by [name redacted]

Part seven of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation, under a different title; something like “The Problem With Game Consoles”. People seemed to take this article more seriously than I intended.

In May I finally saw a PlayStation 3 up-close – and dear lord. Whereas the Xbox 360 at least puts on a pretense of tenability, sucking in its gut like a real man, Sony’s system sets a new standard for girth. Maybe it was the rotating display, walled behind likely-bulletproof Plexiglass – yet I swear it must be the most outrageously massive game console that’s ever been designed. And that’s on top of looking like a space ship based on the template of a waffle iron. Whereas the Sega Genesis looked like you could top-load a CD into it, the PS3 looks like you could top-load a side of bacon.

It was around this point that I realized, on the surface, none of the forthcoming-generation consoles really strikes me as a game machine. Building on the PS2, both Sony and Microsoft have chosen to outwardly craft their systems to resemble nothing so much as random hunks of pop electronics. Microsoft went the Apple route; Sony went the George Foreman one. Either one could be… what, a DVD player? A desktop PC? My last computer case was already smaller than an Xbox (albeit not by my own choosing). Some kind of stereo component? The Wii, meanwhile, is simply inscrutable: a scant, featureless rectangle with an eerie blue glow. At a stretch, you might confuse it for an external DVD-R drive.

Though at this juncture I don’t mean to pass judgment, it seems rather bizarre that, especially now with the advent of the wireless controller, game consoles have somewhat lost their sense of identity – or, as I get the uncomfortable twinge, have gained an unhealthy dose of shame, masked in a misunderstood pragmatism. I think it’s Sony who really brought up the issue. In entering the game industry, about a decade ago, Sony decided the best way to create a market for itself was to draw a line between its definition of The Videogame and the prevailing one at the time: that represented by the 8- and 16-bit eras.

A Line in the Sand

Sony made this distinction, to a large extent, not so much through original design or perspective or technology as through psychology. Their message: videogames are childish, uncool garbage. What we have to offer, it’s barely even videogames. It’s more like movies, or some other kind of entertainment. They reinforced the premise by generally refusing “old fashioned” 2D games on their systems, unless explicitly labeled as a retro package; through putting a heavy emphasis on “mature”-themed games, and by funneling Sony’s limitless funds into years of blanket advertising – rarely showing actual game footage if CG was available, emphasizing the cinematic and familiar. The implication was, the less videogames in any sense resembled what you and I think of as videogames, the better: the more sophisticated, the less embarrassing, the more adult.

The difference between Sony’s approach and Sega’s, five years earlier, is that Sega was simply comparative: they did what Nintendidn’t. (By extension, Nintendo also did what Sega didn’t. They kind of kept that part quiet, though.) Sega’s games were bigger, faster – it was like bringing the arcade home. The Genesis, and Sega’s approach to it, was all about a subjectively better quality of videogames, or at least a different interpretation of them on a practical level. At no point does Sega try to suggest that videogames in general are beneath its audience. That would be silly, as Sega’s whole purpose in life to create videogames. It was in Sega’s best interest, therefore, to promote the medium in general – and merely suggest that Sega’s games were the best. For Sony, as an outside entity attempting to expand into an established market, with practically no experience within that market, the situation is reversed. It made the most sense from a business standpoint to dismiss the medium outright, and pretend to offer an alternative for people who were previously “too cool” for videogames.

Likewise the PS2 and the PSP and the PS3 set themselves as far apart as possible from popular expectations for what a videogame machine should, or might, look like – to the point of plain impracticality. In their time the systems are so expensive, so glossy, so fragile, so unreliable that they serve more as high-end luxury items than a simple game machine. To drive that point home, they are all packed with features to give the impression that they are indeed more than a mere game machine. That nobody uses these added features, that most of them are implemented poorly, and that nobody in his right mind would have reason to buy a game console no matter how “cool” it was unless he was interested in videogames, is beside the point: they create a perception of value, and of a higher order. They also create the odd perception that, to sell videogames, you have to hide them behind a veneer of more “legitimate” electronic devices.

