Authenticity In Games
God gave us an extravagant gift when He presented us with an imagination. The ability to dream up fantastic worlds filled with new and unknown places, beings, and stories is god-like. However, no matter how much we love the worlds we create or how long we choose to linger in them, we will always be firmly rooted in the reality of God's creation.
Sure, we may buck and bristle at our reality, and humanity may attempt to redefine and remake it to our liking. But we cannot suppress our yearnings for truth, meaning, and authentic connection with the world and each other. It is our soul's desire in every area of life—including our art and entertainment.
From this desire for authentic connection, Jesper Juul examines the history of independent games in his book Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity. Its title reads doubly as an oxymoron, hinting at the complicated nature surrounding the idea of independence and authenticity involving digital art forms, which he addresses early in the book.
"This book's title, Handmade Pixels, concerns the point that independent video games, though mere collections of bits, infinitely reproducible and circulated globally, are also promoted as rare, handcrafted objects. The subtitle, Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity, refers to the fact that independent games are continually presented as the authentic alternative to mainstream games—and to previous independent games—and that developers continue to strive to make new, truly authentic video games. Yesterday's independent game design soon comes to be seen as an empty style, too established and too similar to the mainstream."
authentic adjective
not false or imitation : real, actual
true to one's own personality, spirit, or character
worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact
conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features
made or done the same way as an original
Artistic authenticity is a complex idea. To begin with, the word authentic has several meanings. Additionally, it is subjective to individual interpretation; this makes the conversation nuanced even before introducing the creative element. Mr Juul explains it this way: "Authenticity usually refers to the absence of a range of ills: selling out, being unoriginal, being controlled by money, being superficial, or angling for fame."
In the book's 255 pages, Mr Juul thoroughly explores these nuances and varying perspectives surrounding the authenticity of video games; for this article, I will focus on four ideas.
Honesty
Quality
Scale
Expectations
Honesty
When I think about authenticity, honesty quickly comes to mind. None of us want to be lied to, taken advantage of, or fooled. As an introvert, interacting with fake people especially bothers me. Do you know what I mean by fake? The person might say nice things, but there is something off, and you know they aren't being genuine with you. I usually leave those interactions feeling gross, questioning their motives and wondering about the truth.
As an audience, works of art and entertainment can evoke similar responses and questions. The first question you might ask is, is the work honest? Another way to phrase that would be: Does it communicate messages of truth? All art is encoded with messages. A video game, for example, may have an explicit message communicated through its narrative and an implicit message in its mechanics. The question is, do they ring true?
Another next question is whether the artist is honest about the work. What they directly say about it through things like artist statements and interviews is primary, but things like working from a place of sincerity and lived experience are also important. For example, if I were to make a game about the struggles of growing up as an African American, the work would be disingenuous, and the experience would most likely be superficial, cliche, or stereotypical at some level. My efforts would be much more worthwhile in assisting a developer like Justin Fox with his game Black Simulator because he is creating from firsthand experience.
A final question you may ask is, what are the artist's motivations? Jesper addresses this by noting "selling out" and "angling for fame." We understand people need money to live. However, we don't want a creator's sole motivation to be money. Motivations based on fame and money can offend us. They cheapen the art, if not rendering it altogether inauthentic. Interestingly, when an artist admits they were operating from lesser motives, their audience tends to offer them grace because they were eventually honest.
Quality
When we call something authentic, we associate it with quality. For example, the genuine Louis Vuitton purse that costs thousands is of higher quality than the lower-priced knockoff. Even if the imitation purse matches the original in terms of materials and craftsmanship, the perceived quality would always be higher with the genuine article.
Craftsmanship is a related idea under the banner of quality, which Jesper reflects in the title by using "handmade." The words craftsmanship and handmade point to the human element of creation, whereas machine-made and mass-produced stand in contrast. However, creating art in a digital medium creates tension between our desire for handmade bespoke works and the digital nature of infinite frictionless copying and distribution.
Another tension introduced with the digital medium is the ability to create pristine images. We aren't used to perfection; our physical world is full of imperfections. Our possessions accumulate knicks, scratches, and dents. With time, things become worn, dirty, and broken. Even our bodies bear scars and injuries acquired over a lifetime. So, in some non-intuitive way, perfection is at odds with quality.
As mentioned previously, we risk being perceived as inauthentic if we go too far in a direction (like perfection). I remember sitting in a church service once where everything was perfectly polished. The music was flawless; everyone on stage was beautiful and perfectly put together, but it felt artificial and manufactured. Ultimately, it took me out of worship. That is one end of the spectrum, but the same is true if travel to the opposite end. If the people on stage had phoned in their performance and put little effort into it, I would have disregarded it because it lacked sincerity, quality, and care.
Within these competing tensions, the choice of aesthetic style plays a key role in our discussion. Most indie developers lack the budget, skill, and time to achieve a realistic art style or even the realism AAA developers can achieve. Nevertheless, if you scroll through Steam, you will find games that have attempted this feat and received mixed or negative reviews. Even AAA fails when the bar is realism; anything less becomes an inferior imitation in the uncanny valley.
A more authentic and honest approach would be to choose a simpler art style that matches the scope of the project and the team's capacity. This is why pixel art and low-poly styles are popular among independent developers. It is much easier for solo developers with little to no art training to learn how to create quality art within the limitations of these styles—many of the developers interviewed in the book attested to this fact in their choice of style.
