Rantings: Why Video Games Are the Future, or Visa Versa

Remember a time, early in its history, when science fiction was less about spaceships blowing each up other up? Oh, sure, it still was about spaceships and explosions, but it wasn't as dominant. This was before Star Wars and Trek made the concept so mainstream that it became the default. It was a genre of hypothesis in those days, a genre of "what if?" Well, I'm 28, so I'm working mostly on assumptions at this point, but you know what I mean.

More importantly is how one can classify a "what if" story, especially a science fiction one. There are two main subjects, "What if we royally screw up?" and "What if we don't royally screw up?"

The former is more common, because it makes for an easy conflict generator. If, say, we accidentally make Artificial Intelligence too good so it becomes uncontrolled, we just got ourselves an easy villain. The rest of the story could be about the war to stop them, the resistance against them if they already won, or just the daily struggle to survive. Also popular are nuclear war, leaving a post-apocalyptic wasteland, some sort of natural or cosmological disaster that threatens to wipe out the Earth, or at least humanity (big rocks from the stars being a good example of this,) or governmental militarism that created an evil despotism at a planetary or galactic level. Here we have our friend Star Wars, along with far less pulpy fare like Brave New World and 1984.

The second category, while rarer, has its noteworthy examples. Star Trek is probably the most famous. Future civilization is hardly perfect in this case, especially in interaction with other species, but the common assumption is that humanity is more enlightened, generally peaceful, and united in spirit. Also common are stories where things are far from perfect but hardly doomed. Firefly wisely fits into the middle between the Star Wars and Star Trek concepts, with an aggressive but theoretically well-meaning government and the ability to survive without dealing with this government, however tricky that may be.

There are plenty of interesting topics here, but what do they have to do with video game? Well, as a narrative medium (ideally,) the stories are often identical. Bioshock looks at dystopian ruins, Half-Life presents a unique viewpoint for alien invasion plots, while Halo is slightly more traditional. Portal presents an intentionally limited look at the "Killer A.I." storyline.

But, as you might have noticed, most of these are of the first type of "What If" storyline. This is reasonable. After all, the source of the conflict is much easier to find in these circumstances, and while a television show or a movie can try to explore a what if circumstance entirely through nonviolent resolution and character growth, video games thrive on conflict.

That being said, I find that in my own work, when I make a science fiction game, I prefer the latter method. It's not totally unheard of. I have to admit, I still have yet to play Mass Effect (lack of an XBox 360 and a crappy gaming PC at this point are to blame,) but every indicator I've seen suggests that it at least starts in that category. On that note, don't forget that just because civilization has generally advanced, it doesn't mean peace is a given. Look at Star Trek again. There are plenty of local stories of exploration, but they never fail to find another alien race eager to engage in galactic warfare either.

But the advantage of making a second category "what if" is that it fulfills an often lost role of science fiction. It helps modern society advance by letting us answer the question of "what if" and, if we find the answer to our liking, gives us a theory on how to make such a society and mentally prepares us for such a world. The former "what if" stories, by their inherent negativity, are more a warning and a way for us to prepare for the worst. Who hasn't planned how to survive the zombie apocalypse at this point? And our fears about A.I. have magnified so that, when we can actually reach that point of technology, we will be really careful now that we know what the consequences of failure are.

The positive stories are just as valuable, though. If things don't go wrong in a plot-convenient way, we have to understand how we would live our lives in such a world. It's not as easy a question as you may think. If robots advance and don't try to kill us, what happens if they take all our easy jobs? Will everyone be forced into creative or intellectual jobs to survive, or is the era of capitalism over? What if they could do ALL our jobs better?

The same is true for every other advancement. What does bio-engineering mean to the food industry; will we even eat meat, and will the meat no longer mind? What does rapid internet connections mean when we could fit them into our own minds. What if the Matrix is created, not from robot conquerors, but because we all just collectively want to live there?

Video games now have an audience of millions, and that audience consists of the youngest, most tech-savvy, and most network-capable citizens. They will be the first ones to ask these questions en masse, and the first ones to make answers. By creating games that first make these questions mainstream, we can make our images as iconic as black-armored cyborgs with breathing problems or elf-eared aliens with a penchant for logic. We'd do both our industry and our society a favor. And we could still have exploding spaceships if we wanted.