I have just downloaded the Don Miguel translation of RPG Maker 2000, and boy, let me tell you, I’ve been hard at work ever since. You know, video games have a lot of wasted potential as real works of art. People make video games just to make money; they’re like interactive big-budget blockbuster fluff movies. Now that I’m in control of the creative process, I’m going to make an entirely different game. I will make this game a work of art.
First, I’ll evoke names occurring in ancient folklore to give my game a real artsy feel. I won’t do hackneyed stuff like naming swords Excalibur and hammers Thor like in Final Fantasy either; my names will be slightly obscure. There will be Biblical references also. Take for example the lead character, Shadrach, a jaded military man who has a heart of gold. Not like that nonsense Yggdrasil bullshit they threw into Xenogears. I think that game’s translators just put that in there because they couldn’t change their Japanese to English very effectively. There will be several instances in playing my RPG in which you will say to yourself, ‘I bet this name means something; let me look it up,‘ and find to your pleasant surprise that a character’s name mirrors that of a mythical character with similar traits. There’s a fine line between art and crap; the high-brow nomenclature of my game will be comfortably on the side of art.
My RPG will also show how much I respect women. See, these games on the market today, they treat women as objects. Sure, these women are tough and everything, which I suppose is good, but they’re really nothing more than a pair of breasts and a bad attitude. The women in my RPG will be different. I have one female character, named Aurelia. She’s not only a prominent and important character who you will use regularly, but she’s a magician also. And anyone who knows anything about RPGs knows that magicians are the smartest characters around. Not only that, but she will be delicate and feminine, like a real woman. She will showcase how smart and sophisticated I think women are. And another point on the naming trend, Aurelia is also a word which describes the inwardly spiraling shell of a crustacean. This will evoke the dramatic climax in which the gamer learns that the entire world and universe and every idea and thought that has ever existed is in the rapidly accelerating process of collapsing into a single mortal point.
There will be a female ninja character as well.
This is all to say nothing of map creation. When I think of all the symbolism that could have been injected into, say, Matoya’s Cave, it just gets my goat. Maps may just be the greatest reservoir that game creators have for artistic expression, and they just don’t use it. In my game there will be a pyramid in which the succession of switches the gamer needs to activate in order to reach the deepest floors will bear the mark of the quadratic formula. In addition, there will be a fascist town in which the homes form a swastika, and the closer the gamer gets to its center the more the screen’s color shifts to a reddish hue.
All of these things will change the world of gaming, and game creation will be an art form on par with sculpture, or traveling performance art.
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