "objectionable" content of games really has? And why do you think there's such a demand for such material?
MsgId: *emedia(28)
Date: Mon Nov 3 21:55:22 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
There's a chapter about what I like to call the Military Entertainment complex - digital media are beginning to blur the distinction between practicing for a real war and playing a game. It used to be that all the technological innovation came from the Defense Department - sort of a trickle-down into the consumer sector. Now, frighteningly enough, it's going the other way. The military is borrowing from the arcade. Lockheed Martin is in bed with Sega. The Pentagon is teaming up with Paramount - I'm not kidding - to develop war sims with "realistic plots, characters, and storylines. New job opportunities abound for hack screenwriters.
MsgId: *emedia(29)
Date: Mon Nov 3 22:02:40 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
We're just about out of time for the evening, but before we wrap things up, I'd like to hear your thoughts on where games are headed . . . what can we expect to be playing in the next few years, and what major changes or developments do you see on the horizon?
MsgId: *emedia(30)
Date: Mon Nov 3 22:05:30 EST 1997
From: J.C.Herz At: 207.38.253.1
More online gaes. An endless onslaught of Doom clones. More edutainment - games that incorporate some element of science or history that corresponds to the real world (i.e. Cyberflix's Titanic, a mystery adventure set abourd the doomed luxury liner, which was reconstructed bolt for bolt from blueprints and photos). And of course, everyone will be scrambling for the last untapped market - females. Good luck, boys. Tally ho.
MsgId: *emedia(31)
Date: Mon Nov 3 22:09:00 EST 1997
From: DaveThomer At: 207.93.51.73
Well, good luck with the book, and thanks for being here tonight. "JOYSTICK NATION" is now available at bookstores from Little, Brown. I'd also like to thank everyone in the audience for being here tonight, and remind you to be here next week for another E-Media. In the meantime, check out www.omnimag.com for this week's prime time schedule and much, much more. This is Dave Thomer, typing Good Night. See you next time.
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