It was with great excitement I followed the dialogue between two of my favourite bloggers, Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer and Iroquois Pliskin of Versus CluClu Land, about the interesting gameplay and design of »Braid«. A game made out by some to almost revolutionize the way we think about and play videogames. I was therefore a bit surprised to find both Abbott and Pliskin so sceptical and to some degree disappointed with their experiences, and above all I was astound to find which aspects of the game they found to be problematic.

Pliskin finished off his side of the dialogue with a summed up conclusion of the gaming experience, he reflected upon the difficulty to execute and solve some of the game’s tasks as well as a general review of the game’s complex gameplay. In my opinion two completely worthy targets of critique. The problem with Pliskin’s reasoning here is therefore not what he regards the problems of »Braid« to be, but rather why he regards them as problems: “Braid just lacks any immediate sense of fun.” Michael Abbott then followed Pliskin’s conclusion on a similar note, discussing how the complexity of »Braid«’s gameplay really works against the possibility of quality games reaching a more widespread audience.

“It’s a shame to me that a game with Braid’s narrative, artistic, and aesthetic aspirations is inaccessible to so many people hungry for exactly those things. I have an agenda here, and I make no effort to conceal it. I want my friends – the painters, poets, musicians, and philosophers I work with every day – to experience for themselves what video games can do and say and mean. I believe they will meet us halfway if we offer them a reasonable hill to climb and a meaningful experience for their efforts. I wanted Braid to be that game, and I’m disappointed and a little sad that it wasn’t.”

The notion that a game’s level of difficulty stands in direct relation to the experience of the game is obvious. The inference that a game’s level of “fun” would stand in relation to the quality of the game, or that the exclusion of a non-initiated audience would oppose a spread of quality games, is however two ominous assessments. Let me try to elucidate why.

The process of gaming is primarily regarded as a leisure activity, an experience of interactive entertainment exercised for pure escapistic purposes. In this aspect the notion of “fun” or a high level of “entertainment” is vital for the experience; it is also this aspect that is predominantly invoked by many videogame companies. The industry often build on this concept, presenting games through a form of purpose based gameplay (a shooter to thrill you, a platform game to entertain you, a horror game to scare you etc.), and thereby promoting the idea that a game that doesn’t succeed a its purpose is in fact a bad game – ex. a horror game that doesn’t scare you is in some way not a horror game and therefore a failure. Though it is understandable why the industry does this it is not understandable why we let ourselves be limited by this while playing. The idea that for example »Braid« is less of an achievement because of its complexity and/or because it doesn’t entertain the player, or doesn’t induce the notion of “fun”, I believe is one of the reasons why videogames often follow an established – and let’s face it – monotonous formula. I myself have found many of my favorite games rather dull to get through and still I regard them as creations of brilliance and highly value the experience they provided even though it didn’t “entertain” me.

Okay, so let’s retrace one step, to the fact why the gaming industry would want to market games by promoting a purpose or maybe a function of a videogame. The whole idea of this is of course to make a game easier to sell by creating a categorized market. The reason why a categorized market benefits sales however is simply because it makes games a lot more accessible. Michael Abbott argues that games like »Braid« need to be more accessible to be able to attract a larger academic audience. It’s therefore obvious that »Braid« is a game that moves outside the established commercial norm of categorization. It’s a technical and visual achievement rather than a product adapted to be as accessible as possible. You might argue that »Braid’s« complex gameplay has little to do with its low level of profitability but the complexity of the game is exactly what makes it inaccessible. It demands previous knowledge of the structures of videogames as it sets out to develop those very structures.

One of the games most prominent values is that it tries to play with our understanding of how gameplay is generally constructed and thereby assume us to know what’s normally expected of the form. I therefore find it alarming to read Abbott stipulate how »Braid« due to its innovative construction would be perfect for the academic community but at the same time is too inaccessible because of the very same construction. I highly doubt that his friends in theatre, philosophy or art would criticize Bertolt Brecht, Ludwig Wittgenstein or Tristan Tzara (no comparison to »Braid« intended beyond the fact that they all developed the work of others to create new aspects in their respective field) to be too inaccessible. In fact I know they wouldn’t because the value in all those works lies within the very same aspect that makes them inaccessible in the first place.

My reasoning here may seem narrow-minded, or maybe even elitist, but I strongly feel we need to recognize the meaning of »Braid«. Not as visually pleasing platform adventure but rather as an attempt to explore the boundaries of a gameplay paradigm. We have to a allow for games to be complex, boring and inaccessible in order to move the expression of videogames forward, in order to fully explore the possibilities of the media. Otherwise we will end up desperately looking for our »Citizen Kane« and foolishly missing out on our »Meshes of the Afternoon« .