The implication seems to still be, from the Sony camp, that videogames are either something to be afraid of or not innately worthwhile – which, considering how entrenched Sony has now become within the industry, strikes me as something of a problematic and silly position. All it suggests to me, personally, is that Sony has yet to develop any original ideas as to what to do with this industry. To an extent, the company is still flogging its original point from a decade ago – which again at least made sense back then, as non-constructive as it was. That it is still playing the “too cool for you” game strikes me as a little pathetic, and gives me the impression that Sony never really had anything to contribute. That on a practical level all Sony has ever done is play one-upsmanship with other people’s ideas (shoulder buttons, analog sticks, analog triggers, motion control) pretty much confirms the perception that this is a company without much, if anything, constructive to say.

Hard to the Core

Nevertheless, it is that weird sense of shame or disregard that has become the modern “in” thing for system design. After thudding in with its huge, wonky, reasonably well-meaning first system, Microsoft has taken Sony’s hint and bounced off in a bizarre Apple-inspired direction, with removable face plates for the fashion-conscious. Feeling the pressure after broad Western criticism over the GameCube, even Nintendo has stripped down – though for Nintendo there is a further reason to appear innocuous. As the Wii is supposed to ingratiate itself to a broad spectrum of people who might not previously have been engaged with videogames, it has as low a profile as possible. Rather than camouflage itself as something respectable, it simply makes no claim as to its identity. Nintendo therefore matches the current trend, and yet spins it in a somewhat more positive direction.

With the Wii, the trend does reach a sort of focus – showing that, to at least some extent, if you take away the cynicism, Sony did have a point all this time. If, instead of sidelining exiting games, gamers, and philosophies of design and production, you address and include them – and if you take pains to make the medium itself more accessible and appealing to people who might otherwise not be interested in it – everyone involved is probably better off. If, on the other hand, you go in like an ironic jackass, belittle everything that’s already there, then put on a pretense of superiority without any real plans for how to change things for the better, you’ve kind of dug a hole for yourself and everyone else who follows you.

It is to a large part Sony, and the disregard that it bred for the medium as a whole, that results in the broad hostility for, and defensiveness toward, “casual gamers”. Likewise, it is to a large part Sony’s attempts to marginalize 2D games and anything else that didn’t match the image it was projecting that result in much of the defensiveness amongst hardcore gamers against what they see as a dismissive in the newer generation, and the industry as a whole, toward what they consider important.

That said, Sony’s approach did and does make sense: Sony is an electronics corporation. Its tradition is in appealing hardware design, in integrating components, in shoving as many features and options into one package as possible. That’s what Sony does elsewhere, in its audio and video divisions; it should be no surprise that it brings the same philosophy to videogames. Likewise, it should be no surprise that Sony’s main concern is not so much with the subtleties of the medium as with its own branding: making Sony seem like the universal seal of quality, whatever the device you’re buying. As a producer of consumer electronics, this is Sony’s role. That Sony has been so disruptive is not so much Sony’s fault as it is everyone else’s that to date nobody has found a constructive response to put the industry back on track. Again, just now Nintendo’s trying to address the issue. We’ll see how that goes in a year or two.

The Face of Fashion

At any rate, Sony was hardly the first company to disguise its systems, and Microsoft sure wasn’t the first to capitalize on existing trends. Since the beginning, there has an impulse from hardware makers to integrate game consoles into the broader household (or at least the broader household media center). Atari built on the recent introduction of videotape, and the fake wood paneling of contemporary stereo components, to makes its 2600 seem “at home” in the late ’70s. Later, Nintendo insinuated its candy-colored Family Computer throughout North America by redressing it to resemble a cheap VCR, and by nowhere using loaded words like “videogame” or “cartridge”. Even as late as 1991, Nintendo saw fit to alter the colorful, toylike Super Famicom to look like nothing so much as an HP Deskjet 500 – perhaps still clearly a game console, though a more serious-looking one than it might have been.