Scale
Humans are sensitive to size—both physically and metaphysically. Naturally, we relate most easily to human-scale things. When we interact with things our size or smaller, it feels intimate, while things larger than us can feel intimidating, imposing, or even unknowable.
Within video games, a game like Grand Theft Auto Six sits at the far end of the size scale. Every metric of GTA6 is staggering, magnitudes larger than most developers can even dream of. While exact numbers aren't available, it is estimated that between 1,700 and 3,000 developers are on the project, a development budget of over 2 billion dollars, a target audience of over 200 million (GTA5 sales), and an estimated 400-500 hours of gameplay.
Here is the interesting thing: an army of real people with real lives receiving real wages is creating a game that hundreds of millions of real people will play. It's 100% real, which satisfies the first definition of authentic (not false or imitation : real, actual). Yet, many people would argue that it is inauthentic. Why is that?
Two things. First, we judge authenticity from our human-sized lens. If we have trouble perceiving the subject, it's hard to trust our collected data, let alone render any judgments. We see this in our relationship with God. His immensity can make it hard for us to relate to and trust Him. But by taking on the form of a man, He created a bridge for our minds and hearts to connect intimately to Him.
In other words, He became personal, bringing us to the second definition of authentic: true to one's personality, spirit, or character. This definition might not seem to apply to our case—because video games are not people—but there is a connection between the personal and authenticity. GTA6 feels impersonal because its scope, team, budget, and target audience are all beyond the human scale. We may know about a few high-profile team members from interviews and marketing, but we understand behind them is an army of nameless, faceless people working on the game. For them to succeed at this scale, it has to be impersonal; they need the army people, and their content has to appeal to hundreds of millions of customers (the feeling of being controlled by money.)
Contrast this with an independent game from Jason Rohrer. He is a lone developer who creates experimental and personal games that only need to sell a modest amount to stay afloat. It is so much easier to get an accurate read on a developer like Jason, or at least feel like you have one, than from a massive corporation.
Expectations
It's probably unfair, but we consciously and unconsciously place expectations on art and artists. These are our ideals, models, and preconceived notions to which they must conform. That may sound harsh; most of these demands are uncommunicated and stay under the surface. Nevertheless, someone eventually speaks up when they can't make the pieces fit.
Now, this dissonance is occasionally a good thing, and the creator is praised as an artistic genius for pushing the bounds, breaking conventions, or reimagining a genre. Yet, just as likely, criticism takes the place of praise.
Handmade Pixels dedicates a whole chapter to exploring the idea of "games that aren't games" and the responses they provoke. Some indie games that fit in this category include Dear Esther, Proteus, The Graveyard, and the whole walking simulator genre, for that matter. The games in this category are more interactive art than games. Some praise them for expanding the definition of a video game, while others dismiss them as not being video games at all.
But it doesn't stop with the games; our expectations also apply to the artists. The book recounts the story of Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird, who was largely rejected by the video game press. Jesper writes, "Flappy Bird pushed all possible buttons toward being recognized as an authentic, independent game. Independent Style graphics, referring to early Nintendo games, a gameplay almost ironic in its simplicity, and even a moral—and completely timely—message against games that are too addictive." So, what went wrong?
Developer Robert Yang argues that Nguyen, due to elements of "racism/first-world bias," didn't fit the preconceptions of a sophisticated independent developer. In short, being a Vietnamese developer in Vietnam, he wasn't part of the Western indie scene. He thus didn't fit the aesthetic of an "authentic indie developer" previously established in media like Indie Game: The Movie, which feels grossly unfair.
What is an authentic video game?
So, what does it mean for a game to be authentic? To distill the sentiment of specific independent developers, journalists, and tastemakers interviewed throughout the book: video games are authentic when developed outside the mainstream AAA ecosystem by independent developers with unique points of view or techniques and conform to our ideas of what a game is and what an independent developer looks like.
It's quite a mouthful. It's also myopic and divisive when viewed in the context of an ever-expanding ecosystem of games created by a global community. It is no wonder that some people interviewed in the book feel like they have gigantic chips on their shoulders.
Three Final Thoughts
As I concluded the book, three thoughts lingered in my head.
First, as Christians in the industry, I hope we can sensitively perceive the nuances of this topic to enable us to create authentic games. I've seen firsthand the influence a game like That Dragon, Cancer can have on players and the fruit that can come from it. The world needs more beautiful, true, and vulnerable games, so it's important to me.
Second, I was struck by how much time, rhetoric, debating, and even quarreling have gone into defining a video game, what makes it authentic, and who are authentic developers. We have such fragile egos and misplaced identities that we constantly grab onto labels and social groups in an attempt to define ourselves and escape the feeling of never being enough. Every person wants to be loved, known, and accepted. And every artist wants the same thing for their work. We're all desperately trying to recover what was taken from us in Genesis 2—when Adam and Eve were naked and unshamed before God and each other.
Third, I read this book in 2024, but it only covers the history of independent games up to 2018 (the year of its publication). The dynamics of this conversation have and will alter dramatically now that AI has entered every area of our lives, including how we develop games. For the first time, genuinely inauthentic games are now at our door, creating games by mere prompt.
I wonder if some of the rigidity around the definition of authenticity will soften. Will it force independent developers to be more inviting and accepting of other developers and their work? I don't know. But I'm confident that with an explosion of AI-generated art and entertainment, our hunger for authenticity and intimacy will only grow in intensity.
