Galaga is a refinement of a refinement of Space Invaders. It is entertaining and well-made, if a bit limited. Shots are slow.  The ship is slow.

The game does not really build; it progresses level-by-level, in a slight variation of the classic model: each level is a little harder. Galaga does throw in some variation, and the occasional bonus round. Nevertheless, the structure is the same as Pac-Man: you conduct the same task over and over. In this case, you clear the screen of enemies.

Tetris works on a different dynamic level, one more akin to the likes of Centipede. The world is constant and malleable. There is cause and effect. Just by virtue of playing the game, the game world itself is altered. Every choice you make will affect the future dynamics of that play session.

Unlike the overused shooting formula of Galaga and Centipede, however, Tetris puts the player in direct control over the environment: the playing pieces are the very objects which form the world. On top of this, Tetris randomizes the pieces that it allows the player, for his building. In this way, it forms something of a poignant model for life. We have liberty to build what we will with what we are given; depending on our skill and preference for risk, we can organize our world however we wish: build up pressure and risk of failure, or keep a steady release for lower rewards yet more assured success. Even the wisest and most expert of us, however, have only that liberty; we do not have full freedom, as there is only so much we can control in our lives. There is always an element of fate, or luck, thrown into our own structured determinism. We can usually see ahead a bit, to our next immediate task — yet beyond that, there is no telling what the world will throw at us, and ask us to deal with.

To play Tetris is to be in touch with one’s self. To play Galaga is to defensively distance one’s self from the world to the end of a barely-adequate gun barrel, and resign one’s self to the tireless, repetitious onslaught of a vindictive world in hope for the occasional small reward and a possible note in history, earned through one’s own sheer resiliance to harm.

Tetris, to me, seems a far more fundamental and organic parallel to the human experience, than any shooter is likely to be. Then, perhaps I am too optimistic.

An oppressive fear is the primary motivator in a game like Galaga. I am getting tired of fear. As I get older, I am less interested in hiding. I find it far more useful to deal with what the world gives me, as it comes, and in my own way.

The world truly is what you make of it.

Could this be said of all shooters, at their cores? And what does that say about shooter fans, in general? Are we all just afraid of some unnamed evil?

Perhaps. There is a sense of isolation and sadness that I feel in this kind of a stab at interaction. Almost a resignment to the overwhelming futility of life; there is no other way to deal with the world than to peck away at it as it flies at you, and try to come out unscathed — or even superficially on top, for a moment or two. Yet, that is generally only when you have killed everything else in the world — or, anyway, have cleared away more than anyone else.

Though it really depends on the game. As I mentioned, Centipede and Asteroids have an element of malleability in their game worlds. Although you still just peck away at the outside game world, your deeds do have an effect. You are clearly a part of your world. Your firing, in these cases, operates like a probe. There is, in a sense, a slight feeling of epiphany here in that the results of the player’s interaction is contrasted so clearly with the limited nature of those probes. Even the smallest action is relevant, in some way. Tetris is, in its way, the evolution of this thread.

Scrolling shooters add another element, that alters and enriches the dynamic somewhat (although this complicates the matter to make the message somewhat muddier to me, at the moment). The modern shooter — typified by Mars Matrix and Ikaruga — is so abstracted that it has come closer to the Tetris model of dealing with the world. It is, however, somehat more carefree.

I… there is noise here. Hard to think.

Oppressive fear could be said to be the primary motivator in everything in life. Even Tetris. But maybe I’m just being too pessimistic.

Yes. I suppose the point is, how do you react to that fear?

Are you saying that Tetris itself is an evolution of Galaga and Space Invaders, in that it gives players more freedom over their world? Or did you mean something else entirely?

Spacewar/Space Invaders -> Asteroids/Centipede -> [something] -> Tetris

It is not so much about what level of control the player has over the game world, as it is about the level of attachment or detachment that the game emphasizes. What control is offered, is reflective on the individual in accordance to the significance of the player’s actions, and indeed presence, within the world. It is an existential problem.

Pac-Man branches off in a different direction from the likes of Galaga, and pretty much founds the original principles behind the Japanese videogame aesthetic (later adopted and expanded by Miyamoto, Yuji Hori, and others). With Pac-Man, videogames went through an iconographic objectification process. On its own, that is not so bad. I am rather unfond, however, of the side effects it has had in the hands of those who do not quite understand the principles behind the change, and who tend to take that surface as-is, as the reality of the medium. That is… problematic.

On the other hand, I wonder how much further we can venture down the introspective route. I suppose the best way we can find out is by turning back and exploring what we have forgotten for the last two decades or so.

In a way, Rez is like a new abstraction of Centipede. I am curious where else this strain might go.