Religion or lack thereof has had an odd role in my life.  I don't remember being aware of the concept of God or even of organized religion until I was about 8 or 9.  I always remembered my family celebrating Christmas and Easter, but there was no mention of Jesus Christ... It was just that time when we got together with family, exchanged gifts and ate lots of food.  Then came my family's move to Halifax, Nova Scotia, it was there that I became acutely aware of Roman Catholicism. 

My mother was raised Catholic; not strictly or formally, but I do know the influence was there and religion was important to her.  One day in Grade Three, I remember being told I had to leave the class with several other children   Before I knew it I was being taught about The Bible by a plain clothes nun with several of my classmates.  I didn't know that I was supposed to be Catholic, I just assumed my classmates and I were different for some reason.  For the rest of the school year, about once a week all the Catholic students in the class would file into an empty class room and we'd learn about God and Jesus... It got me out of math and spelling, so who was I to complain?  It was around this time my family started going to Church regularly... Well most of my family.  .My father was another story.

It was at the same time my mother, brother and I started regularly attending Our Lady of Perpetual Health that I began to realize that my Dad wasn't down with the whole religion thing.  I remember asking my Mom many times, why Dad never came to Church with us.  The response was always cryptic, "He's too busy.", "He doesn't feel comfortable going to Church.", "He can't go.", etc.  Sounded reasonable to me, my Dad was President of a Company, he was a busy guy back in the early 90's.  Obviously, I was blissfully unaware of the real reason why my Dad didn't come to Church with us... He was an Atheist.

I don't hold anything against my Mom for wanting to expose me to religion, just as I don't hold anything against her for not wanting to explain the concept of atheism to a ten year old kid about to get his First Communion.  That seemed to be the whole intention of this new found religious streak in my Mom, me getting my First Communion.  If you don't know what that is I'll tell you... basically in Roman Catholicism there are six big ceremonies the average Catholic is supposed to take part in during their life: Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Matrimony, Confession and the Last Rites.  If you've done the first three; been Baptized, received Communion and been Confirmed, you're good to go for the rest of them; Marriage, Confessing your sins and being given the Last Rites.  It's good(in the eyes of the Church) if you've taken part in these holy sacraments.  If a good Catholic wants to go to Heaven and by virtue of doing that avoid going to Hell, having taken part in these sacraments doesn't hurt..  Maybe I'm over analyzing my mother's reasoning behind getting is into religion, but I assume this stuff had a little to do with it.  And maybe it didn't, maybe she just wanted my brother and I to get a better understanding of this Christ fellow, and what he was all about... which really are pretty good things for the most part.


Having a priest pour water on my head makes me a Catholic... bitch!

After my First Communion and Confirmation, and my brother's belated Baptism(he was 7 years old I believe), we kept going to Church... For a little while at least.... And then we just stopped going.  I didn't question why, probably because I was entering my teenage years, and the idea of sleeping in on Sundays was becoming more appealing than sitting in a drafty Church.  By that statement alone, you can get an idea how into religion I was even after several years of regular Church attendance.


"Thumbs up for Jesus!"

So as it went, during my teenage years I became apathetic toward religion, and most things in general it would seem.  Prior to my apathetic years, I had always been science minded, being obsessed with space travel, air planes and dinosaurs as a child.  The non-existence of the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa Claus really didn't come as a surprise to me.  Similarly, the whole idea of a Supreme Being that controlled everything and sat on a cloud in Heaven just didn't sit right with me... But adults believed in it too, so of course it had to be legitimate, right?

When questioned about my religion as a teenager, I said I was a non-practising Catholic, but that I didn't really know what to think about God anymore.  And so I drifted more toward the Agnostic view of the universe that I stuck to until a few years ago.  It was then that I was exposed to the works of Professor Richard Dawkins and the always "entertaining" Friedrich Nietzsche, among others.  If you;ve read any of these guys you know that you'll find it hard to believe in a god any more afterwards.  First year philosophy class pretty much sealed the deal for me and I declared myself an Atheist.  It was a weight lifted from my shoulders and a breath of fresh air.  What I knew and had experienced "tended to show that the existence of God was unlikely."

Both my father and his father were atheists as well, and that was just another reason I felt my decision was the right one.  Apparently we atheists are still a big minority, which I find more than a little disappointing, and also a bit frightening.  This is the way I've felt for most of the 2000's, but I'd never actually put it into words... I'm not coming to these conclusions just now... I just wanted to put it in writing for whatever it's worth.

I could say more, but I don't want to turn this blog into a diatribe on organized religion, I've ranted enough about it, and anyone who knows me knows my feelings.  I know that it may disappoint some of the more religious members of my family, but I ask that they look at it this way... If your God is so omnipotent and powerful, he sure as hell doesn't need something so tiny and inconsequential as the worship of a few jerks named William Perkins.

On my way home from Guildwood last week I read the Globe and Mail.  As GO-Trains tend to be littered with newspapers and I tend to get bored easily during the ride, reading the paper was really my only course of action.  This was a few days before New Years Eve, so naturally this particular issue of the Globe was dotted with year and specials.  Best of '06, Year in Review, What To Look Forward to in 07, etc.  Being a game aficionado... well, I use that term because game addict makes it sound like I have a problem, even if the definition may be more accurate... anyways, being the avid gamer that I am of course I was drawn to Scott Colbourne's Year In Review of Video Games.  His article summed up the best games of the year, which next-gen console was the best, what had arrived that changed the industry, and what 2007 held for gamers like myself.  Standard year end stuff, but it was Mr. Colbourne's conclusion that got me thinking.

