Human evolutionary ‘tree’ reveals why video games suck
Scientific American has posted a Hominin evolutionary tree, which is interesting, if for no other reason, then for the way they posted it — via the publishers of effortlessly zoomable online documents, issuu.com. The science is fascinating, but I’m more intrigued by this new method of online presentation than by the magazine artist’s visual rendering of evolution. Ever notice the way the living Hominins (i.e. you and me) will consistently squash any inconveniently branching structure into a linear one of their choosing, as if that is a good way to sum it up? That is not a good way to sum it up. But it’s a pretty good way of summing it down!
Mind you, we can’t really be blamed as individuals, since the best way we have available to represent branching data is through interactivity, and we just don’t seem comfortable yet as a species reading interactively. ‘But but but,’ you’re probably thinking. Yes, branching commonly occurs between articles on the web, but not within them. We have timidly restricted our range of choice to what to experience rather than how, in a sort of faux-futuristic smorgasbord of prehistoric cuisine. World-flattening conventionalism is the reason this planet’s imagination seems thus far doomed to strain the multivariate bolus of inter-causal events that is the Universe and Everything, into the shallow, unitary stream we actually live by.
Ever wonder why, no matter how many times you play your favourite simulated game world, it always tends to collapse into the same general storyline as the previous run? It’s that old branch-blindness at play. It’s as if we think that multiple outcomes cannot hold meaning, and so in order to communicate we must play the reductionists. Where I come from, this is not the case (or cases, as it were) — just the opposite. Compare the upper and lower halves of this evolutionary spread, for example. They simply aren’t saying the same thing. Not even close.
[Submitted by The Laroquod Experiment.]
[…] Vote Human evolutionary ‘tree’ reveals why video games suck […]
First off, I disagree that video games suck. Far from it, they’re much better now than ever before. There’s more options for the types of games, and the ability for individuals to make and distribute them than ever before, and they’re providing much richer experiences than we’ve ever seen.
With regards to branching data, and interactive reading (using the evolution example posted), we’ve come a long way in a very short time, and new technologies are further enabling an increasing level of interactivity. To compare the last 30 years to the last 3000 when it comes to the ability to interact with branching data, I’d say you’re well off the mark to say that we’re ‘doomed’. We’re just starting to learn.
More importantly though, I’m not entirely on board with the statement that “…we think that multiple outcomes cannot hold meaning…”
There’s two roles here, that of the storyteller, and the audience. I’d argue that if the storyteller wants to impart a meaning onto a story, there are only so many outcomes that would impart that meaning. It’s up to said storyteller to determine that ending (or multiple ones). If the storyteller wants to impart DIFFERENT meanings, then each of those paths also have to be crafted.
There’s a real world problem with that. The more interactivity, and the variance of meaning requires MUCH more work on the part of the storyteller, and it’s only in recent years with video games that we’re seeing any real variance (except those gimmicky multiple ending movies).
The reason storytellers are ultimately reductionists is because stories DO come to an end (or ends in some cases), so they pick the ending(s) they want, and roll with it. Sometimes it’s the end that a storyteller crafts first, and then builds backwards.
As for the spread above, when looked at separately, they are offering different looks at the same history, and I agree that they’re not saying exactly the same thing, but they’re closer than you suggest.
Maybe where you come from, sentient beings don’t experience time in a linear fashion, so storytellers have the ability to account for every branch every player in a game takes in real time, but until we mere humans will take what we get, and continue to evolve. 😀
OK video games only suck insofar as they operate on the level at which I see them; I’ll give you that. But they suck really hard on that level.
They are not ‘better than ever’. They have barely changed except in what I think are trivial ways. Mind you, they aren’t really much worse, either, except that there is a lot less innovation going on in new paradigms of gameplay — something like Mirror’s Edge comes out where you interact with the environment a little differently than people are used to (not that differently mind you — just a little bit), and it’s a huge event. Used to be, almost every other game proposed a whole new gameplay and interface paradigm. Not anymore.
Evolution requires both mutation and selection. Without the mutation, no matter how wonderful and refined your tastes, you’re dead in the water. And the industry’s rate of mutation right now is very, very low. We’ve got a world of tasteful players selecting carefully among a very limited gene pool of tasteful-looking clones of a rarefied few original germ lines. It’s senescent; it’s stagnant; it’s a monoculture ripe for infection with something new.
I do agree with you that we are *just* starting to learn. As for doomed: remember I said, ‘thus far’. An oxymoron, sure, but you’d be closer to the mark by criticising me for contradicting myself, than by cherrypicking just the part that sounds the worst.
In other words, I do hold out hope. But your understanding of the meanings available to multiple outcomes does little to inspire it. You allow for different meanings for different outcomes; well, sure, but you seem to have missed out my main thrust, which is that there is a meaning, a single meaning, to be imparted by the combined view of multiple outcomes. This is the key thesis that is described in the branching view of human evolution in Scientific American that is entirely missed out of the artist’s linear conception; the pretty pictures give us an idea of what things may have looked like and when, but that doesn’t even approach the ambition of what the science is attempting to describe. The branching chart view actually tells us something about the theory of evolutionary history that is being proposed. The linear version tells us nothing about this theory whatsoever, so in the way that I think is important, obviously, they are entirely different. And I think that’s very analogous to the amount of narrative meaning successfully imparted by modern video games, compared to what could be available, to those who dare at more than pretty pictures.
Imagine if a game said something, created a meaning with the whole of its branches (and not just two or three endings tacked on; I’m talking about branches), and it were a meaning that you would ‘inkle’ with a single playthrough, but which would dawn on you slowly and eventually with every succeeding linear cut. If you can envision this in the world inside your mind, you might be surprised at the ‘aha’ moment the lies in wait — at the things that can be said about reality, things that will continue to be much further out of the reach of the linear artist than a hypothetical nonlinear one who has yet to be truly born. These are the sorts of things our ultimate descendants will probably say as a matter of course, if everything goes right and we aren’t invaded by nonlinear aliens first. 😉
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