Graphics might be one of the biggest stunts videogames have ever pulled. There’s nothing to complain about with better looking videogames, but there’s also something to be said for style rather than realism. Videogames are typically beautiful due to their lack of realism, and videogames that move towards realism often simply show how ridiculous they often are. Though an often complained about subject, gritty realism isn’t a problem, it’s just a solution nobody was asking for. Effectively, these videogames are attempting to show a part of reality they are fairly unsuited for, such as war, violence, race, sex, and other heavy subject matter which typically don’t belong in the videogames they are situated in. They are placed in a space they simply aren’t ready for.

Videogames still aren’t ready for graphic realism, because graphic realism isn’t something videogames, or even most tech demos, can readily attain. Creating these sorts of scenarios, while at times beautiful, often misses the stylized concepts they are born from, instead opting to reach towards realism, as though it were a boon to creating subject matter with impact. The result is often stilted and creates unreasonable expectations within the medium, and has led to a bit too much cinematic flair, as well as lots of issues with Simon Says. Videogames never really needed these things, but instead have opted for them in order to look a certain way, rather than interact a certain way. The result is a lot of elements with disparity in relation to other elements.

The question videogames should be asking are highly relative, but tend to relate to what the game is trying to let the player do, rather than what the game wants to let the player see. Players will always have different ways of seeing a videogame, but interaction is the golden rule. People play videogames to play with a certain experience. Thinking of a videogame like a Rubik’s Cube, where players are puzzling the pieces together, is a manner in which most videogames can be considered. The answers will often be different, but the goal is common and semi-setup by the game developer. The developer walks a line, often finicky, between too much and too little control, but perhaps the fondness which many players remember old videogames is precisely for their broken realities.

Metroid is perhaps one of the most well known games as a result of how broken its code is, with the mystery “secret world” still captivating players decades after the videogame has passed from popular conversation. In a sense, glitches and bugs, or even the appearance of glitches and bugs, create a fascinating sense of mystery about a videogame, as if the code itself is a living, breathing entity. The strangeness with which these bugs exist is one of the most explored, and yet still most mystifying pieces of the videogame puzzle. A videogame needs a sense of life which has timeless mystery, many parts which may continually be rediscovered.

Dark Souls, Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen evoke mystery. Street Fighter II evokes mystery. Mystery evokes a drive to explore and rediscover. Columbus didn’t sail a ship thousands of miles just because they wished to find a shorter route to the west indies, they also sailed because there was a space in-between. Videogames then, and especially old games with their old problems, evoke some of the most considerable mystery of all, because they often tell you little, yet show you more than you imagined. Even if one could show the secret worlds of Metroid, it would not make them less alien. The videogame itself is a story of aliens, a story of an alien world, with the player-as-writer.

As the writer, the player seeks to make their mark on a virtual territory. The fascination with online videogames is precisely thus. The exploration of a space which is left wild, and which can never be truly tamed, instead only made more relative. The experience of interaction is the strength of virtual exploration, a discovery of how to explore, and the goals of the world versus the goals of the explorer within that world. At large, the player rarely needs to be told to go and explore, it is a natural curiosity. In many ways the internet, and our own fear and drive towards perfection, limit the ability to be lost in virtual territory. In some sense the player is at fault here, seeking comfort over content, in others the publishers are at fault, seeking to profit ever more from their created virtualizations. In the end, the player makes a decision to get lost, and the designer makes a decision to allow it, or to point the way. One is riskier, one is safer, but the allowance is always satisfying, preventing a world from stagnation.