Commenting just to note that for anyone for whom the name “Jeff Vogel” doesn’t ring any bells, he’s the founder of… well, no. He is Spiderweb Software.[1] And Spiderweb Software is the creator of some of the best independent CRPGs that I’ve ever played: the Exile series, the Avernum series, the Geneforge series. And Vogel’s been doing this—making a living from creating computer games, almost entirely by himself—for close to 30 years.
In short, when it comes to “what games are”, Jeff Vogel has a pretty good idea of what he’s talking about.
Yeah. (Exile was a pretty formative game for me in the 90s. I haven’t met many other people who’ve played it, though I’ve met someone who played Geneforge. I’ve always been a bit sad that Exile got renamed to “Avernum”, the original title was much more evocative to me.)
He hires artists sometimes, to create various graphical assets, but aside from that I’m pretty sure it’s a one-map shop. ↩︎
Fun fact, one of those artists is me! (right out of college with my computer animation degree, I messaged Jeff and was like “hey, I’m a poor desperate college grad artist who can probably make art for you at affordable rates!” and then I made thesewalls among others)
So… as I’ve listened to people comment “why are these things counting as power fantasies?” over the past day, perhaps ironically it’s actually my Shoulder Said who has popped up in my head to say “Um, what do you mean by power fantasy, actually? This seems like it has ‘you-could-think-of-it-as’ syndrome. Sure, you can think of horror games as power fantasies, but should you?”
So I’m thinking through that a bit now and forming my own answers, but I’m curious about your own take on that.
It’s certainly a fair question. But… doesn’t Vogel’s post answer it fairly well? I mean, he has a whole section titled “What Do We Mean By “Power Fantasy”?” It’s not long, so I’ll quote it in full:
“Power Fantasy” is usually used as a pejorative term. The phrase often has the word “adolescent” tacked on before it for a fun bit of ad hominem.
Yet. What makes video games different from other artistic media? It is activity. Video games aren’t about consuming words or sounds or images. They are about action, doing things.
In almost every game, what are you doing? You are making changes in your environment. You are giving gifts in a dating sim. Designing roadways in Sim City. Shooting bad guys in, well, just about everything else.
When you change your environment, you are exercising Power.
You are doing this inside a game, a space that does not exist. Every video game takes place in a mental construct that is imagined. In other words, all video games take place in Fantasy. (In the dictionary sense, not the “casting fireball at an orc” sense.) Yet, in your brain, the Power FEELS real, and that is what counts.
Video games are about using power to make changes in a fantasy space, for pleasure. They are power fantasies.
There is nothing shameful about this. The only error is denying it. This will make you not understand video games.
This is, as Vogel explicitly notes, not the standard usage (not that the standard usage has any agreed-upon formal definition, of course, but it has quite consistent connotations, and Vogel’s usage specifically does not share those connotations).
This seems like it has ‘you-could-think-of-it-as’ syndrome.
The question “you could think of [whatever sort of video game] as a power fantasy, but should you?” is, again, a good one. However, again, I do think Vogel’s answer is also a good one: we should think of video games in this way because it precisely identifies what makes them appealing.
(A corollary to that answer is: “We should think of video games in this way when we are thinking about what makes them appealing, trying to diagnose why a game isn’t appealing, trying to make a game be appealing, etc. In other contexts, we may wish to think of video games in some other way.”)
Ah, but that’s not the question you asked, is it? Your question (ascribed to Shoulder Said) was:
Sure, you can think of horror games as power fantasies, but should you?
(Emphasis mine.)
Suppose, for the moment, that we agree with Jeff Vogel in general, about his claim that the essence of the appeal of video games is their power-fantasy nature (in his sense of the term). (Otherwise, there’s nothing further to discuss—he made a claim, we judge the claim to be false, discussion over.)
I think that it’s entirely valid to say “the framework is useful, and applies to most sorts of video games; however, does it apply to [this particular kind of video game]?”. We might answer that question in the negative, and the conclusion would be “the thesis is too strong, but if weakened is true”. Alternatively, of course, we might discover that the answer is, after all, “yes, this framework turns out to also apply to [i.e., to accurately explain the appeal of] that kind of video game”.
That is one aspect of the analysis. Another aspect is that games appeal to different people for different reasons (cf. GNS theory, “Eight Kinds of Fun”, “Timmy/Johnny/Spike”, etc.). We can (and should) ask: how does the view of games as “power fantasies” (in the Vogel sense) interact with these other frameworks? There is obviously a great deal to be said about that, so I won’t even try to answer that question, except to note that “what about horror games” could have an answer along the lines of “horror games are a place where the ‘power fantasy’ framework interacts particularly poorly with any/all of the ‘multifaceted appeal’ frameworks”, or it could have an answer along the lines of “horror games have multiple forms of appeal (as predicted by the ‘multifaceted appeal’ frameworks) and some of those forms fit perfectly well into the ‘power fantasy’ framework”, or the answer could take some other form still… we really can’t say, without actually doing that analysis in detail (and, probably, some empirical investigation to go with it).
