Evolution at the Speed of Thought?

Recently in many of my classes, the question of "action over contemplation" has arisen and I'd like to take this opportunity to comment on it...

There seems to be a pervading idea that my generation (those born between 1980-1990 ish) are those that privileged action over contemplation - a generation that leaps before it thinks, or even looks.
I can say that this is no more true now than it was for previous generations - the reason, I believe that it appears that we are so focused on speed that we miss a great deal of what we should be paying attention to.

I would argue that it's quite the opposite.

For those of us who survive in and compete in the virtual arena of the Internet - learning to sort through the continuous barrage of information we're assaulted with is critical to our ability to function within that environment as proficiently as we do. One "skill set" that is absolutely necessary is an ability to not only comprehend, but absorb, process and execute according to what we gather - the only difference between how we and our predecessors deal with that information and how quickly we are "trained" to interact with it is simply a question of speed and efficiency. If that efficiency were compromised by the speed, we would accomplish far less, learn more slowly and be generally inferior to our parents and those that came before them.

That isn't the case, however, and our generation has continued forward into what many call the next step of human evolution - one that involves a state of mind and an advancement of the human ability to think and comprehend the abstract in a way not possible before without the aid of hallucinogenic drugs.

The ideas of "cyber-spirituality" are becoming more and more pronounced - a separation from the idea that everything we feel and see is real is slowly being proven wrong. The idea of reality as being something "insubstantial" - something that exits on multiple levels as versatile and ever-changing as our own states of consciousness...
Even the question, "What is real?" is something discussed avidly beyond the realm of the traditional philosopher.

Everywhere, we find representations of the "cyber-prophet" - those mystical few who have the knowledge to transverse the enigmatic realm of the Internet - and I have to wonder why.

Is the Internet that frightening to older generations that they dare not even investigate it? Take classes to learn how to use their computers and educate themselves on the positive and negative aspects of this "parallel" realm that so greatly influences their every-day lives?

If that's so, then their fear is born of the ignorance they accuse my generation of... an interesting problem if ever there was one...
A generation gives birth to something the majority don't understand... and then refuse to engage with it, while ostracizing the following generation for the same reasons...

Remember the Old Days - Back in 1984?

Regardless of our age, we've all uttered phrases like:
"Remember the Old Days?" or "Remember back when...?" or "It's old."



And inevitably, in a group of mixed ages, someone will think "That's not that old... I remember when that came out (etc.)..."

Nostalgia is something that people of my generation appear to be experienceing earlier in life than preceding generations, and it occurred to me why that might be...
It isn't ignorance of the past (as I heard a passing professor angrily proclaim in the hall), I think it's something much more fundamental - something I could suggest might point at an evolutionary step, rather than the degradation and decay of society.

The speed of technology allows for nostalgia to occur far more quickly in younger generations than it does with the older ones - things we remember fondly from our childhood are so changed in our adult life that they no longer seem to be the same thing.

Take Super Mario Brothers, for example...

I was around to see the rebirth of console gaming, and one of the forerunners of that resurrection took the form of a portly man with a mustache who wanted to save his princess from a dragon... Classic fairytale stuff, right? Well Mario and co. were only the beginning, and as video games pulled themselves from the ashes and began to flourish far and beyond what most thought even possible, the rate at which we had our favorite heroes, villains and games replaced, revamped and re-imagined accelerated at an ever increasing pace that just barely kept up with the continuing evolution of the technology on which they were based.
Now, in my mid twenties, I'm struck with a feeling of nostalgia...
I remember loading a computer game with an 8 inch floppy and typing C:/run_wordwizard...
I remember sticky fingers on little plastic rectangles of gray and black with red buttons labeled A and B...
I remember being impressed when Sonic moved faster than the in-game camera could keep up with...
I remember being awed by the 3-d  world of Mario 64...
I remember when I began to gave trouble telling the diference between "real" game images and the computer-generated ones...
Some people suggest there's an age-limit, or at least a time-duration limit on being capable of nostalgia, but I disagree.
With the accelerated state of technological development in North American culture (and the ability of the public to access much of that technology), things "get old" faster and faster - lending toward the idea that our favorites of the present may be out-dated in as little as ten years. This doesn't deminish our love of them - perhaps it even heightens our appreciation of what went before, since it passes so much more quickly than it once did.
The argument that some make about my generation's focus on the present and future over the past is perhaps true to an extent, though what's often forgotten is the necessity of our ability to process the onslaught of information, technology and change that occur around us all the time...
But I'll rant about that later =)

video games - not for telling stories

One of the problems with trying to tell stories with video games is that games are not really meant for telling stories...


This isn't to say, howver that games shouldn't, or can't have stories in them, just that they aren't supposed to tell stories... they're supposed to provide opportunity for players to develop a story of their own using the "tool" provided to them through the structure of the game and their ability to develop a dialogue with it.

Telling stories is implicit, something limited to film, radio, most drama and literature, in which the audience must sit and absorb the material - not passively by any definition - one cannot suggest that a person may sit like an empty sponge just absorbing the material they're presented with - intellectual agency is always in effect.

Games are different, however.

A game should ideally make an effort to provide the frameowrk for experience - for exploration and emotional engagement forged by a dialogue between player and digital universe. When a design team forgets that they have chosen a medium in which there is more than just the creator and the consumer - one in which the player is also an author of the experience, and may, through the course of their play, generate a story of their own that stands apart from anything that the designers had originally intended.

A "good game" is one that incorporates the ideas of narrative, choice/agency and entertainment to execute a state of immersion for the player.

Telling the player a story is the wrong thing to do.

Games like Heavy Rain are a prime example where the idea of telling a story to the player overwhelmed the aspect of play and agency that defines and separates video games from other mediums. The game is laborious in its lengthy cut-scenes, some of which run for 20 or more minutes runtime, based almost entirely on Quick Time Events... a poor gameplay choice if ever there was one.

The agency of the player is reduced rather plainly to that of a classical factory worker whose only job is to press one of 8 possible buttons appropriate to the motion they're told they want to perform.

Despite the game's ablity to perform in a graphical sense, it is much more closely akin to an interactive film or choose your own adventure book than a video game in the classical sense.

This isn't necessarily a "bad thing", but it does certainly define itself as something that is not what most gamers commonly attribute to a gaming experience, nor is it a perfect transferal of traditional narrative text.

Ideally, video games will continue to evolve and will become aware that they don't have to emulate film, literature or any other medium before them - they are a medium of their own... and the sooner the developers realize that, the better the games will be.