As for what failed to arrive, the video-game world did not welcome its Citizen Kane or even Birth of a Nation, a work of art that could establish the medium as a meaningful delivery system for ideas. There were fun games and there were beautiful games, but fantasy and escapism still dominated. Perhaps such sound and fury are all gamers can ever expect, and there is something to be said for the lasting appeal of pure play. But there is a growing feeling, and not just among game reviewers attempting to justify their existence, that the activity has to add up to something more than profits and fleeting tugs at the baser emotions.

With capable machines and word spreading to a broader audience, at least that breakthrough seems closer now than it did 365 days ago.

Colbourne is arguing that gaming is still a medium in its infancy.  To use a film analogy, the games we're playing now are silent movies, the Citizen Kane of the medium is going to have to be a talkie.  It may not be fair to compare video games and film, but comparisons have always been drawn.  Games with too many cinematic cut scenes and drawn out dialogue are often criticized for being too filmic, conversely movies with big budget computer effects and mindless action are maligned as being too video-gamic...

1.	of, pertaining to, or characteristic of video games.

2.	containing characteristics resembling those of video games.

Yes, I just made that word up.  I believe it is unfair to the video game medium to be used as a point of criticism against film makers.  Game designers more often than not derive a great deal of influence from films.  Games and movies are both visual mediums, and what works for one will most likely work for the other.  However, the medium of film is so established that it's almost akin to comparing Shakespeare to caveman wall drawings.  Maybe I am giving the medium of film too much credit, but for now it remains the more successful medium.  However, I do believe that ultimately video games will eventually have more to offer participants artistically, emotionally and even physically than film will ever be able to deliver as a medium.

Orson Welles film Citizen Kane is significant to the medium of film in that it was one of the first movies to combine many different styles of film making, new and old artistic techniques and combine them to create something new.  The greatness lay not in the originality of film making technique, but in the combination of tried and true techniques to create something original.  So what would make the Citizen Kane of video games?  Does combining tried and true game design techniques in a different and new ways make it happen?  One thing Citizen Kane had going for it was the vision of the individual behind it, Orson Welles was a true film auteur.  There are game designer auteurs, Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima to name a few jump to mind.  Gaming's Citizen Kane will only get made if a personality like Welles; with a mastery of many different styles of game design and the knowledge and drive to combine them effectively, exists in the game industry.  Maybe the Welles of the game industry does exist, if they do then we're on the right track.

But maybe we've already seen the Citizen Kane of games...  There are of course classic games and iconic game characters that most people are familiar with:  Mario, Pac-Man, Pong, Tetris, Donkey Kong, etc., are all easily recognizable to even the most anti-video game person.  It should be noted that all of these game franchises and characters are from what we would call the early days of the game medium.  Games like Super Mario and Donkey Kong epitomize the pure play element of video games that so many people know and love.  Simple, Straight Forward and Accessible.  These are the elements that have garnered franchises like Super Mario the lasting appeal and recognition they rightly deserve.  As game-play mechanics became more complex however, public awareness of video game franchises and characters dropped off.  You would be hard pressed to find a video game franchise or character that was released in the past decade with the same brand recognition as a classic game like Super Mario.  My Grandmother could tell you who Super Mario is, but I think she would have a bit of difficulty telling you the life story of Solid Snake.  Admittedly, brand recognition amongst average people does not mean that a game is artistically significant in the way something like Citizen Kane was to the medium of film, but awareness certainly does not hurt.

The video game medium now has the ability to present compelling story lines and ever improving game mechanics, and at the same time reach an ever broader audience thanks to new technological capabilities.  New capabilities like WiFi gaming with Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP and internet gaming thanks to XBox Live and the ever present PC gaming.  As well new intuitive control systems like Nintendo's WiiMote and Sony's PS3 Sixaxis controller to a lesser degree are opening up video games to people who would have never previously picked up a controller.  So in theory the potential exists, the big one lauded by Colbourne could be on the horizon.

The broader artistic expectations of cultural critics may need to be shifted for the medium of games.  Amer Ajami is a producer at Electronic Arts and a former editor at Gamespot.com, I spoke to him recently about where he thought the medium was headed.  "At what point do games stop becoming games and start becoming glorified, pseudo-interactive movies strung together by half-baked game-play?", Amer asked me at the start of our conversation.  In recent years games have aimed high when it comes to visual presentation and storytelling.  Many games have incredibly complex and compelling stories that enthral the viewer, but fall flat when it comes to the actual game-play elements.  The intended player is relegated to a passive viewing role.  When I asked Amer how he thought this problem could be solved he responded that "It is incredibly difficult to tell a linear and compelling story in an interactive and open-ended medium.".  A few games in recent years have come close to bridging the gap between solid storytelling and excellent game-play.  The Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Max Payne series have arguably succeeded to a certain degree.  However, with all these games the player will always finds themselves watching a cut-scene instead of playing the actual game, sometimes for nearly fifteen minutes at a time.  The open-ended, role-playing nature of most video games clearly make it more difficult for meaningful storytelling to take place, but the aforementioned games have proved that it is at least within the realm of possibility.

We have not yet seen the Citizen Kane of video games, but I believe that when it arrives it will be the game that successfully bridges the gap between what Ajami calls "pseudo-interactive movies" and the pure unadulterated play of an older game like Super Mario.  Some games have come close, some games of have tried hard and completely failed to achieve anything meaningful.  Others have consciously relegated themselves to the domain of pure play.  Little or no story, basic game mechanics that work may have lasting appeal... But video games have the potential to be so much more than that.  The "If it ain't broke don't fix it" model has been the standard practise in the video games industry for too long.  Playing it safe and sticking to what worked in the past is no excuse for games to stagnate as a medium.  Progress is on the way, the trail has been blazed, the potential is there; Now the video game industry just needs its Orson Welles. 

Big thanks to Amer Ajami for his insight on the subject.