"To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare." - Yoshida Kenkō
Fifteen years ago, the thought of portable gaming as a serious complement to a console or a PC seemed laughable. Most Game Boy games were a decent way to pass time while you were stuck somewhere, but the brick was quickly shelved for the NES once back home, as long as the TV was free. After all, who would want to stick with that monochrome screen and tinny audio if you could have the real thing? What's more, outside of the ultimate time-waster, the system didn't have much to offer when held up against its at-home counterparts. The choice was crystal clear if it was between a masterpiece like Castlevania III and a half-baked Castlevania Adventure. It took an Awakening to give me even an inkling of the possibilities of the future. With a timeless Zelda game stepping up to demand my attention, the Game Boy was no longer a time-waster, now an engrossing and enriching companion which found me fighting off thumb cramps late into the night to see the next bit of Koholint by the light of the same lamp that had been illuminating the pages of The Mote In God's Eye the night before. The title that would truly send the Game Boy into the stratosphere from a market sense was a few years off, but for me, in that dark room with just the ongoing conversation between the game and me, I had my first taste of what was possible in the years to come. The game could have been the same on the NES, but having it there in the palm of my hand fundamentally changed my experience with it.
The idea that the way content is presented fundamentally changes the experience is hardly a new one. Jon Stewart and David Lynch both recently teed off on the idea of watching movies on an iPhone, and how that little screen just doesn't cut the mustard. While theirs is a point made out of a desire for appreciation, the potential differences in content presentation go much deeper. University of Iowa Conservator Gary Frost draws a very mechanical distinction between reading out of a book and reading off of a computer screen:
When efficiency of comprehension is considered, some determinants of primeval origin come into play. These include the primate legacy of hands prompting the mind as well as refinements of the codex format that promote comprehension in book reading. Likewise, surprisingly, the screen based reading mode has also developed its own refinements to assist comprehension. These refinements were pioneered with film and television viewing, but have been accelerated with web site reading.
With screen based reading, a composite of the three parent modes (oral/aural, writing, print) is offered. Because of this complexity, the screen must present a world wide view, that is, a mobile and drifting collage of content from the three modes which is frequently displayed simultaneously. The point is that readers will only invest time in refined modes that assure efficient comprehension. As a result we find traffic seeking on-line presentations are now providing an arresting reading experience by refining and enculturating navigational maneuvers (pun intended).
To Frost, the mere fact that one form of writing is on a page and another is on a screen fundamentally alters the way in which it's read, and thus, must fundamentally be altered in the way that it's written in order to accommodate a new mode of reading. It's not a big leap to think a similar distinction could be drawn in gaming.
With the advancement of technology, home console developers have increasingly attempted to mimic achievements in the film industry. It's easy to see why, as consoles present their games through the television, and users are already used to watching movies in the same place. Patterning games more and more after movies is a natural evolution. However, just as movies don't fly on the iPhone, the cinematic advances made in the console arena simply do not translate to the portable space, for my money.
Many of the most successful developers in the handheld space have long operated with a basic understanding of the needs and limitations in the portable space. Most of their considerations are geared towards the traditional classification of handheld gaming as synonymous with gaming-on-the-go. As such, developers will tend towards bite-sized pick-up-and-play gameplay and often include a "field journal" save allowing the player a one time save and resume at any point in the game. Developers have certainly learned to account for the limitations of the handheld space, however, they still have room to grow in learning about the advantages.
As technology has finally reached a point where an affordable and extremely usable device like the DS can achieve most of what's thrown at it without compromise, developers are now able to stop looking at it as the puny little brother of the big, mature consoles. They can now begin to really explore the kinds of experiences they can offer to users like me, people who hardly limit their handheld play to time wasters when they're on the go.
Nowadays, I sit curled up on a chair in a dark room, with only a small lamp, trading seamlessly between my white DS and my white Kindle, weaving in and out of Dragon Quest IV and The Road Home while the jet black HD entertainment center often sits dark. Ever since Pokémon taught an entire generation of children about the virtues of materialism, RPGs like Dragon Quest have never been out of place in the handheld space. Regardless of how this may have come to be, I've found that this is a very good thing, as traditional Japanese RPGs flow like wine in the palm of my hand.
I've already spoken on how text is usually preferable to me to voice in most RPGs nowadays. The text-heavy experience of a fantastic game like Final Fantasy VI was clearly designed to engage a single player, and engage him on a personal level. The game works as well on a portable as it did on the console, and in many ways, it works even better. The conversations that the best RPGs catalyze with the player are not unlike those from a great written work of fantasy or science fiction. These conversations are meant for one person at a time and without distraction, just as a novel might be.
Clearly, there is a place for games that take markedly after books. The extreme case, of course, is the world of interactive fiction. This genre, despite falling into obscure niche territory years and years ago, continues to soldier on on the independent scene as its fans simply cannot get the fix that they get from good IF anywhere else. The distant lineage of IF is evident in the marketplace today in the revival of the traditional adventure game that has resulted in the success of DS titles like Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk. The traditional adventure game evolved directly out of classic IF titles like Zork and Colossal Cave Adventure and the genre retains a lot of qualities that made those games as good as they were. This seems to exemplify the value that can be gained from games attempting to engage the player just as a great book engages its reader.
Now, I'm not advocating a Zork anthology on the DS; however, the potential here is unlimited and there's so much ground yet to cover. Now that the handheld space is no longer held back by severe technical restrictions, I'd love to see some developers deliver the kind of deep and enriching experiences that just wouldn't have been possible anywhere else. A pipe dream? Yes, maybe. So in the meantime, I'll happily go back to Dragon Quest. Hit the lights on your way out, would you?
