ZEN ALBATROSS

Where would videogames be today if it weren’t for the Nintendo Entertainment System? It’s a question that’s almost impossible to answer, considering the pivotal role that the celebrated 8-bit console had, not just in bringing videogames back into our living rooms after the great game crash of the early 1980’s, but establishing videogames as legitimate part of the cultural iconography.

This week on MOTHERBOARD, we’re celebrating the past and present history of the NES with a series of articles in honor of the console’s 25th birthday. Check it out and join in the conversation.

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Last week, videogame software giant EA made a puzzling and unsettling announcement: Due to recurring complaints from a vocal minority of friends and relatives of fallen servicemen, the company would be removing any mention of the Taliban from their new game, a reboot of the Medal of Honor franchise that focuses on the war in Afghanistan, by re-naming the terror group simply the “Opposing Force.”

The decision came after a long period of refusal to compromise the developer’s vision for the game and naturally, resulted in some considerable Internet backlash. But it also raised this nagging question that keeps coming up again and again: Will videogames, especially those about war, ever be taken seriously?

To try and answer that, let’s take a look at another piece of media — a film — that greatly influenced how stories about war are told today:

Image: Dreamworks

Saving Private Ryan marked a considerable milestone in the way Hollywood directors portray human warfare. Gone were the winsome narratives that yield to traditional “heroes” of old as they overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, winning the day for the good guys. Over the years, we had realized our foolishness in implanting these romantic elements into an un-idealistic setting like war. So instead, we are immediately thrust into an unapologetic maelstrom of death: A gritty, hellish realism that charges forward at breakneck speed, not stopping for even a second to let a viewer to reconcile with the grisly death of that one character he might’ve been fond of.

And it was successful — It was successful because that’s exactly how war is, according to the countless World War II veterans who not only praised the film for its portrayal of these events, but also helped advise the filmmakers for accuracy during production. And just like Ryan, EA’s new Medal of Honor game, like prior titles in the franchise, has received advisement and approval from veterans of the conflict it seeks to depict.

So now we arrive at the heart of this quandary: Why can a film be a serious reflection of a historic armed conflict, but a videogame can not? I could discuss at length the disturbing social taboo that seems to engulf anything and everything having to do with 9/11 and the Taliban in most parts of the United States, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. The other half has to do with videogames and the disparity between what they are and what people think they are.

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Sure, we could continue having the “are games art?” debate from now until doomsday. But NYU’s Frank Lantz has a different take on the role of games — video or otherwise — in our culture as human beings. Rather than drawing parallels in order to artificially place games within familiar contexts we can understand, Frank probes the depths of the human psyche to reveal the unique role that games play in our existence; a role that goes far beyond the ideas of ‘art’ and ‘entertainment.’

“Aesthetic activities are things you do when your work is done. Playing games — like telling stories, making pictures and singing songs — is something we do when the harvest is in; when the hunt is over and the wolves have been chased away and the dishes are washed. But the status of games relative to work is much less clear, much more complicated and ambiguous.

Stories are about remembering and explaining. Pictures are about looking and interpreting. Games are about doing; Games are about solving problems and accomplishing goals.”

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From webcomic to charity to convention, Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik’s Penny Arcade empire has quickly become one of the most successful properties in the videogaming world. So when the duo approached NYC filmmaking troupe 2 Player Productions (creators of the soon-to-be-released chiptune documentary, Reformat The Planet) and asked them to shoot a web series and document PA’s yearly gaming mega-event, the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, they jumped on a plane, moved to Portland and haven’t looked back. With PAX 2010 just weeks away from arriving at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, the PAX 2009 DVD offers a fond look back at last year’s Expo, ensuring that we’re all sufficiently pumped when PAX’s euphoric typhoon of live music, games and events hits Seattle once more in September.

Click through to Original Sound Version to see how the 2 Player crew captured one of the most exciting videogaming events on Earth.

[The punk rock spirit is alive and well at Babycastles, NYC’s only indie games arcade. Check out my coverage of their latest gallery opening party on Motherboard]

In New York City, there’s a new arcade in town. But don’t expect to find anything you could purchase at your local Gamestop here. Instead, the homemade titles that fill the ramshackle cabinets of this musty basement just off the L train’s Halsey stop are part of an underground movement that’s re-invigorating interest in grassroots game development by taking to heart a credo strikingly similar to that of the early punk rock scene.

The place is Silent Barn, an active DIY music venue in Ridgewood, Queens that has quickly become an unlikely hub of videogame counterculture through Babycastles, a curated gallery of independently developed games from developers around the world. Normally a faceless exchange operating through all manner of internet message boards, blogs and IRC channels, Babycastles co-founders Syed Salahuddin, Kunal Gupta and Arthur Ward aim to bring the indie games community back into meatspace. And they’re doing it the only way they know how to: By throwing raucous parties with live music and huge crowds of gaming enthusiasts button-mashing away on arcade cabinets lovingly crafted from planks of wood, painted styrofoam and whatever else was lying around that day.

[Read more on Motherboard]