Needless to say, a healthy helping of examples (of horror games, e.g., or of whatever else is involved in any objections or doubts we might have about Vogel’s claims) would be necessary in order to actually get to any useful answers we might want. (For example, Vogel says that “give you the power to survive, no matter how horrible your surroundings are”; how well does that describe horror video games? It certainly sounds plausible, but I’m not actually a big fan of the genre, so I couldn’t say. And without some concrete examples, we’re not getting anywhere with this!)
Commenting just to note that for anyone for whom the name “Jeff Vogel” doesn’t ring any bells, he’s the founder of… well, no. He is Spiderweb Software.[1] And Spiderweb Software is the creator of some of the best independent CRPGs that I’ve ever played: the Exile series, the Avernum series, the Geneforge series. And Vogel’s been doing this—making a living from creating computer games, almost entirely by himself—for close to 30 years.
In short, when it comes to “what games are”, Jeff Vogel has a pretty good idea of what he’s talking about.
He hires artists sometimes, to create various graphical assets, but aside from that I’m pretty sure it’s a one-man shop.
Yeah. (Exile was a pretty formative game for me in the 90s. I haven’t met many other people who’ve played it, though I’ve met someone who played Geneforge. I’ve always been a bit sad that Exile got renamed to “Avernum”, the original title was much more evocative to me.)
Fun fact, one of those artists is me! (right out of college with my computer animation degree, I messaged Jeff and was like “hey, I’m a poor desperate college grad artist who can probably make art for you at affordable rates!” and then I made these walls among others)
Was there meant to be a link there?
Yeah should be fixed now (not that, like, they are particularly great walls or anything that are particularly worth looking at)
Oh man, I know those walls, though. Those are pretty recognizable walls! Very cool that you worked on this!
So… as I’ve listened to people comment “why are these things counting as power fantasies?” over the past day, perhaps ironically it’s actually my Shoulder Said who has popped up in my head to say “Um, what do you mean by power fantasy, actually? This seems like it has ‘you-could-think-of-it-as’ syndrome. Sure, you can think of horror games as power fantasies, but should you?”
So I’m thinking through that a bit now and forming my own answers, but I’m curious about your own take on that.
It’s certainly a fair question. But… doesn’t Vogel’s post answer it fairly well? I mean, he has a whole section titled “What Do We Mean By “Power Fantasy”?” It’s not long, so I’ll quote it in full:
This is, as Vogel explicitly notes, not the standard usage (not that the standard usage has any agreed-upon formal definition, of course, but it has quite consistent connotations, and Vogel’s usage specifically does not share those connotations).
The question “you could think of [whatever sort of video game] as a power fantasy, but should you?” is, again, a good one. However, again, I do think Vogel’s answer is also a good one: we should think of video games in this way because it precisely identifies what makes them appealing.
(A corollary to that answer is: “We should think of video games in this way when we are thinking about what makes them appealing, trying to diagnose why a game isn’t appealing, trying to make a game be appealing, etc. In other contexts, we may wish to think of video games in some other way.”)
Ah, but that’s not the question you asked, is it? Your question (ascribed to Shoulder Said) was:
(Emphasis mine.)
Suppose, for the moment, that we agree with Jeff Vogel in general, about his claim that the essence of the appeal of video games is their power-fantasy nature (in his sense of the term). (Otherwise, there’s nothing further to discuss—he made a claim, we judge the claim to be false, discussion over.)
I think that it’s entirely valid to say “the framework is useful, and applies to most sorts of video games; however, does it apply to [this particular kind of video game]?”. We might answer that question in the negative, and the conclusion would be “the thesis is too strong, but if weakened is true”. Alternatively, of course, we might discover that the answer is, after all, “yes, this framework turns out to also apply to [i.e., to accurately explain the appeal of] that kind of video game”.
That is one aspect of the analysis. Another aspect is that games appeal to different people for different reasons (cf. GNS theory, “Eight Kinds of Fun”, “Timmy/Johnny/Spike”, etc.). We can (and should) ask: how does the view of games as “power fantasies” (in the Vogel sense) interact with these other frameworks? There is obviously a great deal to be said about that, so I won’t even try to answer that question, except to note that “what about horror games” could have an answer along the lines of “horror games are a place where the ‘power fantasy’ framework interacts particularly poorly with any/all of the ‘multifaceted appeal’ frameworks”, or it could have an answer along the lines of “horror games have multiple forms of appeal (as predicted by the ‘multifaceted appeal’ frameworks) and some of those forms fit perfectly well into the ‘power fantasy’ framework”, or the answer could take some other form still… we really can’t say, without actually doing that analysis in detail (and, probably, some empirical investigation to go with it).
Needless to say, a healthy helping of examples (of horror games, e.g., or of whatever else is involved in any objections or doubts we might have about Vogel’s claims) would be necessary in order to actually get to any useful answers we might want. (For example, Vogel says that “give you the power to survive, no matter how horrible your surroundings are”; how well does that describe horror video games? It certainly sounds plausible, but I’m not actually a big fan of the genre, so I couldn’t say. And without some concrete examples, we’re not getting anywhere with this!)