To the Moon is an indie game that came out in November of last year. I think for most people it flew under the radar - in fact the only way I discovered it myself was by chancing across it while perusing the indie section of Steam during one of their (in)famous sales. The game itself is quite good and I highly recommend it to anyone that is interested by the trailer, but what I'd really like to discuss isn't the game itself but where it (and games like it) belong in gaming.
Some may claim that it's not really a game but more of a modern day picture book, and it is difficult to argue with that. The actual gameplay is rather sparse - pretty much all you actually do as a player is walk around talking to people and objects until the story continues. There are no fail states (at least none that I were able to find) and the whole thing was extremely linear, making the gameplay more of a pacing element than anything else.
To the Moon is hardly the first game to receive such criticism either. The most notable example of this is Dear Esther, which primarily consists of you walking around exploring the scenery and trying to trigger moments of dialogue. I've heard it described as watching a movie on a broken VCR where you had to hold down the play button, and I can't say that I entirely disagree. But the question still remains - does that make these not games?
A Game By Any Other Name
Gaming is no stranger to ambiguously broad definitions - many would even argue that the term "gaming" itself doesn't really fit everything that it's trying to describe (but that is a lengthy topic for another day). So what exactly is required for something to be called a game?
Winners and Losers
One of the most common definitions I hear is the existence of win and lose states. You need to be able to succeed or fail in order to be called a game. This is also one of the easiest to throw out because of how many popular examples of games exist without one or both of these. Pre-release Minecraft (before the dragon was introduced) had neither a win or lose state - you could die but you would just respawn, and everything possible to be done in the game was for it's own sake without any end goal or victory condition.
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| I take it back - this person clearly won Minecraft |
In fact, I would argue that the majority of modern games don't exactly have fail states in any sort of absolute sense. There are plenty of examples of games where it's impossible to die or enter a state where you can no longer win (such as Prince of Persia 2008) and even the harshest of modern games will generally only set you back rather than result in an unwinnable state or throwing you back to the title screen. Ironically enough almost every game that includes permadeath as a mechanic is specifically crafted to include death as a fairly normal event in the game so that it doesn't constitute the end of the game itself.
Player Interaction
Another common definition for games is interactivity - a player must be able to enact change within the environment. This definition comes closer but another problem arises from that definition - what degree of interactivity is required for classification as a game?
If we decree that any amount of interactivity is sufficient to be a game then we run into some strange issues - are choose your own adventure books actually games? What about plays like the musical "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", where the ending is determined by the voting of audience members? In both there is real change enacted in the narrative world based on the decisions of the audience. Conversely there are games where you can move around within the game world but not meaningfully change anything. This is actually the norm as it relates to the narrative within games - very few allow you to enact any change on how the narrative plays out, and even fewer allow that change to actually be meaningful.
More Suited to Another Medium
Others still would throw out the argument over whether it can technically be classified as a game and instead ask why they would choose a game-like format if it would be as good or better in another format. Whether interactivity is a requirement for games can be debated but it is true that the primary advantage of games over other mediums is the degree of potential they have for interactivity, and if you aren't adequately utilizing that interactivity then why bother making it a game instead of a movie or book?
I've used this argument myself on more than one occasion, and it was the question foremost in my mind when I finished To the Moon. I don't think the gameplay actually contributed meaningfully to the narrative in a way that couldn't be accomplished through more traditional mediums, so why make it into a game?
Budgets, Availability, and Limitations
To the Moon is clearly low budget as far as games go; the core development team only consists of 4 members and there are only 10 other credited contributors even if we include beta testers. Despite this the game is very appealing both visually and musically, and outside the retro graphics style it doesn't feel particularly low budget.
However if that same budget and team size were to try and recreate the same narrative experience in another medium they would instantly run into problems. Movies are far more expensive to produce and require larger teams (actors, technicians, etc), and even if you moved past that the game is 4+ hours long - well outside the standard length of a movie.
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| Imagine this movie but give it a fraction of the budget, cut it down to a third of the cast, and stretch it out to 4+ hours long. Would you want to watch that? |
Similarly books have their own set of problematic limitations for this case. While you're no longer tied to as large a budget or team size you lose the ability to create the experience in an audiovisual medium, meaning that creating the same experience would be impossible. Recreating To the Moon in a book would be a completely different experience than it's current form (not worse, just different).
On top of that you'd run into a publishing and distribution problem in both cases. Self-publishing is far more practical for games as compared to books or movies, moving the barrier for entry down dramatically. Just about anyone can set up a Paypal account and sell a game from their own website (and many games do even if they are distributed through more traditional channels as well), but lower cost distribution methods such as this are extremely rare books or movies.
The truth of the matter is that even if To the Moon could have been equally good in another medium it likely never would have happened due to higher barriers for entry in those other mediums.
Overlapping Other Mediums
So the question remains - supposing for a moment that budget wasn't an issue would games like this be better in other more traditional mediums? I regularly see claims to that effect but I've never actually seen any reasoning or justification to support this - but I have to admit that my initial reaction is the same.
Certainly it makes no sense to transform a book into a movie only consists of a wall of text slowly scrolling across the screen, but if pressed the only fundamental reasons I can think for that is because the movie would be more expensive to make and in a more limited and less convenient format. That argument doesn't exactly work for games though - games are generally less limited than movies while still having a lower barrier for entry and (arguably) just as much room for scaling up with budget.
And the truth of the matter is that wholly narrative games with zero interactivity already exist - Pixar specializes in creating them. CGI animated movies are the extreme end of that scale and they've been a part of our culture for decades.
While it may not be clear where the line between "game" and "movie" should be drawn on that spectrum I do like to remind people that the proposition of turning a game into a movie doesn't always work out too well.
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