(This began as a simple endcap on the MIGS roundup post, but the post quickly became too long and lopsided for that.)

While it's tough to ever assign a running theme to an entire conference, I did feel that there was a bit of an undercurrent running though a number of the Montreal International Game Summit talks I covered, about the need to expand the expressive or creative possibilities of the medium. I may be reading that into more talks simply because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

If you're reading this, you probably love games. I certainly do, but I've been thinking about what makes games important to me, versus what makes books or music or film important to me. I think I might be most interested in the formal and design aspects of games more than those other things, partially because the way my career path has gone means I spend so much time thinking about that. It's also just exciting to be here to witness the evolution of a creative form so early in its existence. The theory and creative side of games is going through so much more creativity and discovery than the theory of those other forms, which are much better established and understood.

But there are still some parts of my life that games don't address that well. They do the "fun" thing well, and they give me a lot to think about, but they rarely speak to me the same way a wonderful novel, film, or album does. I don't as frequently feel that I've genuinely realized something about myself or my world in the same way I do when I read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, watch Mad Men, or listen to The Who's Quadrophenia.

That doesn't mean I don't get creatively excited when playing games. That happens all the time, and it's great. I love it. But, at least for me, that excitement is more often related to the exploration of game design and the video game medium than it is related to broader human revelation. It's obviously easy for me to say things like this; it doesn't take much to throw stones. And it is certainly true that (fairly randomly) chose examples of other works that were created much later in their forms' history than would even be possible with games now. (Although on a personal level, I think I could choose a number of films that are more historically equivalent in that respect.)

But the reason I bring this up is because I think games are certainly capable of more. I think games have the possibility of speaking to us as people, not just as gamers, in the same way a film by Scorsese or Bergman or Welles or Kurosawa or the Coen brothers can speak to us as people, not just as film buffs; in the same way The Beatles or Beethoven or Charles Mingus or the Flaming Lips or John Adams speak to us as people, not just as analysts of music theory; in the same way Vonnegut or Nabokov or Shakespeare or Orwell or Hammett speak to us as people, not just as appreciators of literary prowess.

Maybe some of you reading this would claim games are already there. I wouldn't actually disagree. For me, there have already been a few amazing games that speak to me beyond triggering my "fun" receptors or engaging my interest in design. And obviously there's no objective measure of this; I would never presume to decide which games have achieved this or haven't achieved it for anyone who isn't me.

As Hecker suggested, though, that crucial consideration of the "why" of game development -- along with related questions like "What are you trying to say to people?" or "What influenced this?" or "Are you trying to say anything at all?" -- seems to be less important in this medium than it is elsewhere. That's understandable, since "fun" can be pursued for its own benefit, and to great and impressive effect. Surely we've got that covered by this point, though, and there's bandwidth for more.

Smith's discussion of whether it would be possible to make a "not fun" game is also probably less important than the question of whether we can make games which don't explicitly put "fun" at the top of their list of paramount goals. (I imagine that, outside of the context of his directed thought-experiment, he would agree.) It seems as though, through iterative design and decades of progress, we have -- at least to a reasonable extent -- figured out how to iterate until we've found some fun.

I'm sure directors like Scorsese or writers like Vonnegut are plenty concerned that their works turn out "fun" (or whatever equivalent synonym you want to apply to their forms), but I suspect they have never focused so single-mindedly on that goal that they strip away any elements that aren't All Fun, All The Time. They have other goals they are trying to achieve with their work that serve some higher purpose, and their skill and experience as craftsmen allows them to keep "fun" (or whatever) as one consideration, rather than as the one consideration.

Particularly right now, as the industry becomes even more risk-averse than ever in a period of declining revenues, maybe this isn't on everyone's mind. But I think game developers who actively have something to say and want to express it through games don't necessarily need to engage in particularly risky or experimental design to work towards this goal. Intent seems like a great first step.

We still have no comment functionality on this blog, but feel free to head over to the forum and discuss this thing there if you like.