If any one company has really reveled in contemporary console design, that would probably be Sega. The Master System, Genesis, and Dreamcast all glory in their forms, the former two being off-kilter, ornate, attention-grabbing, and plastered with huge logos. Likewise, with its brilliant white shell, orange decorations, four controller ports, and sleek-yet-bubbly facade, the Dreamcast both declares defiantly, in a no-nonsense voice, that it is a game console and that it is meant as a conscious reversal of Sega’s fortunes – sort of a new start for the company. (White and orange are the opposite of black and blue.) There is a level of glee and comfort to Sega’s designs – comfort within the medium – that is rare elsewhere. That Sega’s designs have likewise tended toward the poetic – Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast – is also perhaps telling.

Nintendo’s designs, to contrast, have tended towards the company’s background in toy design. Again, the Famicom and Super Famicom were multicolored affairs, marketed toward a “family” audience that simply doesn’t exist in the US (much to the frustration of BBC Worldwide). The N64 and GameCube followed largely the same trend, much to the derision of North American audiences. (Me, I’d been waiting my whole life for a purple game console. No, really. I like purple.) It is only with the Wii that Nintendo has chosen to reassess its approach to “family” entertainment, shifting its focus more toward the conceptual and its presentation more toward the neutral.

As history has proved, image does indeed matter: assuming you actually have something to say, the last thing you want is for your appearance to speak for you before you get a chance to make your argument, unless that appearance somehow helps to illustrate your position. And likewise, the appearances of past systems suggest the roles they were meant to play. Their designs reflect the philosophies behind the systems – of what videogames are meant to represent, or to be perceived, or of how they already are perceived by the broader culture.

The State of Grace

What, then, is the ideal design for a game machine? What should it aspire to? How should those aspirations manifest themselves in the system’s appearance? What do people expect – and should those expectations be met, or confounded? Addressed or ignored?

Well, ideally a machine’s appearance would accurately reflect what it distinctively had to offer – and ideally what any particular game machine had to offer would be a unique and constructive vision as to the role or nature or function of the medium, in relation to its audience. Ideally that audience would include as many people as possible, while excluding as few.

Should a game machine be concerned with issues outside of its immediate purview – mitigating factors such as current design trends within or without the industry, probable environmental factors (space, heat, sound), or perceived expectations? To some extent, probably. Nobody wants a system that sounds like a vacuum cleaner, burns his hands, and that it’s impossible to find a place for. It’s easy to get so neurotic with these things, though, dragging you off-focus – and anyway, when someone buys something new to introduce into his home and life, with which he will presumably spend a lot of time, it seems silly to think that he will be concerned with it calling attention to itself. To the contrary, ideally a game machine would draw at least some attention – so long as the attention is positive, nonthreatening, and on-message. Looking like a toilet seat, for instance (see: Atari Jaguar), is simply distracting – as is being shaped like an enormous “X” and taking up as much room as a coffee table.

Doing the math, it would seem the ideal game machine would be clearly a game machine (Genesis). It would be distinctive and attention-grabbing (Master System), without being a nuisance (Xbox). Its appearance would suggest something of what it had to say to the world – or rather, perhaps, what kind of experience to expect from it. It would be warm and inviting (Dreamcast), without seeming trivial (GameCube). Failing much of the above, you can’t go too wrong with simply being as nondescript as possible (NES, Wii) – though that’s the safe route. You know what they say about the safe route.

My sincere hope is that, as the industry gets back on track again, it will regain confidence in the perceived value of videogames as videogames – and that this confidence will reflect itself in a shift of design, bringing us back to the old days where the big guys fought it out over the innate value of their ideas rather than simply who can best work the market. If nothing else, I expect the hardware will be an awful lot more handsome.