Occasionally fascinating, more often incredibly frustrating, the new video game design show at the Museum of Design Atlanta, “XYZ: Alternative Voices in Game Design,” focuses on the influence of women on video game design. The show is composed of computer, tabletop, console and arcade games that range from board games to imaginative independent games and big-budget, high-profile games such as “Journey.”
While video games are often stereotyped as violent and action-oriented and centered on male characters, many of the games featured in “XYZ” have female characters and female points of view, deal with gender issues, explore political themes and imagine the game space as an exploratory, introspective, inventive space. Despite the many frustrations of the show, it does convey the incredible variety of approaches to the medium and will be, for many, a compelling primer on the complexity of gaming.
Games run from the humorous to the serious. In the minimalist game “N,” a tiny figure navigated through maze-like spaces is consistently, comically thwarted, its tiny appendages exploding into gory bits. The game both engages in the cathartic video game thrill of destruction, while lampooning that destruction. Some of the games are revelatory and striking like the Belgian independent game “The Path,” a gothic, sinister variation on the “Little Red Riding Hood” story. The table top game “The Train” references Monopoly-style game-playing with its dice, drawn cards and pawns moved around the game board, but has an eerie message about the Holocaust.
There are plenty of socially conscious games too, like “Analogue: A Hate Story,” a convoluted statement about misogyny. But good luck getting past the introductory hoops the game requires you to jump through to arrive at its message. Play is a critical part of this exhibition, but there are definite barriers to entry.
The show has its share of problems, the biggest being how difficult it is to comprehend the themes and ideas of individual games without devoting hours to playing them. The show may be an especially tough sell for non-gamers. The assembled video games purport to reveal insights into the usual gaming experience, but those insights will be hard to access without the necessary game-playing skills. Docents are on hand to offer help, but a well-executed exhibition shouldn’t require hand-holding to put its messages across. And without some awareness of current video game conventions to measure these games against, it will be hard to discern what is revolutionary about some of these examples.
Showing game play or cut scenes might have given a sense of what makes these assembled games significant. The show offers many declarative quotes printed on banners about the social merits of gaming. But it could use some very basic explanations of the concepts it throws around, like game modification, to describe the social commentary game “Escape From Woomera.” In “Escape” another commercial PC game, “Half-Life,” has been modified to become a political statement on immigrants trapped in an Australian immigrant detention center.
Videos show examples of other games not represented in the exhibition, such as “Kiss Controller,” that allow players to control game movements via their tongues. The McDonald’s-sponsored alternate reality game “The Lost Ring” is a subtle piece of indirect marketing that created a global phenomenon and interactive game played by fans around the world.
Such examples convey the idea that games are an incredibly creative, malleable form no longer limited to players operating a controller, but have expanded into complex, interactive, cross-continental experiences where the world is the game board. As the gallery notes explain, “we cannot design play, but merely the mechanisms to facilitate it.” The ability of games to create a space for interaction is one of the more profound and accessible messages in “XYZ.”
Art Review
“XYZ: Alternative Voices in Game Design”
Through Sept. 2. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays. $10; $5 students; $8, seniors, military and educators; $5 children 6-17; free for children 5 and under and members. Museum of Design Atlanta: MODA, 1315 Peachtree St., NE. 404-979-6455, www.museumofdesign.org
Bottom line: Bring a gamer along if you want to gain some deeper understanding in this occasionally revealing, often deeply frustrating exhibition on female-created video game design.
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