Videogames, unlike other media seem to have very little going on in the area of critical analysis or unifying theories by which they can be interpreted and understood.Ask someone in the know to give you examples of postmodernism in film; they’ll likely point you in the direction of Tarantino or David Lynch.While those two practitioners of movie making are the most obvious and provide the most easily identifiable examples, (the earcutting in Reservoir Dogs, set to the tune of “Stuck in the Middle With You” all of Mulholland Drive) there is more to Postmodernism than a few films that some would call weird for the sake of being weird.

One of the primary criticisms leveled at Postmodernism at its application as an interpretative tool is that it lacks a unifying theory that it’s users can fall back on to back up the assertions that they are making.To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, it doesn’t explain anything that isn’t already obvious.This exercise in keeping my own mind fresh isn’t going to attempt anything so bold as to try and put a doctrine to postmodernism, but rather take a look at the state of the games industry and games on their own through the lens of a postmodernism and deconstruction.

It is the addition of user input that makes writing a critical analysis of a particular game so difficult.In film there is simply the audio and the visual in terms of the text of the material.It does not change this makes analysis of the material quite a bit more simple.After all when one looks at the game where do they begin?Is the game created the canvas and the player the artist?Perhaps the game itself is the canvas with the programmers the artists.While playing a game, in order to progress the player must sooner or later conform to the rules of the game lest the story be halted.It is for this reason that this document will operate under the assumption that the games creators are the artists, and the player does not participate in the creation of the artistry.A formidable Street Fighter IV player could be a virtuoso, but everything they do still falls within the confines of the rules of the game, thus the creators of the games are the artists and not the players.

So now that the groundwork for how to approach the topic has been explained why not take a look at the state of the industry.Up until this moment in its history, progress in video games has been marked mostly in terms of technological advancement in the medium.To simplify this idea even more, it’s all about the graphics.With the release of the two new consoles showing the least amount of visual fidelity increase ever, progress will have to be measured by something other than the technical specifics of the visuals.While some may find this lack visual progress to be disheartening, one would hope that this means that games will in turn become more sophisticated as there is no longer only the simple appeal of better visuals with which to see the “Boom! Headshot!”Thus even from a hardware and technical standpoint, video games have entered a moment of postmodernism.The hardware can only take us so much further visually.Game makers will have to either grow more sophisticated, or find out that the whole video games thing really was just a fad like our parents said.

It is in the realm of the independents that the most progress seems to have been made in terms of sophistication and presenting new ideas and modes of play to the gamer.One could go on forever interpreting the meaning of something like “The Stanley Parable” What does it mean?Is its meaning found in the lack of meaning?Thus far I have only watched the trailer and read the reviews, so anything I would have to say would be mostly speculation.One thing that it is important to understand when viewing something through the postmodern lens is that there is nothing new.Everything is recycled, and it is in the layers of complexity and extra textual that we can interpret the work.Games like, “Super Meat Boy” and the “Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures” are titles that fit perfectly into the idea of video games being in a postmodern moment.

Both titles go backwards in terms of the traditional way in which progress in games are measured.Some would say that the retro aesthetic is there only to help form sense of nostalgia in the gamer.It is only a sense of nostalgia, because both of these games did not exist at such a time that their visuals would have been current.They are thoroughly modern games that have recycled the visual style of a bygone era of gaming to create something entirely new.So what about them would be considered postmodern then?Certainly it is not the story or even the gameplay, though “AVGNA” is interesting in that it is a modern game that is based on a show that is deeply rooted in the history of gaming.No, the postmodern flair in these games comes in the form of difficulty.

The majority of modern games are made to be beaten.They are easy, because content developed and not seen is basically wasted money for the publisher.Older gamers, me included are fond of telling those younger than them that games used to be hard and that it took more than following the arrow from point A to point B to beat them.AVGNA and SMBoy are not easy.They are in fact ferociously difficult arguably more difficult than most of the games from the era from which they reference.It is in this sense that they are postmodern.If we assume that modernism in a game is easy completion then we understand that a postmodern game would revel in its own difficulty.

Please don’t take the above ideas of difficulty to mean that I am saying that difficult=postmodern.It doesn’t.One could find and argue other examples, the crop of Lego games are not difficult at all, and are in fact directed toward younger gamers.It is in their mash up of ideas that one would consider them to be postmodern.In the games you use toys as characters to play through a story that generally already exists in another medium.Such a mash up and recycling of ideas could most certainly be considered postmodern.

So what do you all think?From this point forward how will progress in video games be measured?Should they grow in sophistication or are you happy with the way they are now?